Matt Desch: So the safety program, which largely developed is entering into its certification phase right now where it starts flying on airlines. There’s a whole trial program that’s sort of been scheduled right now with airlines agreeing to sort of fly it and demonstrate it through most of this year. We expect to achieve the certifications later in the year, and our partners manage really the installations. We don’t do that. It’s our — the ones who have channels into the airlines in particular for these kinds of services, like controller, pilot, data link and that sort of thing, who have channels to install these things on airliners aftermarket as they are being built, et cetera. And that’s a model that we’ve been part of for the last 15 years to 20 years, really, in our narrowband product.
This will really give us a whole new capability that they’re excited about with higher speed services, and we expect to see good transition over to that new service technology in the coming years.
Chris Quilty: So does it make sense to either working with the OEM or a partner shooting for OEM installation?
Matt Desch: I’m not sure what you’re referring to I mean —
Chris Quilty: Factory installations that’s in aftermarket.
Matt Desch: Yes. I mean that’s under — that’s expected. The people who make Boeing and Airbus really want Certus in the cockpit. And I’m expecting you’ll hear more about line fit applications of those as they adopt it. They both want Iridium because it’s more global, it’s less expensive, the antenna is smaller, the cost is better. Overall, it is a preferred solution for the cockpit, and manufacturers are extremely supportive of this whole effort we’re underway. This is not something we’re doing and pushing as much as there’s a lot of pull in the market for it.
Chris Quilty: So — and one final question on D2D. You had some peer group companies; competitors form a new mobile satellite service association. It looks like it’s primarily a Viasat, Inmarsat driven, though I guess they did pull in Yahsat and Omnispace on that also. What was your rationale for not participating in that effort?
Matt Desch: Lack of knowledge of it. We — I heard about it, when you heard about it. Mark actually reached out to me this week and we have a call tomorrow to talk about it. He asked if we would want to join, but I don’t know much about even what it’s necessarily seeking to accomplish yet, and I look forward to hearing more about it. I sort of assumed when I saw it as you did, that it was the geo operators, many of them, who don’t have spectrum, I mean, who don’t have satellite sort of capabilities or more spectrum oriented, trying to kind of band together to harmonize and market together to those people who may be able to use that spectrum, since most of the people who announced it really don’t have the money to build, say a standalone network for that way.
So I’m interested in hearing more about it. But obviously our strategy is pretty self-contained right now. We have our own system today. We have spectrum. We have the ability to implement as Stardust our plans. But I’ll certainly look forward to hearing more about it and seeing if our interests align in some ways.
Chris Quilty: And one more final question, which is back to IoT. Have you seen any movement you’ve talked about the UAV market in the past several quarters? Should we expect to see some announcements around this year? And how would that contribution look relative to the ARPUs or number of units compared to the existing base?
Matt Desch: Yes, there’s still an awful lot of activity in that space, more VARs and service providers who are developing solutions. We’re testing things out in everything from industrial applications as well as delivery and other things, who want a lightweight, lower cost, low power kind of command and control solution. Just had a discussion yesterday. There’s a number of HAPs providers, which is interesting. It’s kind of a new growth space as well, who have larger vehicles who again want to use Iridium for our global command and control ability for their solutions as well. But I don’t see a giant ramp up in necessarily at least coming through here quite yet. I mean, I certainly see a lot of interest in market activities, market development activities, solution development, but I don’t have visibility to kind of when that will ramp. So I don’t have a — I don’t think it’s really going to be this year necessarily. I think it’s still to come.
Operator: Our next question comes from Louie DiPalma with William Blair. Please go ahead.
Louie DiPalma: Related to the previous question and discussion on spectrum, you have discussed how you are interested in acquiring more spectrum if the opportunity arises and as it relates to Project Stardust, are you interested in forming regional spectrum partnerships to add capacity to your network at all similar to what AST space, mobile and Starlink are doing with the cellular carriers?
