Satellite firm Iridium is developing a new positioning, navigation, and timing (PNT) solution targeting data centers.

The company has revealed exclusively to DCD that it is in the early stages of a new technology, with the working title “Project Authentic,” which uses a new method to authenticate the location of a user via their device using their satellite network via an authentication server installed at the data center.

“Our position, navigation, and timing (PNT) technology is now being productized by us as a trusted location and authentication source,” Matt Desch, CEO of Iridium, told DCD. “This is an innovative area that Iridium is working on, that can’t be done any other way, and that we’re in the very early stages of. I can only start talking about this because no one else can do it.”

Iridium acquired Satelles Inc., a leader in secure satellite PNT and GPS and GNSS system protection, in 2024.

The acquisition unlocked access to Satelles’ Satellite Time and Location (STL) product for digital infrastructure, including 5G base stations, data centers, and similar sites, which addresses satellite positioning vulnerabilities with low-cost hardware without exterior antennas. Iridium owned a 20 percent stake in Satelles before the acquisition, and paid $115 million to take ownership of the rest.

Desch said the acquisition renders PNT a major growth area for the combined company, a focus that has supported the seeming breakthrough he claims Iridium has made in the technology.

“We have the ability to use this ASIC in a different way to just time and location. With an authentication server, we can prove the location of a device,” Desch said. “The authentication industry today is well over a billion dollars, which has to authenticate users with passwords and multi-factor, and despite all that, we’re swimming in more fraud than ever. What we can do is prove definitively where something is. This would lock out criminals and hackers, attacking elsewhere.”

Desch said that Iridium was talking with large companies about how to utilize its new method, which he believes has the potential to be transformative.

He added that the company was still exploring how to best deliver this solution, and could only reveal so much at this stage, but noted that data centers are highly reliant on accurate time.

“They’re full of hardware that must be precisely synchronised, both among the racks of a data center, and everything they connect to,” he said. “Everyone is starting to appreciate that the time those data centers keep is at risk of manipulation or jamming. Operators of these sites are looking for better guarantees of resilience here.”

Desch referred to data centers in the Gulf, that were suffering a number of these issues as a result of the war in Iran.

“Our PNT is extremely cost-effective for providing a backup time source – the same method used by major stock exchanges. Data centers all require this same sort of redundancy, and Iridium’s is ready today. Alternative terrestrial solutions available today are, at best, local or regional, and many of them need to be built from scratch.”

The company expects to release a new PNT ASIC in July.