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Inmarsat was chartered as an intergovernmental organization (IGO) in 1979 to exploit the emerging satellite technology for cellular communications to enhance maritime communications, specially to enhance safety of existence at sea. In view of the potential future benefits of supplying positioning applications as well as communications providers for mobile users, the organization's official purposes incorporated the authority to supply radio determination services.

Inmarsat communications services commenced in February 1982. At first Inmarsat fulfilled its mandate utilizing room resources leased from third parties. Since 1990, Inmarsat has applied satellites specified, procured, owned, and operated internally. Its first and second generation satellite systems offered maritime and later aeronautical and land mobile products and services but didn't consist of radio location-determination capabilities.

All through the evolution on the SBAS concept, Inmarsat played an active part in satellite navigation. In November 1990, it decided to consist of navigation transponders on its third generation of geostationary satellites, Inmarsat-3, created to supply the room capability required by WAAS and EGNOS.

Inmarsat-3 satellites alone, on the other hand, do not give sufficiently redundant coverage for EGNOS and WAAS to provide operational services through their respective support areas. Moreover, much more GEOs will probably be necessary to assure a proper replenishment policy when the Inmarsat-3 satellites terminate their operational life.

Navigation Payloads. In 1989, Inmarsat cooperated with all the European Room Agency (ESA) on its Navsat program studies, and this led towards the improvement of specifications for navigation payloads to be embarked on geostationary satellites. Inmarsat then adopted these specifications for such payloads on Inmarsat-3 and created these transponders for use as a civil complement and overlay for augmenting GPS and GLONASS.

5 Inmarsat-3 satellites have been successfully launched involving 1996 and 1998, each and every carrying a dedicated navigation transponder. As described earlier, the Inmarsat-3 navigation transponders form an integral part of WAAS and EGNOS, which boost availability, integrity and accuracy with the major GPS and GLONASS navigation signals over North America and Europe. Inmarsat is currently the only operating supplier of navigation payloads for SBAS, with two transponders leased through COMSAT for WAAS and two leased for EGNOS.

On April 15, 1999, Inmarsat became the first intergovernmental institution to privatize, even though it nevertheless maintains its important public support responsibilities for maritime security, even as a private company.