Kymeta Suiting Up Aurum Armored Vehicles With Ultra-Secure Satellite Communications

It only makes sense that a vehicle designed to keep its contents secure would also use the most secure communications systems available. Satellite antenna company Kymeta, whose mTenna has no moving parts and uses software to aim the beam that communicates with the satellite in the sky, is hoping to fill that role. Their antenna is housed in a 70cm flat-panel that can be mounted on or integrated with a vehicle’s roof to achieve broadband-speed Internet access from anywhere in the world. Kymeta announced that it is partnering with Aurum Security to offer its solid-state satellite antenna for broadband Internet connectivity on its armored vehicles.

Originally designed for cruise ships and yachts (Kymeta demonstrated the mTenna at the 2016 Monaco Yacht Show), mTenna’s have the capacity to connect an entire village, says Tom Freeman, Kymeta’s senior vice president of land mobile. They’re capable of transmitting terabytes of data and support cloud computing, which are essential to enabling autonomous vehicles to communicate with infrastructure and other vehicles.

Freeman didn’t give speed specifications, but he says that satellite broadband is the backhaul to 5G, and that the only system that can scale to the zettabyte (approximately 1 billion terabytes) is based in space. Rather than speed, the main problem is availability and reliability.

A significant advantage to a vehicle equipped with Kymeta’s antenna is that it will have always-on Internet access anywhere in the world, as long as it can see the sky.

“5G will never solve dead zones,” Freeman said to The Drive, adding that you can drive out to Death Valley and hold video conferences.

Security is another benefit that makes this next generation of technology so appealing to automotive manufacturers, especially ones that sell armored vehicles to high profile individuals, such as royalty, and defense departments.

Read more at The Drive