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Thrane & Thrane’s EXPLORER 325 Goes Green Travels The Planet By Electric Car
Thrane & Thrane provided an EXPLORER 325, to handle the communications during a ‘green’ expedition in which two electric Nissan Qashquais are driven around the world. The ‘Charge to Change Electric Expedition’, which set off from Copenhagen on Friday, July 25th is the brainchild of married Danish writer and explorer couple Hjalte Tin & Nina Rasmussen, who plan to complete the 36,000km course in just 10 months.
Charge to Change will be the first round the world journey using standard electric cars. The team will drive a gruelling route, while meeting experts and communities, in order to show the world that electric cars are a viable, cleaner form of transport. Already authors of 12 books, stars of a TV series about their travels and famous for designing and building an innovative low energy house in Denmark, the couple’s high-profile is important for insuring the support and coverage that the expedition needs to be a success. As indeed is the EXPLORER 325, which will enable followers to watch the team and get updates regardless of where they are in the world.
The Thrane & Thrane EXPLORER 325 uses the Inmarsat BGAN service to offer data speeds up to 384kbps standard IP and up to 128kbps streaming, and works down to 5° elevation whether stationary or moving at speed across all types of terrain. It provides global voice coverage and Internet access and is suitable for a wealth of applications and user segments from government and military through to NGO, humanitarian and field service use. Its introduction in March 2010 and subsequent first delivery in July 2010 opened up a new low price-point, making cost-effective on-the-move communications a possibility for a wider range of applications, including trains, buses, trucks and sporting events such as cycling or motorsport.
Hjalte Tin is no stranger to satcoms and in particular Thrane & Thrane’s EXPLORER terminals, having used them while leading motorbike tours all-over the world with daughter Ida, for the family’s bike tour company, Moto Mundo: “The route will take us through some very remote areas and over some rough terrain, so based on my previous experience of the robustness and reliability of EXPLORER products, I am delighted to be using them again,” says Hjalte. “We will have global voice communication and broadband internet via satellite, wherever we are, and even when the cars are moving. EXPLORER 325 will be used to deliver photos and footage, to maintain our blog and to talk to and e-mail friends and family.”
The Charge to Change Expedition will travel 36,000 km in sixteen 2-week stages, with the cars completing 200-300 km over 4-5 hours of driving per day. The first stage of the route ended in Moscow at the beginning of August. After Moscow the team started the long journey east and is currently driving through Mongolia. The plan is to reach Shanghai in October, where the cars and the team will play an important role in the Danish pavilion at EXPO 2010. After this, the route crosses the USA from West to East before rising up through Europe to the finish line in Copenhagen on 1st May 2011.
“We are delighted to be part of this important expedition as it has the potential to promote a much greener form of transport to the world,” comments Morten Rishøj, Market Development Manager at Thrane & Thrane. “EXPLORER 325 is the ideal solution for the team and has already proven it’s worth. Hjalte and Nina are able to keep in touch via voice and the internet while the cars are moving even in the most remote areas such as Siberia. At just 35cm in diameter and 13cm high, EXPLORER 325 features the smallest available vehicular BGAN antenna on the market so its size and weight will ensure minimal drain on the car’s battery, helping the team to make better progress between charges. We are excited to play a part in Charge to Change and wish Hjalte and Nina the best of luck for their travels.”
Improvising Around A Disaster
The first of the U.S. Air Force’s AEHF (Advanced Extremely High Frequency) communications satellite was launched on August 14th. It achieved its initial orbit, but then it was discovered that its main maneuvering rocket, needed to get the six ton satellite into its permanent fixed, 36,000 kilometer, orbit, was not working. Efforts to get the main engine going failed. The engineers then went to work and found a way to use the lower thrust maneuvering rockets to still the AEHF bird into position. But the alternate method will be slower, and take about nine months. That’s a small price to pay for a satellite that is supposed to last 14 years, once you get it in the right position. AEHFs will replace the older MILSTAR birds, providing more abundant and reliable (jam-resistant) communications. Two more AEHFs are under construction, with one going up next year and another in 2012. Several more will be ordered if the first three (costing about $2.2 billion each) perform as expected. The cost of the first three includes development costs, so additional ones will cost less than half as much.
While the AEHF are mainly to facilitate communications between headquarters in the United States and troops abroad, they are also up there to deal with the huge increase in wireless devices the troops are using. For example, the number of military radios has nearly tripled, to over 900,000, in the last decade. There has also been a huge increase in data transmission capability (“bandwidth”) from 46 megabits (million bits) per second in late 2001, to nearly ten giga (billion) bits per second now. This is just for troops in CENTCOM (the Middle East and Afghanistan). That’s 200 times more data being pushed through three times as many “wireless devices” (radios). This doesn’t even count the many cell phones and laptops used by troops in the combat zone, which often use civilian bandwidth. But it hasn’t been enough.
The major consumer of all this new bandwidth is live video being generated by the increasing number of vidcams on the battlefield. These vids are being exchanged by the units cooperating in an operation. This huge growth in bandwidth began in the 1990s, when the U.S. armed forces moved to satellite communications in a big way. This made sense, especially where troops often have to set up shop in out of the way places and need a reliable way to keep in touch with nearby forces on land and sea, as well as bases and headquarters back in the United States. At the time of the 1991 Gulf War, there was enough satellite bandwidth in the Persian Gulf for about 1,300 simultaneous phone calls. Or, 12 megabits per second. But while the military has a lot more satellite capacity now (the exact amount is a secret), demand has increased even faster. UAV reconnaissance aircraft use enormous amounts of satellite capacity. The Global Hawk needed 500 megabits per second, and Predators about half as much. The major consumer of bandwidth is the live video.
UAVs have other sensors as well, as do aircraft. A voice radio connection only takes about 240 bytes per second, and each of the multiple channels needed to control the UAVs use about the same. But it adds up, especially since the military wants high resolution video. At the moment, the U.S. has far more demand for satellite communications than it can support. As a result, not all the Predator and Global Hawk UAVs in combat zones have sufficient bandwidth to send their video back to the United States. Data compression and using lower resolution is often necessary, or using satellite substitutes (aircraft carrying transponders) to send the video to local users. The substitutes are becoming more common, simply because there is neither the money, nor the time, to get sufficient satellites into orbit.
While the larger UAVs need satcomm to send video back to the United States, most of the bandwidth demand now is for local use. Tanks, helicopters and aircraft are all sending and receiving more vids, maps and data of all sorts. AEHF is needed to get essential material to higher headquarters as quickly as possible. The basic idea is to keep everyone connected, all the time. More radios, and other wireless devices are on the way, as well as more features any Internet user would recognize, all available while under fire. AEHF is an essential link in this data chain.
www.strategypage.com
Inmarsat’s profits are booming.
During an economic downturn most companies’ profits will take a beating whilst their managers have to batten down the metaphorical hatches to pull through what is a period of great uncertainty.
The few businesses which prosper during a recession are those whose characteristics are particularly well suited to hard times such as debt collectors, insolvency practitioners and discount retailers like Poundland.
So it is a bit of a surprise to find a high-technology business which has positively thrived during the recent global recession. In the last two years Inmarsat (LSE: ISAT), the provider of satellite telecommunications services, has managed to increase its turnover by 80% whilst its earnings per share have risen by two-thirds.
Recession. What recession?
Inmarsat’s performance is no fluke; the company is still growing strongly as its results for the first half of 2010 showed, with earnings per share increasing by over 40% compared to the same period in 2009.
If Inmarsat can produce this sort of performance during a recession, a big question is much better might the company’s performance be when the world economy starts to power ahead?
Naturally this means that Inmarsat’s shares aren’t cheap and this is reflected in a PE ratio of 31. But since Inmarsat’s sales, profits and dividend have doubled since it floated on the stockmarket in 2005, realistically you its shares wouldn’t be sitting in the bargain bin!
The business
Inmarsat owns and operates a network of eleven geostationary satellites through which its customers make satellite telephones calls and access the internet from almost anywhere on the surface of the Earth. Consequently its main customers are organisations which operate in what the company describes as “the remote environment market” such as the military, mining and oil companies, aid agencies and shipping (both commercial and recreational).
You can find more background information on Inmarsat in my article from last December.
In June Inmarsat started selling its first global handheld satellite telephone, the IsatPhone Pro, to good reviews. Intriguingly commentators on sailing websites have remarked that the IsatPhone Pro’s calling costs can sometimes be cheaper than those of some conventional mobile phone networks.
While the current range of satellite phones won’t replace most people’s mobile phones, if only because they won’t fit into your jeans or shirt pocket, it’s quite possible that they may directly compete with mobile phones one day.
Inmarsat’s satellite network represents a considerable barrier to entry for potential competitors as they would need to establish a similar network, or lease space on other satellites, which would take a lot of time to establish (and cost a lot). Consequently Inmarsat and its major competitors, Globalstar, Iridium and Thurya, have a big foothold in the market which makes it difficult for newcomers to dislodge them.
When comparing 2009 with 2008 you should bear in mind that Inmarsat’s 2008 after-tax earnings received a massive boost thanks to a deferred tax rebate which meant that the company ended up with a net tax receipt of $161.6 million. To get a clearer picture of the underlying business for 2009, it’s better to look at the adjusted diluted eps which increased from 39c from 32c
Inmarsat’s results for the first half of 2010 were released on 6 August and these were excellent, with sales up by 12% whilst diluted earnings per share rose by 41% and the interim dividend was increased by 10% to 14c.
Inmarsat’s shares performed well in the first half of 2010, rising from 700p in January to over 820p in July but they have fallen back with the rest of the market to the current price of about 670p, which is roughly where they stood last December.
The prospects
To keep its network up-to-date Inmarsat has to regularly launch new satellites to replace its older models. Its three earliest satellites, the Inmarsat-2 series, are expected to cease operating within the next two years, but Inmarsat is planning three more launches to complement its most recent satellite, Inmarsat-4 F3, which came into service in 2009.
A dilemma for investors is that Inmarsat’s shares have never been cheap. The historic P/E ratio (diluted eps) of 31 tells us that the stock market expects to see a substantial improvement in profits over the next few years (merely adequate results will not be enough for the market).
However the demand for satellite telecommunications should continue increase as the world becomes ever more interconnected, which means that Inmarsat’s profits are likely to grow substantially in the next few years. Consequently some investors are perfectly happy to pay up for what looks to be a very full share price and no doubt deters many others.
www.fool.co.uk