Yes, Iridium Is Still Around, And Yes, It’s Still Got Hardly Any Users
Iridium was one of the most spectacular failures of the late ’90s, as the satellite phone service that cost $5 billion to build was eventually bought out of bankruptcy for $25 million. The company that picked it up on the cheap has made some money from it since it wasn’t saddled by all that debt and was able to quickly get a government contract after the purchase. It’s not clear how much money Iridium pulls in, since it’s a private company, but its CEO said in its mid-year report that it “met or exceeded its targets for subscribers, revenue and profitability” for the first half of the year. No telling, either, how high — or low — those targets are, but probably not too high, as there are still just 127,000 Iridium users worldwide. Using that $5 billion figure, the initial cost of the network has worked out to over $39,000 per user. No wonder they had to charge so much.
Really Moblogging
Im going to keep updating the site via a PDA and an Iridium satellite phone (using a tweaked version of Wordpress that well be releasing as open source once Im back in June).
Satellite DMB 3G Phone that Slides and Rotates
3G Jul 27 2005 3:56PM GMT