Hughes Wins Record Commercial Satellite Deal : Telecom: $1.3-billion mobile phone contract adds to a prosperous year for the El Segundo unit.
Hughes Electronics Corp. said Thursday that it has won the biggest commercial satellite contract in its history, a $1.3-billion pact to build 12 satellites for a global mobile telephone system to be operated by an affiliate of the Inmarsat consortium.
The award extends a prosperous year for Hughes’ El Segundo-based satellite manufacturing operation, whose order backlog now stands at 41 satellites valued at a record $4.3 billion. Hughes has won orders for 29 new satellites during the past 12 months.
The Inmarsat contract “ensures job stability for our space and communications unit for the next several years,” the group’s president, Steven D. Dorfman, said.
The division employs about 6,000 people.
Inmarsat (formally the International Maritime Satellite Organization) is a London-based consortium that provides mobile communications via satellite links. It is setting up Inmarsat-P as a separate entity to operate a new system for connecting lightweight hand-held telephones worldwide.
However, Inmarsat-P is only one of several ventures planning such systems. Two others are the Iridium program, led by Motorola Inc., and the Globalstar project, which includes Loral Corp.
Two years ago, Lockheed Martin Corp. won a $700-million contract to provide satellite components and other gear for Iridium’s 66-satellite system.
Los Angeles-based Hughes, a unit of General Motors Corp., said Inmarsat-P’s first satellite is scheduled to be launched in 1998, with service beginning in 1999.
