By IANS,
Kolkata: To help the seafarers in distress, VXL Technologies has launched a global positioning system (GPS) based search-and-rescue beacon, called Distress Alert Transmitter (DAT), a company official said Thursday.
“By pressing a button of this transmitter, fishermen can save themselves when they are in danger,” the company’s executive director B.D. Bose told reporters here.
In case of distress at sea, a flick of a switch on the DAT fitted on-board the vessel will send out a continuous stream of signals to the INSAT 3A satellite, which will then beam the signals down to the Chennai-based Maritime Rescue Coordination Centre of the Indian Coast Guard, he said.
The product is priced at Rs.10,000. Keeping in view the importance of this product the company has approached governments of all coastal states to subsidise the product and distribute it among fishermen.
The DAT technology has been developed by the Space Application Centre, Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), at the behest of the Indian Coast Guard.
“ISRO has already distributed 1,000 units. We will produce another 1,000 units in the next 3 months for ISRO which they will distribute among fishermen,” Bose said.
Bose claimed that had the DAT been available during the 26/11 terror strike in Mumbai, the incident would not have happened.
The product is manufactured at Rajarhat in northeast Kolkata.
VXL Technologies, a S.K. Birla company, is also planning to launch a two-way mobile satellite service (MSS) in the next three months, Bose said.