"Our product takes the signal from the Iridium phone and creates a hotspot inside a building or on an aircraft or below deck on a ship," says Randy Shapiro, Eagle Broadband’s vice president of marketing. "We create the equivalent of a WiFi hotspot where those Iridium users can make fully wireless calls inside of a building."

In this case, the calls will be made at Scott Air Force Base in Illinois, which is the first military installation to adopt the technology. The U.S. government is currently Iridium's largest customer with a multiyear contract for unlimited use of the 66 low-earth-orbit satellites in the network. In most instances the user must be outdoors with direct line-of-sight to the bird. Eagle hopes to make the military a major customer by removing some of those restrictions. Eagle anticipates that adoption of its product in emergency planning and emergency preparedness situations will become more widespread in both the military and private sectors.

"There's a range of demand drivers that includes homeland security, emergency preparedness and back-up communications in the event that primary communications are destroyed or become inoperable," says Shapiro. "Other situations will also arise to take advantage of the technology's NLOS capabilities."

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