Three I-4 satellites make up the INMARSAT BGAN, FleetBroadband and SwiftBroadband communications network. They provide Internet and telephony connections anywhere on Earth, except the polar regions.
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Data services
Two general types of data service are currently provided:
- Streaming
- Background
Streaming
Streaming is a guaranteed delivery style of service. A terminal requests a context of X bandwidth (currently 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, or 256kbit/s) and, if there your current spot beam has enough resources available, you are allocated a guaranteed chunk of the available bandwidth. So if you ask for an 8k streaming context, you will at all times be able to send data at 8kbit/s.
Streaming contexts are billed by time.
Background
Background is a best effort style of service. Each spot beam provides a certain amount of usable bandwidth. The bandwidth which is not in use by Streaming contexts is used for Background contexts. This means that the actual amount of bandwidth you receive with a background context will vary over time. The theoretical maximum bandwidth available is ~400kbit/s.
Background contexts are billed by volume.