There’s been another piece of positive news for the still relatively nascent satellite-direct-to-standard-phone market with a contract in Ghana for Lynk Global.
Satellite-direct-to-standard-phone telecoms company Lynk has announced that it has signed its second commercial contract with Telecel Group in Africa to provide services to Vodafone Ghana’s subscribers. The first deal was with Telecel Centrafrique.
The company says that this new contract will provide mobile coverage to 100% of Ghana’s population of 31 million inhabitants using Lynk’s so-called 'cell-towers-in-space'.
These will enable Telecel Group to offer ubiquitous geographic coverage to over 6 million Vodafone Ghana subscribers and will be utilized for extending rural coverage, including Maritime Economic Zone coverage, as a backup to ensure service resilience, continuity of IoT devices, and as a terrestrial tower replacement for economically or technically underperforming towers.
Following the takeover of its majority shares by Telecel Group, Vodafone Ghana has leveraged the partnership between Lynk and Telecel Group to provide innovative services and widespread mobile coverage across Ghana's rural areas.
Lynk says it remains the only patented, proven and commercially licensed company for satellite-direct-to-standard-phone technology anywhere in the world. It is currently testing satellite direct-to-standard-mobile-phone services in more than a dozen countries and says it is the only company in the world to have successfully sent and received text messages to and from space via unmodified standard mobile devices.
From the beginning, Lynk says it will enable two-way emergency messaging, emergency cell broadcast services, and regular SMS messaging on every phone across the globe.