Washington, DC, Mar 16, 2011 (M2 PRESSWIRE via COMTEX) — Inmarsat (LSE:ISAT), the leading provider of global mobile satellite communications services, today announced the availability of a data service on its global handheld satellite phone, IsatPhone Pro.

The new circuit-switched data capability, offering an effective data rate of up to 20kbps, will be provided in the next firmware upgrade to the handset on 31st March 2011.

“IsatPhone Pro is ideally suited for use as a data service,” said Drew Brandy, Director of Land Services at Inmarsat. “The handset design means the IsatPhone Pro can be simply placed on its side with the antenna deployed for connection to the satellite while a micro USB cable connects it to a laptop. And the Inmarsat-4 satellites on which the service runs are, of course, designed specifically to handle data communications.

“We are very pleased with the performance of IsatPhone Pro’s data capability. It is proving to be very robust whether using generic or customized applications. In testing we have actually exceeded 20kbps throughput with plain text email on several occasions. It’s ideal for those people wanting to access emails, jpegs, documents or PDFs,” he said.

Full Press Release, click here

For more information on the IsatPhone Pro and IsatPhone Pro Airtime, please visit www.IsatPhone.com.