goTenna, the first and only company to enable completely off-grid, long-range mobile communications on regular smartphones regardless of cell service, wifi, satellites, or base stations, is exhibiting its third product and flagship of its new professional-centric business, the goTenna Pro, this week at SOFEX.
The goTenna Pro is a professional-grade, mesh-networking tactical radio, that comes in a candy-bar form factor and at a radically low price point never before seen in the tactical security market.
The goTenna Pro is designed for use by mission-critical users and has already been adopted widely across the global Special Operations Forces (SOF) community. The device works in conjunction with the simple goTenna Pro smartphone app — or with any variety of apps built atop goTenna Pro’s open software development kit (such as the Android Tactical Assault Kit [ATAK])— to allow users to send and receive critical situational awareness data such as blue-force tracking, map marking, and messaging over many miles and across various terrain, without any kind of centralized infrastructure.
Before the goTenna Pro, this kind of high-performance mesh-capable radio system would cost tens of thousands of dollars per unit and be extremely bulky — representing an insurmountable barrier to acquisition for almost all except the most well-funded military operators. With goTenna Pro, however, this paradigm has fundamentally shifted, and for the first time, the most powerful type of off-grid tactical communications can be had for only $499 per unit.
Simply put, the goTenna Pro is 40x less expensive, 12x smaller, 10x lighter, and 30x more energy efficient than any other comparable mesh networking tactical radio system. Plus, with its intuitive smartphone integration, operationalization is immediate — no special training is required, as it works just like any other messaging and mapping app on your smartphone.
Some of the key enhancements in goTenna Pro relative to the company’s existing consumer product line are:
Professional-grade, high-performance mesh networking- Upgraded 5-watt variable output power
- Software-defined tunable VHF/UHF radio (142-175MHz & 445-480MHz)
- Greatly upgraded radio sensitivity (-124dBm)
- SMA antenna connector for easy operation with any legacy antennas
- Military grade ruggedization (MILSPEC & IP68)
- Intrinsic safety for explosive environments
- Upgraded battery life exceeding 60 hours per charge
- Complementary enterprise fleet management portal
- Continues to be the only mesh networking tactical radio without ITAR or any other export restrictions.
By providing a reliable mode of long-range multi-hop communication that operates independent of top-down infrastructure at an affordable cost and user-friendly form factor, the goTenna Pro is accessible to everyone from non-profit relief workers to local fire and police, through to both SOF and conventional defense personnel. goTenna Pro not only brings new users to the table who were previously shut out from high-quality mesh-capable communications in the past, but it also makes entirely new and unique kinds of communications architectures possible for the first time.
New possible network architectures include deploying to the field with multiple Pro units on each user so as to bread-crumb devices in challenging or obstructed environments to ensure reliable communications no matter what – all practically possible thanks to the low cost and SWaP of the device. Teams can also interconnect goTenna Pro with traditional networking systems like wifi, LTE, or satellite to push the tactical edge of the network out further than before, through a flexible and long-range hub-and-spoke network architecture.
“goTenna Pro will improve the line of communication between teams and institutions that require resilient, scalable communications in incredibly demanding, mission-critical situations,” says Jorge Perdomo, goTenna’s co-founder, Product Lead, and Chief Evangelist. “The ease-of-use and affordability of Pro brings the power of off-grid mesh-networking to anyone from non-profit humanitarian workers to the most well-funded defense and enterprise organizations, helping them perform their important jobs day-to-day and during emergencies.”
In conjunction with the launch of goTenna Pro, goTenna also offers a cloud-based fleet management portal and the goTenna Professional Deployment Kit. The goTenna Professional Management Portal is a full-featured web portal for the provisioning, management, and maintenance of enterprise teams’ goTenna Pro devices, and is included with the purchase of any Pro device for free, with the option to upgrade to certain paid SaaS features. The goTenna Professional Deployment Kit enables operators to maintain as well as efficiently deploy up to 30 goTenna Pro units and their partner apps in any situation without any need for network connectivity anywhere in the world.
