XGate makes satellite communications fast, efficient, and easy. But it can also save you a ton of money! Here's how.
1) Compression, Compression, Compression
XGate uses the most advanced and effective compression on the planet to get your data down to 95% of its original size. This saves you time and money, without compromising on quality or connectivity.
Takeaway: compression means faster. (And it saves a lot of money).
2) Midfile Restart
Lose satellite signal halfway through a data transfer? (Like when you're downloading an email or a weather file). XGate will pick up where you left off next time you connect, instead of starting over from the beginning. Satellite connectivity can result in lots of dropped calls depending on your connection with with the satellites and if you had to start from the beginning each time you initiated a data transfer it would take forever to get things done. (And cost you a lot of money in the process).
Takeaway: XGate Midfile Restart is an excellent way to get things done and saves a lot of money.
3) Image Resampling
XGate resizes and resamples images before sending them as an email attachment. This results in compression sizes that are 99% smaller than their original size - without loss in overall picture quality. We wrote a geeky blog post about exactly how this compression affects picture quality (with lots of sample pictures!). You can check out the XGate image quality blog post here.
Takeaway: 99% compression on images saves lots of money.
4) BigMail
Let's say a certain cat-loving cousin of yours sends you (and every single other person in their contact list) a PowerPoint presentation titled "500 Reasons Why Cats Are The Best." It's 15 MB in size. You might not even want to look at this thing if you were on your home Internet connection, but you definitely don't want to download it over satellite, where it's going to cost you anywhere from $120 (BGAN) to $1,500 (Iridium GO!) (Not to mention the fact that it would take 17 hours to download on an Iridium GO! or other handheld satellite phone). XGate sees that email and immediately applies BigMail filtering on it. You'll get a short email notification with the sender, subject line, and size of the email. You can then choose whether or not to download it over satellite, or wait until you have another connection like WiFi or cell to download. Nice feature: you can also change the BigMail limit to fit your exact needs. Default is 50 kb, but you can make it bigger or smaller as you see fit.
Takeaway: Avoiding cat PowerPoints, videos, or other huge emails saves a lot of money.
5) Alternate Networks
Let's say you're on your boat, using your satellite phone, and you come in range of a marina WiFi hotspot (say, because you're using a long range WiFi extender?) XGate allows you to check and send email using any type of network connection you find. Instead of being locked into using your valuable satellite airtime, you have the flexibility of using less-expensive (or free) networks that might be available to you.
Takeaway: using alternate networks when available saves a lot of money.
6) Let's Talk Web Compression
The compression web-browsing component for XGate (XWeb) strips out ads, resamples images on the fly, and cuts out most of the overhead involved with loading web-pages. This means in general you get 3 to 5 times faster web-browsing speeds (and 3 to 5 times savings on your airtime bill). While XWeb is best for use on satellite broadband devices, it works with handheld satellite phones and satellite WiFi hotspots like Iridium GO! or RedPort Aurora as well. Loading small, mobile webpages can take a minute or 2 (or 5, depending on the page), but it can be done.
Takeaway: XWeb in many cases makes web browsing possible, and 3 to 5 times compression on your Internet traffic saves a lot of money. (It also makes your browsing speed seem much faster!)
7) XWeb URL Search
A recent new feature of XWeb includes a super-duper compression-driven URL search in XWeb that makes web-pages load in less than a minute (on narrowband satellite phones), and in the blink of an eye on satellite broadband terminals.
Takeaway: XWeb's incredibly internal compression machine and new URL search saves a lot of money.
Less Than 2 Minute Video About XGate