Iridium has unveiled a compact, three-in-one IoT module that integrates its SBD short burst data satellite service, LTE-M cellular connectivity and GNSS positioning.

By combining these features in one device, the Iridium 9604 can reduce complexity, lower costs and accelerate time to market, making dual-mode IoT connectivity viable for price-sensitive, high-volume deployments.

“By integrating cellular, GNSS and Iridium satellite into a single, power-efficient module, we’re giving customers the flexibility to design and deploy lower cost, smaller, power-efficient, and location-aware solutions without the burden of integrating multiple components,” said Tim Last, executive vice president at Iridium. “With our best-in-class proprietary satellite IoT service and upcoming standards-based NB-IoT service debuting this year, anyone thinking about IoT beyond terrestrial networks is thinking about Iridium first.”

The Iridium 9604 beta programme, which launched earlier this year and was oversubscribed by a select group of companies, has generated positive industry feedback highlighting lower costs and simplified design, and enabling location-aware network selection. It has shown savings of 60 per cent or more in board space.

“As an early Iridium 9604 developer, utilising the three-in-one module has already fundamentally changed our product economics,” said Alastair MacLeod, CEO of Ground Control (www.groundcontrol.com). “We eliminated two components from our bill of materials, reduced our board size and simplified our power architecture. Additionally, having dual mode connectivity options enables a smarter, location-aware network selection in our application. The Iridium 9604 turned what would have been a complex multi-component design into a single module. This is a major breakthrough for IoT.”

Dean Welten, CEO of Everlink (www.everlink.co), added: “Our customers require essential data and real-time intelligence to operate with confidence anywhere in the world. By integrating the Iridium 9604 with our secure cloud platform, we can now enable global connectivity, greater operational efficiency and measurable impact at scale.”

The Iridium 9604 is moving the company beyond traditional satellite-only modules to a unified, multi-mode connectivity architecture. The Iridium network now offers customers three IoT service paths to follow:

• Iridium SBD packaged with cellular and GNSS in the Iridium 9604, or SBD and Iridium Burst dedicated modules
• Iridium NTN direct for standards-based direct-to-device using third-party chips
• Iridium messaging transport for industrial-scale, larger payload capabilities with the Certus 9704

The Iridium 9604 (www.iridium.com/9604), built on the U-Blox Sara-R5 platform, comes in a 16 by 26 by 2.4mm form factor for dual-mode IoT deployments previously cost-prohibitive across industrial, infrastructure and mobility applications.

Commercial availability begins in June 2026 with the Iridium 9604 development kit made available for testing satellite and cellular services.

Headquartered in McLean, Virginia, Iridium (www.iridium.com) provides its products and services through an ecosystem of 500-plus partner companies around the world.