COMSAT Mobile Communications (CMC), a telecommunications company which provides global mobile communications solutions to the maritime, land mobile and aeronautical communities, and offers data, voice, fax, telex and video capabilities via the Inmarsat geosynchronous satellite constellation through two earth station facilities in Southbury, Connecticut, and Santa Paula, California. CMC was a business unit of

COMSAT COMSAT (Communications Satellite Corporation) is a global telecommunications company based in the United States. By 2007, it had branches in Brazil, Argentina, Colombia, Mexico, Peru, Venezuela and several other countries in the Americas. A ...

Corporation of Bethesda, MD (NYSE: CQ) (delisted). In concert with COMSAT General Corporation's (another business unit of COMSAT Corp)

MARISAT Marisat satellites were the first maritime telecommunications satellites and were designed to provide dependable telecommunications for commercial shipping and the U.S. Navy from stable geosynchronous orbital locations over the three major oce ...

system, CMC sparked a revolution in medium- and long-distance maritime ship-to-shore communication, augmenting and eventually replacing cumbersome and technically challenging high-power

radiotelegraph Wireless telegraphy or radiotelegraphy is transmission of text messages by radio waves, analogous to electrical telegraphy using cables. Before about 1910, the term ''wireless telegraphy'' was also used for other experimental technologies for ...

and

radiotelephone A radiotelephone (or radiophone), abbreviated RT, is a radio communication system for conducting a conversation; radiotelephony means telephony by radio. It is in contrast to '' radiotelegraphy'', which is radio transmission of telegrams (messa ...

equipment with solid state, user-friendly satellite terminals which required relatively minimal training to use in voice, fax, and telex modes that were impervious to normal

radio propagation Radio propagation is the behavior of radio waves as they travel, or are propagated, from one point to another in vacuum, or into various parts of the atmosphere. As a form of electromagnetic radiation, like light waves, radio waves are affected ...

conditions and unaffected by distance, although initial rates were high ($10 per minute for voice/fax to/from the USA).

History

Acquired by Lockheed Martin Global Telecommunications (LGMT) (a subsidiary of Lockheed Martin) as part of an August 2000 merger with its parent

Corporation, the COMSAT Mobile Communications unit was purchased from LGMT by

Telenor Telenor ASA ( or ) is a Norway, Norwegian majority State-owned enterprise, state-owned multinational corporation, multinational telecommunications company headquartered at Fornebu in Bærum, close to Oslo. It is one of the List of mobile network ...

Norway Norway, officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic country in Northern Europe, the mainland territory of which comprises the western and northernmost portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula. The remote Arctic island of Jan Mayen and t ...

on 11 January 2002.

Footnotes

Telenor to Acquire COMSAT Mobile Communications From Lockheed Martin Global Telecommunications
Lockheed Martin Press Release 27 March 2001. Retrieved 10 January 2010.
Global Maritime Distress and Safety System (GMDSS)
International Maritime Organization. Retrieved 12 January 2010. # Ross, Irwin
Marisat - deep-space switchboard for ship-shore calls
Popular Science, January 1979. Retrieved 12 January 2010.

Lockheed Martin Press Release 27 March 2001. Retrieved 10 January 2010.

Lockheed Martin Press Release 25 January 2002. Retrieved 10 January 2010.
{{Telecomm-stub Telecommunications companies of the United States

History

See also

Footnotes