Rick Somerton, presently regional director ANZ for satellite IoT player eSat Global, has been promoted to the company’s CEO.
Somerton joined eSat Global, a US based company planning to use existing geostationary satellites to provide communications for IoT, as regional director ANZ in November 2019. Before that he was CEO and founder of IoT OZ, the Asian licensee for Ingenu’s (formerly OnRamp Wireless) terrestrial based LPWAN business.
According to eSat Global, as regional director ANZ he “had a meaningful impact on customer and partner engagement,” and at Ingenu, “built an extensive network of ecosystem partners across a range of Asian territories and partnered with Chinese investors in the establishment of the first independent LPWAN project in China utilising Ingenu’s RPMA technology.”
Somerton said that, since joining eSat Global he had been working closely with partners and had been “blown away by their level of engagement and their keenness to incorporate eSAT’s modules into their IoT solutions as soon as they are available.”
He said the company would be “giving many Australian IoT solution businesses the opportunity to deliver out of the box solutions to international markets.”
In March 2020 the company announced it would be providing global connectivity for Australia company Smart Paddock’s cattle tags
From leosat to geosats
Somerton was formerly head of Salomon Brothers Australia’s power, energy and utility business. In 2018 and 2019, after leaving IT OZ, and before joining eSat Global Somerton was an advisor to leosat IoT company Totum Labs.
US IoT commentator, Stacey Higginbotham, reported this week that Totum Labs was staffed by other former Ingenu executives and was planning a network of leosats for IoT. She said Totum Labs co-founder and CEO Ted Myers had been co-founder and CTO at Ingenu.
“Myers is especially excited because — thanks to the 2.4GHz spectrum — the Totum technology will also work indoors,” she reported.
“The satellite connection will communicate with a gateway that devices connect to. In the meantime, Totum has signed a partnership to have existing company Loft Orbital provide the gateways and ground network that Totum will use for backhaul.”
However, according to eSat Global “the average cost of sending a 100-bit command via LEO CubeSat to a remote IoT terminal is over 200 times higher than sending that same 100-bit command via eSAT technology using a GEO MSS satellite, such as those operated by Inmarsat.”
