RESTON, Va.-American Mobile Satellite Corp. has introduced Skycell Satellite Dispatch Service, a digital point-to-multipoint broadcast system that can operate throughout North America, Hawaii, Alaska, Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands and 200 miles of coastal waters.
Skycell Satellite Dispatch Service and its subscriber equipment will be distributed beginning in this year’s fourth quarter, AMSC said.
The service provides comprehensive voice dispatch and individual private telephone service for small and large fleets of mobile users. Each network can be divided into multiple talk groups, enabling a dispatcher to communicate with individual users, groups of users or the entire fleet by opening a voice channel and broadcasting a message. Skycell customers will be able to have up to 10,000 mobile users in one network, AMSC said.
Users are equipped with a fully digital Skycell satellite telephone with push-to-talk dispatch capability for land, mobile, fixed site, maritime, aviation and transportable applications. Phones are manufactured by Westinghouse Electric Corp. and Mitsubishi Electric Corp.
AMSC offers fleet management mobile data and position reporting to the maritime, trucking and rail industries throughout the United States through leased satellite capacity.
AMSC shareholders include Hughes Electronics Corp., Singapore Telecommunications, McCaw Cellular Communications Inc. and Mobile Telecommunication Technologies Corp. AMSC launched its first satellite in April.
