Life office to use satellite link

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32701, 2 September 1971, Page 18

Life office to use satellite link

The National Mutual Life Association of Australasia, Ltd, is purchasing an IBM 370/145 computer, to be installed next year in Melbourne, the manager for New Zealand (Mr S. R. Ellis) announced.

By 1974 the computer will service more than 55 video and printer terminals at its branches in Australia and New Zealand.

Information stored by the computer will be available within seconds to staff at branches and leased telephone lines will be used to link the terminals with the computer.

The link over the Tasman Sea will be supplied by the New Zealand Post Office using the communications satellite, Intelsat IV, which is scheduled for launching later this year, and will be located over the Pacific Ocean. National Mutual is the first commercial organisation in New Zealand to arrange a communications link between New Zealand and Australia using the Intelsat global communications system. The New Zealand earth station is sited at Warkworth, 40 miles north of Auckland

and the Australian counterpart of Moree, New South! Wales. Mr Ellis said that the ini-i tial cost of the new equipment, of the order of s2m, represented a smaller proportion of current premium income than the National Mutual’s present IBM 1410 computer did when it was ordered more than 10 years ago.

The new computer, with its video and printer terminals, will take over all the work of the IBM 1410 computer without initial reprogramming, using a feature known as emulation.