Over the past couple of weeks Iridium has received some questions regarding their efforts to help alleviate the emotional strain of the COVID-19 epidemic on there users, particularly in the hard-hit maritime industry, where many crews have been at sea for extended durations.
What has Iridium done?
Starting in January, Iridium elected to extend what was a limited time commercial offer doubling the amount of data available on popular Iridium Certus® (their L-band broadband service) packages for the maritime industry. The offer is exactly as it sounds --- get double the previous amount of data for the same price.
Seeing how the situation has evolved, Iridium has decided to go one step further. Iridium is now giving away up to 500 minutes of free crew calling for each vessel equipped with Iridium Certus or Iridium OpenPort as a primary service, currently through the end of September 2020. And as Iridium itself never charges for connections or termination rates, there are no hidden fees.
This has been rolled out to their service provider network, and they are now operationalizing the program for each requesting vessel. Fleets interested in taking advantage of this program should immediately reach out to their service provider, or they can contact Iridium directly to help with coordination.
Additional efforts in other industries are being met on a case-by-case basis, tailored to fit the need. For example, Iridium’s push-to-talk (PTT) service has seen increasing popularity among first responders and NGOs working in remote parts of the world. Iridium's team has committed to providing free PTT talk groups for responding organizations (NGOs, governments, businesses and so forth) that customers can share over identified “hot spots”, ensuring various organizations can easily coordinate relief efforts across separate organizations without worrying about additional costs.
Iridium is also speeding up integration of a new local number dialing capability for all Iridium® satellite phones and Iridium GO!® devices. The goal is to add more than 40 countries’ local numbers, turning what would be an internationally billed call into a local call, helping families control the long-distance costs associated with calling an Iridium® phone, which like other satellite phones is the equivalent of calling another country. This feature already exists in the United States and has worked incredibly well. Once rolled out, families and friends around the world can proactively call loved ones with Iridium equipment without worrying about the cost associated with it from their local telephone company.(FYI, Iridium already offers free incoming SMS standard.)
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