The Iridium Edge Solar is a solar-powered remote asset manager. Photo: Iridium

Iridium is partnering with CLS Telemetry, Everywhere Communications, Marlink, M2M Connectivity, Rock Seven, and Tesacom to test its newest satellite Internet of Things (IoT) device Iridium Edge Solar. 

The solar-powered remote asset management device is being deployed across continents for applications including Vessel Monitoring Systems (VMS), fisheries management, asset tracking including freight and containers, oil and gas and heavy equipment telematics data reporting. Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE)-enabled smart device applications are also being tested.

Iridium said this product solves common problems with solar-powered asset tracking devices such as water intrusion, limited operating temperature, long-term reliability or degraded battery capacity over time. The company claims this device can be deployed anywhere on Earth for up to 10 years without maintenance. 

Bryan Hartin, executive vice president of Sales and Marketing said in a Thursday announcement that Iridum plans to launch Iridium Edge Solar by the end of 2020. “The Iridium Edge Solar is the new gold standard for the solar-powered satellite IoT device world, but at an incredibly cost-effective rate. Our beta partners will be pushing the device to its limits in a wide array of environments, ensuring it meets the industry-leading quality and reliability standards,” Hartin commented. 

Iridium is seeing growth in IoT subscribers. In its Second Quarter (Q2) results, commercial IoT data subscribers grew 20% from Q2 2019 to 863,000 customers, which the company said was driven by consumer personal communications and tracking devices.