Iridium Satellite today reported that the number of ships using its maritime Crew Calling service has increased by 54 percent during the first six months of 2006. Iridium executive vice president, Don Thoma, attributes the success to the company's unique value proposition, offering the best combination of cost and convenience for crew members to make ship-to-shore calls at sea.

"Iridium maritime satellite terminals, which use small omni-directional antenna units instead of steerable, stabilized dishes, are easy and inexpensive to install, and the satellite airtime charges are substantially lower than other marine satellite communication systems," Thoma observed. "Iridium is also the only satellite communication network offering global pole-to-pole coverage over all of the world's ocean areas."

Shipowners and managers are responding to the rising costs of attracting and retaining qualified seagoing crew members. The Iridium Crew Calling program provides an important contribution to crew welfare and job satisfaction by making it easy for them to keep in touch with friends and families while at sea.

Using convenient prepaid scratch cards, Iridium's Crew Calling plan provides a cost-effective and easy-to-administer program. Crew calls are priced at a single flat rate per minute, regardless of the time of day or location. Personal calls are automatically separated from the ship's traffic, eliminating the burden of manually accounting for crew calls on the satellite network. Crew members can use an extension phone in the break room to make satellite calls, avoiding any interference with communications on the ship's bridge or equipment room.

Iridium's Family First program offers 35 percent discounts for crew calls placed with scratch cards on major holidays, as well as the first day of each month and weekends. The discounts are applied automatically and are in effect for 24 hours based on Greenwich Mean Time (GMT), regardless of the location of call origin or termination.

"Iridium is planning to expand this highly successful program, adding new holidays in 2007," said Thoma.