Critical.
Authoritative.
Strategic.
Subscribe to CIO Magazine »

TCS begins offering TotalCom for range of communications

Wireless and satellite services offered, including space routing

TeleCommunication Systems (TCS) introduced a portfolio of managed mobile communications services on Monday called TotalCom for government agencies and businesses.

TCS has a long history of providing E-911 services and supports many U.S. Department of Defense wireless and satellite communications, as well as 30% of the eight billion text messages sent in the U.S. every day, company officials said.

The components of the new TotalCom portfolio provide secure voice, video and data communications between fixed sites and remote operations over any type of network, whether wired or wireless, marine, airborne or in space, said Michael Bristol, general manager for the government solutions group of TCS.

"We've had all the elements of TotalCom before, but never sold it as a package," Bristol said. Some of the traffic TCS manages goes over its own wireless spectrum or leased fiber, but "all of it goes into our own infrastructure."

TCS has data centers in Seattle and Phoenix backed by 99.999% reliability and offers a range of mobile cloud computing services for navigation and asset tracking.

Bristol didn't detail pricing, which will depend on a customer's needs. In recent months, TCS has provided communications support for the Defense Department and U.S. State Department, including nation-building efforts in Iraq and aerial communications for fighting narcotics trafficking in South America, Bristol said.

He said TCS envisions private sector services using TotalCom for commercial maritime interests and oil and gas exploration.

TCS can take advantage of meshed global satellite connections, which includes using Cisco's Internet Routing in Space (IRIS) technology, an Internet Protocol router on the Intelsat IS-14 satellite. TCS first announced its agreement with Cisco in February, with commercial availability in May. IRIS helps reduce satellite communications latency and can lower costs, Bristol said.

TCS also announced Impact Tactical, an IP terminal that can be adapted for vehicles or use in tents, and SwiftCell Lite, a complete cellular network housed in a small ruggedized case. Within 10 minutes of powering up SwiftCell Lite, up to seven users can communicate privately over their own cellular network, making calls or sending text messages and other data. Pricing and many other details were not announced.

Matt Hamblen covers mobile and wireless, smartphones and other handhelds, and wireless networking for Computerworld. Follow Matt on Twitter at @matthamblen or subscribe to Matt's RSS feed . His e-mail address is mhamblen@computerworld.com .

Read more about wireless networking in Computerworld's Wireless Networking Topic Center.

Join the CIO Australia group on LinkedIn. The group is open to CIOs, IT Directors, COOs, CTOs and senior IT managers.

More about: Cisco, etwork, Intelsat, IRIS, Phoenix, TeleCommunication Systems, Topic
References show all

Comments

Post new comment

The content of this field is kept private and will not be shown publicly.
Users posting comments agree to the CIO comments policy.
Login or register to link comments to your user profile, or you may also post a comment without being logged in.
Related Coverage
Related Whitepapers
Latest Stories
Community Comments
Tags: government, Government use of IT, IT in Government, Mobile and Wireless, networking, U.S. State Department, wireless, wireless networking
Latest Blog Posts
Whitepapers
  • The Case for Real-Time Networking
    CIOs are facing several powerful trends and inflection points that are defining the new IT landscape, including cloud computing, virtualization, the consumerization of IT, smart computing, and communications to collaboration. Taken individually, each one of these trends will have significant ripple effects throughout the planning and operations of IT network infrastructure. In aggregate, they will have an even more dramatic impact on the way that future network architectures need to be planned and designed. Read on.
    Learn more »
  • Keeping up With Ever-Expanding Enterprise Data - 2010 IOUG Database Growth Survey
    A majority of respondents report having performance and budget issues due to exponential data growth. Those companies with the highest rates of data growth, in fact, are eight times more likely than slow-growth sites to be seeing significant increases in their storage budgets. New processes and tools are needed to help organizations take control of the massive volumes of information now moving through their systems. The IOUG survey looked at approaches being taken by organizations to manage their growing data stores, and what still needs to be done.
    Learn more »
  • HP Managed Print Services solutioning methodology
    Many organisations launch initiatives to increase the efficiency of their imaging and printing environment—only to quickly find that maintaining those improvements is the real challenge. Sustainable, long-term efficiency gains require that imaging and printing be approached as part of your organisation’s overall IT strategy. Read more.
    Learn more »
All whitepapers
rhs_login_lockGet exclusive access to Invitation only events CIO, reports & analysis.