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News
Issue #2001 - 15
(Apr. 2001)
(Updated
April 11, 2001)
PRODUCTS,
SERVICES & APPLICATIONS
Iridium Reopen for Business
Being on the edge of
bankruptcy in 1999, the Iridium satellite system is now open for
business under new ownership.
Iridium Satellite acquired the operating assets of Iridium LLC’s
and has recently launched a global Iridium service with enhanced
products and services. With competition from Inmarsat and Globalstar,
Iridium will try to attract customers from vertical markets, such as
government defense, emergency services, and aviation, with new data
and messaging services along with the voice communications that the
original Iridium offered.
Come June the Leesbur, Virginia company is scheduled to upgrade
its data service to offer speeds of roughly 10 kbps, reported The
New York Times.
Iridium Satellite’s chairman and CEO Dan A. Colussy told The
New York Times that the new Iridium could break even with as few as
40,000 commercial customers in addition to its $2-million two-year
contract with the U.S. Defense Department.
The Iridium network routes each call from one satellite to
another until they reach the satellite above the Iridium subscriber’s
handset, thus enabling a remote worker equipped with anyone of
Motorola’s 9500 series portable satellite phones or pagers to stay
in touch with colleagues half-way around the world.
For more information: http://www.iridium.com/corp/iri_corp-story.asp?storyid=1
Mobileinfo Comments and Advisory: Iridium
is a classic case study in failure of a large project for commercial
exploitation of an exciting future technology. It demonstrates that
world's largest telecommunications vendors may not be able to
forecast accurately market's acceptance of high monthly service
charges, bulky handsets and that people find cheaper alternative
solutions to a given need. Also that there always is a significant
gap between somebody saying, during a market research survey,
that they would buy a service and actually putting the money down
when the service is offered. The idea of one phone throughout the
world is still exciting but not at Iridium's original prices. It
will be interesting to make it successful when you have to give a
return to shareholders on 20+ million dollars only instead of
several billion dollars..
Note: This news release may contain
forward-looking statements. Readers should take appropriate caution in
developing plans utilizing these products, services and technology
architectures. All trademarks used in this summary are
the property of their respective owners.
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