ICS track news crews with Satamatics

Satamatics' satellite-based tracking technology deployed to protect the security of news crews and outside broadcast units operating in remote, high-risk areas.
Satamatics, the global operator of satellite-based telematics information services, have supplied their tracking and tracing technology to UK-based Integrated Communications Solutions (ICS), for monitoring the location of news crews working in high-risk situations.
ICS deployed their first Satamatics systems for CBS News outside broadcast (OB) units covering the recent conflict in Iraq, enabling the exact position of the units to be tracked at regular intervals by satellite. The systems were fitted to an armoured vehicle carrying a CBS News anchorman from Jordan to Baghdad just after the city's fall, and to a further vehicle in the same convey. CBS News also used the Satamatics systems to track satellite uplink vehicles.
In view of the risks involved with news crews operating in war zones, CBS News took the decision to install the tracking systems on vehicles whose progress would be impossible or impractical to follow by other methods.
(GB)