Motorola Inc has now disclosed its deal with Iona Technologies Ltd to use the Dublin firm’s Orbix object request broker for building and controlling the ground station part of its Highway-in-the-Sky global cellular network Iridium Inc project (CI No 2,472). The Common Object Request Broker Architecture Orbix will be used in the system control segment in the plan to put up 66 low-earth-orbit satellites to offer portable phone service. It will include management of the satellites and the celestial and terrestrial networks, with interfaces to gateways and control facilities, launch centre control and Iridium business computers. The $3,400m project is due to go live in 1998. Meanwhile, Iona’s Orbix for Windows 3.1 is completing its beta process and will ship this quarter – AIX, OSF/1 and OS/2 versions are coming.
