Thuraya-3 is ready for starting commercial activities

Thuraya-3 and relating ground network are fully ready for starting commercial activities effectively from 9th June 2008, which heralds a new phase in the Company's expansion and growth towards Asia. The geosynchronous satellite, which was launched by Sea Launch in January this year, underwent a rigorous technical testing on all its Ground, Space and other related systems to ensure high service quality prior to commercial launch.

The company's expanded coverage towards Asia-Pacific, including such major markets as China, Australia, Japan, Korea and Indonesia, will double the current market size and population covered by the Thuraya system, bringing two more billion people under its extensive footprint. The border-to-border coverage provided by Thuraya in each country under its footprint will empower people in rural and remote areas as well as those at sea or beyond the reach of terrestrial networks by providing them a reliable access to modern voice and data communications. Continued coverage expansion provides existing subscribers great advantage and flexibility to use their satellite phones in a larger footprint of nearly 170 countries.

Parallel to technical readiness which has been undergoing since 2007, the commercial infrastructure has also been put in place in time, with highly promising distribution and marketing partnerships established with strong networks in such key markets as Australia, Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Mongolia and Macau. Several agreements for ThurayaMarine have also been signed up with specialised maritime distributors which started service provisioning in the Asia-Pacific from last week.

The smallest satellite telephone GSP-1700

Satellite phones have traditionally been big, bulky monsters that look more like bricks than actual phones. But just like their cellular phone cousins, satellite phones are also getting smaller. When you hit the road, you make do with our ordinary GSM handsets for voice calls, but that strategy doesn't always work when you are reporting from, say, the rural fringes of Kazakhstan.

After Thuraya, Globalstar debuted the world's smallest, lightest handset for use on a global satellite network. The new GSP-1700 mobile satellite telephone, which operates on the Globalstar satellite network in more than 120 countries and six continents around the world, is nearly half the weight of the company's current satellite handsets weighing in at approximately 7.1 ounces or 203 grams. And it's close to 45 percent smaller than Globalstar's other satellite phones. The lithium-ion battery is designed to provide users with four hours of talk time and 36 hours of standby time. The GSP-1700 is being manufactured by Qualcomm.

GSP-1700 is Globalstar's smallest satphone to date. In addition, this Qualcomm handset packs an EV-DO modem, so you can get high-speed data access from "virtually anywhere you can see sky," according to the company's website. We're not sure on the price of this handset, but given that its predecessor, the GSP-1600 goes for $750 (without a service plan), it's a safe bet that this one will go for at least that much when it's released "in the coming months."