Rendering of Iridium’s constellation. Photo: Iridium

Iridium announced more details about its direct-to-device ambitions, announcing a service called Iridium NTN Direct that will connect people and things to Iridium’s network using 3GPP standards. 

Iridium announced Wednesday that 3GPP accepted the company’s request to extend the functionality of Narrowband Internet of Things (NB-IoT) for Non-Terrestrial Networks (NTN) into the Work Plan for 3GPP Release 19 as an official work item. This is a step toward Iridium’s satellite service to be accessible via industry standard chipsets. 3GPP Release 19 is currently scheduled to be completed in the fourth quarter of 2025.

Iridium NTN Direct came out of ‘Project Stardust,” which was Iridium’s pivot to standards for direct-to-device service after its previous deal for a proprietary chip with Qualcomm didn’t pan out. 

Iridium plans for it to be a global, 5G NB-IoT service operating on its existing satellite network. This service is in the technical development phase, and Iridium said it performed a successful experiment in a lab earlier this year. The company is looking for collaboration with chipmakers, smartphone manufacturers, mobile network operators, and IoT developers. 

“We’re already well into our technology development, and we’re excited about our progress and to see so much enthusiasm from the 3GPP community,” said Greg Pelton, Iridium CTO. “As a cloud-based service powered by the flexibility of our software-defined satellites and building upon recognized industry standards, we’ve been able to jump off to a super-fast start.” 

Last week, Iridium CEO Matt Desch spoke about the direct-to-device opportunity at World Space Business Week, saying this type of service would be incremental revenue for Iridium, with a key focus on emergency messaging. 

“If services work well and are positioned correctly, they will work well, starting with emergency services. The important part for us will be things like emergency messaging,” Desch said.