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Mavenir, a leading cloud-native network infrastructure provider, and Terrestar Solutions Inc., Canada’s premier mobile satellite operator, have achieved a groundbreaking milestone by successfully completing the industry’s first Voice over NB-IoT (VoNB-IoT) call in Non-Terrestrial Networks (NTN) mode. Conducted over a 3GPP-standardized NTN S-band spectrum, this breakthrough eliminates interference issues commonly found in terrestrial networks.
This industry-first call was made in January 2025 using Sony’s Altair ALT1250 module, Mavenir’s Open RAN (Open vRAN and Open Beam radio), and Mavenir’s Converged Packet Core, in collaboration with Terrestar. Designed to operate seamlessly with GEO satellites, this innovation ensures uninterrupted connectivity, even with higher latency.
By leveraging 3GPP-compliant NTN technology, Mavenir and Terrestar are integrating satellite and terrestrial networks to bring seamless connectivity to remote and underserved areas, supporting IoT use cases and expanding reliable communication networks.
Jacques Leduc, President of Terrestar Solutions, emphasized their mission to accelerate satellite mobile connectivity through a fully compliant 3GPP non-terrestrial network.
Sachin Karkala, SVP & GM, RAN Business Unit, Mavenir, highlighted how this achievement enables satellite operators to offer voice services immediately using existing GEO satellites and industry-standard equipment with a simple software upgrade