On Monday, Virginia-based listed data satellite provider Iridium Communications announced that it has made a strategic investment in DDK Positioning, a firm headquartered in in Aberdeen, Scotland that develops enhanced Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) for industrial Internet of Things (IoT) applications. The investment builds upon an existing relationship between the firms: DDK uses Iridium’s satellite network for global precision services (GPS) to augment its own GNSS constellations and provide greater accuracy for critical industrial applications. Price and other deal terms were not made public. DDK Positioning said the strategic investment will be used to help the company scale and expand globally.
According to Iridium, industry-standard positioning through a system like GPS is typically accurate to within 10 meters. High-precision, emerging industrial applications, such as autonomous vehicles for military or civilian use, precision agriculture, offshore infrastructure projects (e.g. wind farm construction), mining, construction, surveying, and IoT use cases) require even more precise positioning, to within five centimeters or less, a capability that DDK’s enhanced GPS provides.
Iridium says there has been a limited number of geostationary satellite providers in the past, all of them dealing with line-of-sight blockage issues and coverage limitations in and around the Arctic and Antarctic regions. Global demand is keen and growing: figures from the European Global Navigation Satellite Systems Agency value the forward-looking market for GPS augmentation services at $76.5 billion in revenue by 2029. Revenue for the global GNSS downstream market, which includes services delivered and hardware devices, is estimated to reach $382 billion in the same timeframe.
“This partnership is a perfect fit for DDK Positioning, with Iridium’s satellite communications network and our GNSS solution, we are in a position to deliver a truly unique service which is robust, resilient and secure,” DDK Positioning CEO Kevin Gaffney said.
Iridium provides satellite infrastructure service for a diverse base of commercial customers, including maritime, aviation, oil and gas, mining, recreation, forestry, construction, transportation and emergency services. Not insignificantly, it is a major U.S. defense partner, where its technology improves situational awareness for military personnel and track critical assets in tough global environments. In September 2019, Iridium signed an Enhanced Mobile Satellite Services (EMSS), a seven-year, $738.5 million fixed-price airtime contract with the U.S. Air Force Space Command, to provide various satellite airtime services to multiple Department of Defense subscribers.
Late last month, DDK announced a strategic alliance with U.K. telecommunications firm NSSL Global, to incorporate enhanced GNSS positional technology into NSSL Global’s maritime portfolio
