COMSAT Mobile Communications

COMSAT Mobile Communications (CMC) is a telecommunications company which provides global mobile communications solutions to the maritime, land mobile and aeronautical communities, and offers data, voice, fax, telex and video capabilities via the Inmarsat geosynchronous satellite constellation through two earth station facilities in Southbury, Connecticut, and Santa Paula, California. CMC was a business unit of COMSAT Corporation of Bethesda, MD (NYSE: CQ) (delisted).

In concert with COMSAT General Corporation's (another business unit of COMSAT Corp) MARISAT system, CMC sparked a revolution in medium- and long-distance maritime ship-to-shore communication, augmenting and eventually replacing cumbersome and technically challenging high-power radiotelegraph and radiotelephone equipment with solid state, user-friendly satellite terminals which required relatively minimal training to use in voice, fax, and telex modes that were impervious to normal radio propagation conditions and unaffected by distance, although initial rates were high ($10 per minute for voice/fax to/from the USA).

History
Acquired by Lockheed Martin Global Telecommunications (LGMT) (a subsidiary of Lockheed Martin) as part of an August 2000 merger with its parent COMSAT Corporation, the COMSAT Mobile Communications unit was purchased from LGMT by Telenor of Norway on 11 January 2002.