Thrane & Thrane Airtime A/S has signed the first customers for Inmarsat’s Broadband Global Area Network (BGAN) service.

Thrane & Thrane Airtime, a BGAN distributor for Inmarsat, will provide Explorer Terminals and BGAN airtime to Geowireless, a South Carolina-based wireless Internet systems and disaster recovery provider, and Caribwebstar, a Cayman Islands-based provider of remote communication systems.

Backend operations provided by Thrane & Thrane Airtime will include automated provisioning and activation, ordering of BGAN SIM cards, online traffic monitoring and billing, and international credit-card clearing.

Thrane & Thrane Airtime hopes to have 8,000 to 10,000 BGAN users by 2010, the company said.