About Thuraya

What is Thuraya?

Thuraya Satellite Telecommunications Company is a regional mobile satellite system that provides satellite telephone services to a region covering more than 110 countries. Thuraya offers satellite-based telephony through a dynamic mo-bile phone that combines satellite, GSM & GPS.
Thuraya was established on April 1997 in UAE, as a private joint stock company. The shareholders of the Thuraya are twenty one prominent national telecommunicat-ions operators and investment houses.

Why Thuraya?
Thuraya was established to meet a demand for seamless coverage of mobile telecommunications. Its mission is to provide uninterrupted, telecommunications services to a vast region inhabited by 2.3 billion people. With Thuraya, users are assured of continuous border-to-border coverage beyond boundaries of terrestrial systems and cellular networks.

What are Thuraya’s benefits?
Thuraya integrates satellite, GSM and GPS all in one handset. Each handset offers, voice, data, facsimile, messaging and location determination (GPS).
Thuraya’s dual service enables the user to use GSM service any time in local networks, yet automatically switch on to satellite mode whenever out of local terrestrial reach.
Thuraya service is available through local telecom operators. As a facilitator of advanced technology, Thuraya aims to contribute to the development of telecommunications infrastructures. Thuraya’s satellite services will touch people’s lives in a fundamental way, allowing them to grow closer, no matter where they are, and remain connected to their work partners and loved ones.

Who are Thuraya’s target users?
Thuraya’s services are valuable to a wide variety of users: regional roamers to international travelers, international transportation fleets to national marine operators, relief and rescue crews to workers of remote industrial sites.

Where is Thuraya?
Thuraya covers an area spanning more than 110 countries that is inhabited by 2.3 billion. Thuraya’s footprint includes Europe, North, Central Africa and large parts of Southern Africa, the Middle East, Central and South Asia. Thuraya’s services are available through service providers in each market. (Refer to the "Store Locator" list below)
Thuraya is based in the UAE. The Thuraya 2 satellite is positioned in Geosynchronous Orbit, 35,786 km (22,236 miles) above the Earth, at 44 degrees East Longitude and inclined at 6.3 degrees. Its Primary Gateway, situated in Sharjah, UAE, acts as the operation center for the mobile satellite system.

When was Thuraya launched?
The Thuraya-1 satellite was successfully launched on board a Sea Launch Zenit-3SL rocket from the equator in the middle of the Pacific Ocean on 21st October 2000. Thuraya launched its commercial services in the year 2001.
Thuraya’s second satellite -Thuraya 2 was launched on the 10th of June 2003.
Thuraya’s third satellite- Thuraya 3 was successfully launched on the 15th of January 2008 from the Odyssey Launch Platform; Thuraya 3 was built by Boeing Satellite Systems to expand system capacity.

For more details please visit www.thuraya.com.