Inmarsat Gold Rush

Inmarsat Limited, the world's leading global mobile satellite communications provider announced today it has topped more than 250,000 activated satellite communication terminals worldwide.

Over 50,000 of these terminals have been activated since the year 2000 and a terminal purchased by an Australian mining and exploration company brought the tally to the quarter of a million mark.

Bolnisi Gold, an ASX-listed developer of mainly gold mining properties recently purchased an Inmarsat Global Area Network (GAN) World Communicator, from Inmarsat partner Xantic.

The terminal is now operating from a major Bolnisi Gold project site in Chihuahua, Mexico. While the Bolnisi Gold team are in Chihuahua exploring property and evaluating it for mining potential, large amounts of data about the drilling core is sent regularly to head office in Sydney and a senior mining consultant in Lismore, Australia.

The evaluation team sends orders and reports via Inmarsat's GAN satellite terminal at 64 kbit/s. "Our projects are located in remote areas and in many cases, phone, fax and - most definitely email - facilities are almost non-existent." said Ken Phillips, Exploration Director, Bolnisi Gold. "The Inmarsat GAN is our prime means of communicating with the outside world."

This is not the first Inmarsat terminal purchased by Bolnisi Gold. The company also utilises two Inmarsat M terminals at its producing mine in Georgia, in the former Soviet Union. The Inmarsat M is a briefcase-sized, personal communicator which offers phone, fax and 2.4 kbit/s data.