The Iridium Certus 100 service sits between Iridium’s Short Burst Data (SBD) service and the higher throughput of Certus 700. It’s comparable to Inmarsat’s BGAN M2M service; both services utilize the L-Band frequency range, which means antennas can be small and lightweight, and the connection is resilience and stable. Both services are intended for relatively small volumes of data, with Certus 100 offering IP data speeds of up to 88 Kbps (BGAN M2M can offer IP data speeds of up to 464 Kbps).
Certus 100 differs from BGAN M2M due to the difference in satellite orbit height. Certus 100 utilizes Iridium’s low earth orbit network, which provide pole-to-pole coverage, and have the benefit of lower latency. Additionally, antennas do not have to be ‘pointed’ to pick up Iridium satellites, which makes this service ideal for mountainous or wooded areas.