Iridium Satellite said Monday Britain's Royal National Lifeboat Institution has started testing a maritime safety system using its network.
Iridium said that the RNLI will be testing a safety system for automatic vessel monitoring and emergency alerting at sea.
"The Iridium-based vessel tracking system will permit the lifeboat crew to concentrate on the task at hand, safely operating the boat under difficult weather and sea conditions, without making continual position reports by voice calls over radio channels," Mark Morgan, radiocommunications project officer at RNLI, said in a news release. "With this system, we will be able to monitor the lifeboats at all times from the shoreside headquarters, providing enhanced levels of safety and operational efficiency in our lifesaving operations," he added.
Copyright 2005 by United Press International
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