The new Stratos BGAN SCADA service reinforces the Company's commitment to offer superior supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) solutions to support the upstream oil & gas, utility, mining, water-management and tower-monitoring markets. The service will be commercially available in Q1 2009.

Stratos is one of the world's largest distributors of Inmarsat's BGAN (Broadband Global Area Network) service, an L-band mobile satellite offering that uses portable, lightweight terminals to provide simultaneous, high-speed data (up to 492 kbps) and voice connectivity anywhere in the world. BGAN is ideally suited to enable communications in areas where terrestrial or cellular networks are damaged, congested, non-existent or too difficult to deploy.

The SABRE Ranger is a ruggedized, compact BGAN terminal that withstands all environmental challenges associated with remote SCADA applications. It is designed to reliably transmit mission-critical data to the user's corporate headquarters from hard-to-reach locations.

The Stratos BGAN SCADA service is the perfect complement to DataSat II from Stratos, the Company's Ku-band, VSAT-based SCADA service introduced earlier this year. The Stratos BGAN SCADA service can serve as a network-independent backup solution to DataSat II, ensuring seamless connectivity in case of extreme weather. More than 10,000 Stratos VSAT-based SCADA terminals have been deployed for a wide range of markets nationwide.

Because it is based on the highly reliable, global Inmarsat BGAN service, the Stratos BGAN SCADA solution also is well suited for regions - such as Africa and South America - where VSAT-based SCADA systems may be too difficult to deploy, due to regulatory obstacles or lack of space-segment availability.

The Stratos BGAN SCADA service supports applications for data collection and monitoring of remote assets - including utility substations and oil or gas pipelines. In addition to custom solutions, Stratos also offers enhanced IP or serial polling and 24x7 network monitoring from its Network Operations Center (NOC). The NOC is staffed with trained, SCADA-network experienced operators who ensure the highest possible network availability and provide specific insight for SCADA applications.

"Partnering with Addvalue to develop this easily deployable, cost-effective BGAN SCADA service illustrates our ability to broaden the depth of our SCADA offering to respond to urgent customer requirements," said Stratos President and CEO Jim Parm. "This new service successfully enables penetration of active SCADA management into new markets and portions of existing markets that have previously been underserved."

Addvalue Chairman & CEO Dr. Colin Chan said, "With its large installed base of BGAN systems and its deep understanding of the SCADA market, Stratos is well positioned to introduce the benefits of the SABRE Ranger terminal to a broad global audience. We expect this new agreement will be the latest in a series of successful partnerships we have enjoyed with Stratos."

Keywords: supervisory control and data acquisition, performance connectivity, addvalue, scada applications, bgan, global corp, global distributor, global supplier, sabre, high performance, Wireless Access Points