ORBCOMM (NASDAQ: ORBC) is a company that offers Machine to machine (M2M) communications solutions designed to track, monitor, and control fixed and mobile assets in markets including transportation, heavy equipment, maritime, oil and gas, utilities and government. The company provides hardware devices, modems, web applications and data services delivered over multiple satellite and cellular networks.
As of November 2015, ORBCOMM has more than 1.3 million billable subscriber communicators, serving Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) such as Caterpillar Inc., Doosan Infracore America, Hitachi Construction Machinery Co., Ltd., John Deere, Komatsu Limited, and Volvo Construction Equipment, as well as other customers such as C&S Wholesale Grocers, Canadian National Railways, CR England, Hub Group, KLLM Transport Services, Marten Transport, Swift Transportation, Target, Tropicana, Tyson Foods, Walmart and Werner Enterprises.
ORBCOMM owns and operates a global network of 31 LEO communications satellites and accompanying ground infrastructure including 16 Gateway Earth Stations (GESs) around the world. ORBCOMM is licensed to provide service in more than 130 countries and territories worldwide.
Orbcomm satellites are low Earth orbit communications satellites, operated by the United States satellite communications company Orbcomm. As of July 2014, 51 such satellites have orbited Earth, with 50 still continuing to do so.
Orbcomm-CDS (Concept or Capability Demonstration Satellites) are spacecraft which were launched to test equipment and communication techniques used by the other satellites. The first three CDS satellites, Orbcomm-X, CDS-1 and CDS-2, were launched before any operational satellites, in order to validate the systems to be used in the operational constellation.
Orbcomm-X, also known as Datacomm-X, was launched in 1991. It carried communications and GPS experiments. Initially, the spacecraft was reported healthy, but communication was lost after just one orbit.
CDS-3 was launched in 2008, along with the 5 Quick Launch satellites. It contained experiments for relaying signals from the United States Coast Guard Automatic Identification System through the satellite constellation. It was designated Orbcomm FM-29, having most of the communications payload from an unlaunched satellite. The avionics bus to that satellites later became TacSat-1.