May 2016, ORBCOMM has more than 1.6 million billable subscriber communicators. ORBCOMM has control centers in the United States, Brazil, Japan, and South Korea, as well as U.S. ground stations in New York, Georgia, Arizona, Washington and international ground stations in Curaçao, Italy, Australia, Kazakhstan, Brazil, Argentina, Morocco, Japan, South Korea, and Malaysia. Plans for additional ground station locations are underway. The ORBCOMM satellite network best suits users who send small amounts of data. To avoid interference, terminals are not permitted to be active more than 1% of the time, and thus they may only execute a 450 ms data burst twice every fifteen minutes. The latency inherent in ORBCOMM's network design prevents it from supporting certain safety-critical applications. ORBCOMM's acquisition of SkyWave Mobile Communications in January 2015 gave the company access to higher bandwidth, lower-latency satellite products and services that leverage IsatData Pro (IDP) technology over Inmarsat's global L-band satellite network. ORBCOMM's direct competition includes Globalstar's simplex services (which ORBCOMM also resells) and L-band leased capacity services such as those offered by SkyBitz. ORBCOMM's most significant competitor is Iridium Communications, which offers the Iridium SBD service, which features data packet, latency, and antenna capabilities similar to that of IDP technology, which is now jointly owned by ORBCOMM and Inmarsat. ORBCOMM satellite services can be easily integrated with business applications. Customer data can be retrieved or auto-forwarded via SMTP or HTTP/XML feed directly over the Internet or through a dedicated link. ORBCOMM also partners with seven different cellular providers to offer wireless connectivity, cellular airtime data plans, and SIM cards for M2M and IoT applications. ORBCOMM's other network service business is Automatic Identification System, or AIS, a widely deployed system to track ocean vessels. Six satellites with AIS capability were launched in June 2008, referred to as the Quick Launch satellites. However, all six satellites eventually failed prematurely. When ORBCOMM's next-generation satellites launched on July 14, 2014, each one was equipped with an Automatic Identification System (AIS) payload to receive and report transmissions from AIS-equipped vessels for ship tracking and other maritime applications. ORBCOMM combines its satellite AIS data with a variety of terrestrial feeds to track over 150,000 vessels daily for around 100 customers in a variety of government and commercial organizations. Military Contracting On December 10, 2020, US Army Contracting Command, Rock Island Arsenal, Illinois, contracted ORBCOMM for transponders. See also Mobile-satellite service Satellite phone Globalstar Globalsat Group