ThurayaRelay™ Services

The recently introduced ThurayaRelay™ Services provided to Thuraya clients by the combination of Thuraya handsets and airtime, Geonix location services and red24 security information provide a simple, easy to use and highly cost effective solution. For a fraction of the cost of one night’s hotel stay per year, ThurayaRelay™ provides the traveller with unlimited security advice and web-based threat assessment together with an automated platform so your own security professionals can see where your employees are anywhere on earth and provide appropriate assistance in an emergency. And as well as this, the system provides regular update positions to the employee’s family, allowing their location to be viewed and providing a security lifeline back to home and the office. In an emergency, your messages, positions and status will also be relayed to multiple contacts simultaneously both to e-mail addresses and mobile phones.

ThurayaRelay™ works with all Thuraya handsets ever produced, as well as the new ThurayaMarine terminals. The telephone response services are available 24 hours a day, 365 days a year for unlimited use both for briefings and emergency assistance, and can be reached from any Thuraya phone, regular mobile or landline. Position displays in the office or home can be accessed by an internet enabled PC running a recent browser such as Internet Explorer. Absolutely nothing additional is required – no special hardware, no special SIMs, no special software, no special training.

The normal price for this service is $149.99 per user per year. If a handset is used by more than one user during the year (i.e. it is not a personal handset but one from a ‘pool’ provided to travellers), then the charge is only levied once per handset irrespective of the number of users.

HOW THE SYSTEM WORKS

The basic system operation for all handsets is as follows:

1. The Thuraya handsets acquire their longitude and latitude co-ordinates (their ‘position fix’) from orbiting GPS satellites. Accuracy outdoors is typically around the 10 metre diameter precision: if a valid fix is not able to be obtained (for example when the worker is inside a building) the unit will report its last known good position, typically the door by which the worker entered the building.

2. The Thuraya handsets then transmit their positions via the Thuraya satellite (or the cellular mobile phone network for Gen I and SG handsets if the path to the satellite is not available). The user is free to add additional text messages describing the nature of their SOS and assistance requested.

3. The position reports received are captured and analysed on Geonix servers on the internet, and the position reports made available for display using Google Maps or Windows Virtual Earth. Regular position reports are denoted in green and show full detail of the user and his location: emergency events are shown in red and can be accompanied by a loud claxon or hooter alarm sound.

4. The history and follow live positions of each and all registered handsets can then be viewed real time by your own ThurayaRelay™ security staff via PCs with standard internet browsers as well as by families or friends.

5. Security facilities are provided via the use of username/password combinations for each registered user.

6. The user requiring emergency assistance makes voice contact with the your security centre to receive advice, assistance and voice relay services to friends, family and external resources such as police, embassies etc as needed and agreed with the user.