In an interview with Defensehere.com, Steven Kennington responsible for business development and marketing at Paradigm Communication Systems talked about the company's Paradigm Interface Module (PIM) and its agile multiband SATCOM terminal the Swarm.
"Paradigm is a UK based company and we specialized in developing these quick deploy satellite communications. The idea with something like this one is you would take it in a backpack anywhere in the world, you can set it up and then you can be able to have a mobile forward operating base, you’ll be able to stream video and you’ll be able to use the internet in any way that you want via the satellite connection.
Something like a Swarm is a very high throughput terminal and so its good for the military end user who want a use a little bit more throughput then perhaps you would get from a satphone.
Paradigm always doing more research and development there is always things in the works. This product is a product of development that’s gone over a few years. This terminal actually is very popular with, already in the defense industry and its being produced for a few years.
The key to all Paradigm terminals is this base until called the PIM, the Paradigm Interface Module, and that will have visual crosshair on it which makes it easy to point towards the satellite even if you’ve had very limited training or even no experience as a satcom engineer.
That PIM unit is going to be across our entire range, not just the Swarm, and that’s where we focus as a company, on making PIM an easy-to-use unit across the whole range of terminals.
The terminal is being used in militaries around the world. Obviously, we are a European company, so the terminal is being used in a lot of European countries, also in the US and throughout the world. In term of commercial, we are a commercial company, and these terminals are used in a lot of different sectors.
One example I can give you is of a disaster relief organization, for example, the UN. What they’ll do is they’ll have terminals like these, they’ll flight out to where a hurricane has hit, or an earthquake has hit and they will be able to set this up and in real time stream data and use the internet from those locations where the infrastructure has been knocked out.
So its not just military use that these terminals are used for although because they are ruggedized and easy to use a lot of the time that is where they end up.
So we are here in Turkey to support our Turkish partner DNI. DNI are a defense company based in Turkey and they are really good because they have the connections and the expertise to know where these terminals are used and who would be using them.
One thing that is really good for us as a manufacturer to do is work with companies like DNI to provide the end user a complete solution. We offer a terminal out of the box and then also our partners like DNI will be offering the airtime and the complete solution for the customer so ultimately when the customer gets a Paradigm terminal they can take it out of the box they can point it and it will work straight away."
