DOD taps Motorola for Iridium gear

The Defense Information Systems Agency today awarded Motorola Inc.'s Government Systems Operation a $219 million contract for equipment and accessories to support Defense Department communications through the Iridium LLC satellite network.

Under the terms of the deal, Motorola will provide DISA with telephones, pagers, accessories and associated air-time services that will be linked through an Iridium communications gateway in Hawaii.

According to officials in DISA's Pacific switched services branch office, the gateways can handle up to 1,920 simultaneous telephone calls, with the signals from the three antennas that feed the gateway routed to two T-1 lines that hook into DOD's Hawaii wide-area network [FCW, Sept. 21, 1998]. From there, the data either enters DISN or the public switched network.