Iridium Communications Inc. (NASDAQ: IRDM), a leading provider of global voice and data satellite communications, today announced a new five-year commercial contract with L3Harris Technologies [NYSE: LHX] for the Iridium® Satellite Time and Location (STL) service. Under the terms of the five-year agreement, Iridium will provide the STL service to more than three dozen L3Harris-operated communications network backbone nodes and a similar number of Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) facilities throughout the United States.
L3Harris owns and operates a private nationwide network for the FAA, providing voice, data, and video communications for the National Airspace System operations and mission support functions. Timing synchronization is essential within the L3Harris communications network, especially since it supports several critical infrastructure applications. The Iridium STL service is a vital component of the overall network timing architecture that removes dependencies on GPS as a primary timing source.
Compact devices provided by Adtran’s Oscilloquartz division that receive Iridium STL signals are also included in the solution for L3Harris. This high-performance equipment is easily integrated into the network and helps fulfill network timing synchronization requirements nationwide.
Today’s communications networks and the applications that run over them have exceptional real-time requirements and are extremely sensitive to delays. For example, keeping database replications perfectly harmonized in a distributed architecture necessitates timing synchronization among servers within a data center as well as between data centers, even those that are thousands of miles apart.
“With Iridium STL, data center managers can count on dependable timing synchronization throughout their facilities,” said Christina Riley, vice president and general manager, Commercial Resilient Time and Location, Iridium. “STL solutions offer cost-effective resiliency in critical infrastructure environments where GPS is unreliable or unavailable, so L3Harris and the FAA can benefit from uninterrupted, high-performance operations.”
In April 2024, Iridium acquired Satelles, Inc., the leading provider of highly secure satellite-based time and location services.
