Soracom, Inc. announced the advancement of its integration with Non-Terrestrial Network (NTN) service operator Skylo from Private Beta to a global initial service rollout for select Soracom customers. During the keynote at Soracom Discovery 2024, Soracom CTO and co-founder Kenta Yasukawa, alongside Skylo CEO and co-founder Parth Trivedi, confirmed that qualified customers worldwide can now activate Skylo connectivity on their Soracom SIMs/eSIMs, allowing their devices to seamlessly switch between cellular and NTN.
In 2023, Soracom and Skylo announced a partnership designed to give customers building IoT solutions and M2M devices access to Skylo’s direct-to-device 3GPP NTN connectivity, along with the advanced capability of Soracom’s fully-virtualized cellular platform. Following a successful Private Beta period, that service is now available commercially in Limited Preview, and can be activated directly by qualified customers in consultation with Soracom.
Skylo’s satellite NTN lets chipsets, modems, modules, and devices designed for terrestrial networks connect via existing satellites using the global 3GPP Release 17 standard. Customers with devices located in North America, Europe, and Oceania that include 3GPP R.17-capable LPWAN modules can now use Soracom’s Subscription Containers feature to add the Skylo-based satellite connectivity plan (called “planNT1”) over the air (OTA) to Soracom “plan01s” and “plan-US” IoT SIM cards. NTN typically comes with higher latency and base data cost compared to cellular. However, Soracom’s platform services let customers minimize the amount of data transmitted and handshake over the satellite link while maintaining integration with their cloud service of choice. This approach maximizes coverage, including satellite failover, while also integrating billing and connectivity management using the Soracom connectivity management portal.
“Soracom is committed to an Internet of Things without limits, where anything can connect to any cloud from anywhere,” said Kenta Yasukawa, CTO and co-founder of Soracom. “Now, customers can add Skylo’s breakthrough 3GPP NTN coverage to their devices while still taking full advantage of Soracom’s CMP and platform to control their connections, cloud integrations, and data use.”
“We are very happy to expand our partnership with Soracom as we move beyond our Private Beta,” said Parth Trivedi, CEO and co-founder of Skylo. “Deep platform integration, seamless switching between NTN and cellular, and the ability to add NTN gives Soracom customers the ability to unlock the full potential of IoT at any time, regardless of their location or infrastructure constraints, enabling real-time data access, monitoring, and control in areas not currently served by cellular connectivity.”
Speaking from the Discovery stage, Blues Inc. CEO and Founder Ray Ozzie spoke directly to the benefits of the partnership integration: “Blues simplifies wireless communication so that our customers can transform physical products into intelligent services. Key to our approach is supporting all major Radio Access Technologies. The ability to connect via satellite where cellular is not an option while allowing customers to maintain control and minimize data overhead promises to help Blues build a safer, more intelligent connected world.”
