Photo: Nordic Semiconductor

Iridium Communications has a new collaborator for its recently announced Iridium NTN Direct service. The operator is collaborating with Nordic Semiconductor for early integration of the NTN service into Nordic’s modules and chipsets. 

Nordic is known for low power wireless connectivity solutions including cellular IoT (LTE-M, NB-IoT), Wi-Fi, Bluetooth LE, and Thread. The company has cellular IoT solutions that are used for global tracking, utility metering and industrial remote monitoring and control. 

Under the deal with Iridium, Nordic plans to incorporate the Iridium NTN Direct service’s communication capability as part of its 3GPP release 19 NTN roadmap. Iridium said this collaboration will “create a universe of consumer and industrial devices.” 

Iridium NTN Direct is a service under development that will connect people and things to Iridium’s network using 3GPP standards. Iridium is working with the 3GPP standards organization to make its satellite service accessible via industry standard chipsets.  

“Iridium is a global leader in satellite communications,” said Oyvind Birkenes, executive vice present for the Long Range BU at Nordic Semiconductor. “It is exciting that Iridium is taking the step to enable low-cost, 3GPP-standard NB-IoT modules and chipsets like Nordic’s nRF9151 to connect to its network of satellites. This helps bring the vision of universal connectivity for global and massive IoT to life.”