SkyTerra, formerly Mobile Satellite Ventures, is the recipient of the 2009 Frost & Sullivan North America Technology Innovation of the Year Award in Space Communications.

The award, part of the Frost & Sullivan Best Practices Awards Program, recognizes SkyTerra's pioneering efforts in developing an innovative technological solution for an integrated satellite-terrestrial communications network that potentially could dramatically improve the utility of wireless telecommunications worldwide.

"It is with great pleasure that we present this year's technology innovation award to SkyTerra,” said Frost & Sullivan research analyst Anirudh Srinivasan. "SkyTerra's next-generation hybrid network, combining cellular and satellite technologies, has significant potential for its distribution partners to offer differentiated services by providing nearly ubiquitous access to content and services.  SkyTerra's network architecture approach will allow significantly greater flexibility for the provisioning of advanced services and devices, affording partners the opportunity to deliver a significantly enhanced end-user experience.”

"We are honored to be recognized by Frost & Sullivan as a recipient of their Best Practices Award,” said Alexander H. Good, chairman, CEO and president of SkyTerra.  "SkyTerra's technology facilitates a more economical model for next-generation mobile satellite services and for the first time enables hybrid cellular-satellite networks.  Our approach involves using a very powerful and spectrally efficient satellite system, which is made to appear virtually as a base station in the sky to subscriber equipment essentially identical to a standard cellular device.  One of our main objectives is to ensure that the satellite element of the integrated service offering is as transparent to the end-user as possible.”  

According to Frost & Sullivan's research, the main advantage of SkyTerra's innovative technology will be its economies of scale, and that it will enable integrated services on conventional wireless handsets with minimal modification to the selected chipset platform.  To this end, SkyTerra is collaborating with Qualcomm, Inc. for integrating satellite and cellular communications into Qualcomm's standard, multi-mode, mobile baseband chips.  This technology is expected to be available as a no-cost option on selected Qualcomm chips beginning in 2010.  

Frost & Sullivan's Best Practices Awards recognize companies in a variety of regional and global markets for demonstrating outstanding achievement and superior performance in areas such as leadership, technological innovation, customer service, and strategic product development.  Industry analysts compare market participants and measure performance through in-depth interviews, analysis, and extensive secondary research in order to identify best practices in the industry.