Iridium marks major milestone with maritime safety, breaks monopoly

by Chris Gebhardt

A year after completing launch of their Iridium-NEXT constellation, the Iridium Corporation has marked a major milestone with certification of the constellation for use in the Global Maritime Distress and Safety System (GMDSS).

The certification ends a monopoly on the GMDSS previously held by Inmarsat and opens up the system for use globally, including in the lucrative and emerging Arctic Ocean shipping lanes as a result of climate change.

In short, the GMDSS serves as a lifeline from ship to shore when a vessel is in distress — defined as when a vessel is threatened by serious and/or imminent danger and requires immediate assistance.

Full implementation of the GMDSS — “full” in this case meaning its operation in all ocean areas except the Arctic and Antarctic regions — occurred on 1 February 1999; but its roots trace back more than a hundred years.

In 1912, the sinking of the RMS Titanic on its maiden voyage highlighted the need for the world’s maritime powers to improve ship distress and international shipping safety.

In 1914, the world’s maritime nations agreed a process that eventually led to the International Convention for the Safety of Life at Sea (SOLAS), the International Maritime Organisation and, eventually, the GMDSS.

Today, GMDSS is a requirement for all SOLAS vessels — cargo ships over 300 gross register tonnage, as well as passenger ships such as ocean liners, ferries and cruise ships.  But there are tens of thousands of non-SOLAS vessels that use GMDSS as well.

A maritime rescue coordinated through the GMDSS. (Credit: Iridium Communications)

The most recognisable component of satellite GMDSS is the so called “Red Button”.  When a vessel is in distress, a person can hold down the button for 3 seconds to send either a distress alert or a distress call to a Maritime Rescue Coordination Center.

Since its implementation, Inmarsat has held a monopoly over the GMDSS.

But that has now changed.

In May 2019, Iridium obtained recognition from the International Maritime Organization’s Maritime Safety Committee to serve as a GMDSS provider.  With that, Iridium was one step closer to being able to provide vessel owners with a choice of GMDSS equipment for the first time ever.

But there were still two hurdles.

  1. The SOLAS Convention had to be formally changed to allow Iridium as a provided, and 
  2. Iridium needed a Letter of Compliance from the International Mobile Satellite Organization formally authorizing it to provide GMDSS.

The SOLAS Convention changes took effect on 1 January 2020, and the Letter of Compliance was delivered to Iridium on 13 January 2020 — paving the way for Iridium to begin selling its GMDSS consoles to maritime operators.

But this all begs the questions: why did it take Iridium so long to receive this certification and letter of compliance?  And why was there a permitted global monopoly on GMDSS service providers for 20 years?

According to Matt Desch, CEO of Iridium Communications, “This was something I was interested in when I first arrived at Iridium.  I said, ‘Why aren’t we supplying that service?  We have all the technical capabilities of doing it.

“And the answer was that there was a monopoly and that the regulatory organizations were staffed with people from the company with the monopoly.  There was literally no interest in changing the way things were done.”

Mr. Desch continued, “It was a different kind of competitive environment back in that time, and Iridium was still just a few years old and financially troubled.

“Even though Inmarsat bought up all the suppliers and distributors of GMDSS systems, they were still technically an independent supplier of the equipment.  And everybody thought everything was fine. Why bother having any competition?  

“Even if we could have added something technically, it almost wasn’t worth it to everybody go through the trouble.”

But that began to change six years ago.

As Iridium was planning its NEXT satellite constellation, Mr. Desch met the Chief Information Officer of the Coast Guard at a satellite show; and by that point, the intervening seven years had changed mood and attitude toward the GMDSS monopoly.

There was now a desire for competition in service providers.

But moreso, climate change was literally changing the nature of maritime operations.

An overlapping coverage map of the Iridium NEXT constellation. (Credit: Iridium Communications)

As the polar ice caps melted and Arctic sea ice levels diminished, arctic shipping routes that had never before been accessible were now opening.  

Crucially, Inmarsat’s monopoly did not cover the polar regions, meaning ships travelling in those regions would be out of compliance with shipping safety standards because Inmarsat’s satellites and systems did not — and still do not — cover Earth’s polar regions.

But Iridium offered full global coverage with its Iridium satellite constellation.  And the chance meeting between Mr. Desch and the Coast Guard’s Chief Information Officer rekindled the desire for Iridium to enter this market and sparked a round of conversations to get Iridium certified.

But that was six years ago.  Why did it take so long for Iridium to clear all the hurdles?

A large part of that stemmed from the need to get the Iridium-NEXT constellation launched across 10 flights of SpaceX Falcon 9 rockets from Vandenberg Air Force Base, California.

That process began in January 2017 and wrapped in January 2019 with the entire Iridium constellation on the NEXT satellites by mid-2019.

But more than the NEXT constellation, it was years and years of regulatory meetings and paperwork.

According to Mr. Desch, “There were multiple international organizations involved.  There were commercial maritime organizations. They all had a whole bunch of very defined legalistic rules and procedures and techniques that had to be changed. 

“And everyone had to agree.  Sometimes there wasn’t help from a few parties and there were even barriers setup which we had to get over.  

“We had to demonstrate to multiple organizations in multiple ways we could accommodate the requirements — and in fact exceed the requirements.  And then it all had to be tested and proven that what we had developed would work exactly the way it was supposed to. 

“We even had to get agreements between the rescue coordination centers.  It wasn’t a matter of plugging in and going. We had to have an agreement with them to connect to our system.  

“So it wasn’t just technical issues or regulatory issues.   Frankly, it was paperwork issues, too, and convincing groups that had been operating one way for 30 to 40 years to accommodate a completely new system.”

Right now, with all regulatory approvals in place, Iridium is not yet selling their GMDSS terminal interfaces, but the company is in the final build stages for those systems. 

Synergistically, while Iridium is a direct service provider competitor now to Inmarsat for GMDSS, they do not see themselves as a direct competitor to other satellite service providers that can, will, and do operate on ships worldwide. 

Most notably, Mr. Desch pointed out the potential intersection between the Iridium-developed GMDSS interfaces with SpaceX’s proliferating Starlink internet constellation — mainly because Starlink cannot be used for GMDSS.

Render of Starlink satellites in orbit – via SpaceX

“We’re complementary to Starlink.  We don’t compete with them. And we continue to talk to operators like Starlink about how we can work together.  A lot of them are very interested,” said Mr. Desch.

“We might find commercial reasons to work together to tie these [systems] together, these kinds of [complimentary services].”

On a personal level, Mr. Desch related his happiness to have gone through early milestones with SpaceX.

“I’m proud of the fact that we went through a number of early milestones with SpaceX in utilising a lot of firsts, whether it be landing on barges or reusing rocket cores and that sort of thing.

“We knew what was possible, very smartly, and it paid off.  It wasn’t ‘get lucky.’ It was a smart decision, and we did grow up together.  And so I’ll always appreciate that about our relationship with SpaceX even now as we look forward to working together with something like Starlink.  

“That’s just an extension of really the whole decision we made over 10 years ago.”

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