Swarm Announces Commercial Availability of Industry's Lowest-Cost Global Satellite Data Service

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., Feb. 9, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Swarm, developer of the world's lowest-cost live satellite communications network, today announced that the Swarm network is now commercially live and available for customers to begin using. Swarm is the first low-cost satellite provider to offer commercial services to every point in the world, and companies in markets ranging from agriculture, to logistics to maritime can now globally scale their business with Swarm overnight for only $5/month per device.

Legacy satellite solutions have historically been extremely expensive, with complex and power-hungry hardware and a poor customer experience. Swarm has focused from day one on meeting the enormous and growing demands for a low-cost IoT network with 100% global continuous coverage. Swarm's affordable pricing also makes connectivity available for the first time to markets that have historically been priced out of satellite solutions.

Founded by Sara Spangelo and Ben Longmier in 2017, Swarm rapidly moved from concept to commercialization, developing all the hardware and software required to run its global data service completely in-house. Swarm's unique technology consists of innovative satellites the size of a grilled cheese sandwich that provide complete and redundant global coverage, and a satellite modem -- the Swarm Tile -- that is designed to be embedded into a customer product. The Swarm Tile can be integrated  into a wide range of IoT devices, providing them with connectivity to the Swarm global satellite network and two-way data transfer. Compact, lightweight, and low power, the Swarm Tile is ideal for low-bandwidth, battery-powered use cases.

"The value of data is not obvious until you start collecting a lot of it, but the cost of communications in very remote locations has been a barrier to achieving this," said Bruce Trevarthan, founder and CEO of New Zealand-based Layer X Group. "The low price of Swarm's satellite communications services removes this barrier entirely, making it viable for our customers to collect increased amounts of data on a more regular basis. Using Swarm, we have seen monthly data collection costs using our service drop from NZ$450 per month to less than NZ$15."

With the commercial launch of the industry's first ubiquitous, low-cost satellite data service, Swarm enters 2021 with significant momentum including:

• Expanding its constellation of satellites from nine to 81 satellites in the past 15 months to deliver ubiquitous data service all over the world. In January, the latest 36 Swarm satellites were launched on a SpaceX rocket and are fully operational.
• Increasing the number of new customers on the Swarm network by over 400% from the third to fourth quarter in 2020, during the company's early access program.
• Transmitting 600% more data packets over the Swarm network in the fourth quarter of 2020 compared to the quarter prior.

"Now that the Swarm network is commercially available, we are thrilled to begin providing affordable global IoT connectivity to a growing number of customers around the world," said Sara Spangelo, CEO and co-founder. "Too many companies have had to bear the high cost and complexity of traditional satellite solutions because it was their only connectivity option. Many more companies have been unable to access the benefits of connectivity due to its prohibitive costs. Now, for the first time, companies can access low cost connectivity that covers every point on Earth. Swarm gives businesses the ability to gather critical data and make more informed decisions, regardless of location, while spending 4x to 20x less on satellite data than before."

"Swarm is already opening brand new markets that could never afford satellite data in the past.  We imagine a future where every crop in a farmfield, every truck on the road, every refrigerated container with vaccines, and every high value pallet being shipped internationally will have a Swarm Tile embedded into the shipment for rapid and up-to-the-hour tracking and monitoring," said Ben Longmier, CTO and co-founder.

Pricing and Availability
Companies looking to take advantage of global, low-cost IoT connectivity can get started today by visiting swarm.space/contact-us/ or emailing [email protected].

• TheSwarm Tile ($119 per device) is a low-power, easy to integrate modem that can be embedded into any new or existing IoT device.
• At $5/month per device, Swarm's data pricing is four-to-20 times less than other existing services, with no hidden or setup fees.

About Swarm
Swarm is the developer of  the world's lowest-cost global communications network with breakthrough satellite technology and ground hardware for customers in remote locations. Swarm was founded in 2017 by Sara Spangelo, former systems engineer at NASA and GoogleX, and Ben Longmier, former CEO and Founder of Aether Industries (acquired by Apple) and postdoctoral fellow at NASA Johnson Space Center. Swarm has raised more than $36 million from leading technology investors. Subscribe to Swarm's newsletter to stay connected. Contact Swarm's sales team to get connected to the world.

SOURCE Swarm Technologies