Washington Post – Iridium article

By Dan Beyers
Monday, November 29, 2010

One of the keys to business success, it seems to me, is the ability to shift to plan B when plan A is not working.

Iridium Communications had what sounded like a great plan A back in the late 1990s for creating a single mobile phone network served by a constellation of satellites that would allow anyone to make a call anywhere on Earth.

The only problem was that the cell phone world sort of beat the company to the punch, depriving it of a ready customer base once it had deployed its network of 66 low-Earth-orbit satellites.

Eventually, the highflying company landed in bankruptcy.

I stopped by Iridium’s Tysons Corner offices recently to find out how the company is doing these days — and was surprised to find things, umm, looking up.

Iridium is now working on its second act, choosing to partner with companies that could use a reliable communications link to accomplish some task in remote territory. The McLean firm still sells phones, for people at sea or working and fighting in far-flung places, but more and more, it is providing communications links to move data. An Iridium module might be collecting information from an ocean buoy or a pipeline someplace, or it could be used to track aircraft.

“We’re becoming an Internet of things instead of an Internet of people,” said chief executive Matthew J. Desch.

The company currently has about 240 partners, such as General Dynamics and SAIC, and more come forward every day. More than a fifth of its revenue comes from the U.S. government.

It has about 413,000 subscribers, up 22 percent from the 339,000 it had a year ago.

Desch feels good about Iridium’s prospects. The company, profitable now, recently announced that it had lined up financing to build a new generation of satellites to replace the ones in the air now. The new satellites promise to move data faster, and are configured to carry other equipment should anyone want to pay for the privilege of installing a payload.

The satellite business, though, is a risky one; plenty of companies have spent time in bankruptcy given the huge expense of getting birds in the air before it’s really known what kind of revenue they might bring in.

“Satellites can be cash machines but it takes 10 to 15 years,” Desch said.

If that’s the case, Iridium might be due.

Source: Washington Post

BGAN helps elect President…

Brazil elected its first woman president – with Inmarsat BGAN helping to gather votes from more than 1,400 remote election stations across the country.

The BGAN network enabled local government officials to transmit election ballots logged on electronic voting machines to regional counting centres.

The new president, Dilma Rousseff, was elected in the second round of polling with 54 per cent of the vote, with a total electorate of more than 135 million.
A few weeks before the election, more than 1,400 BGAN SIM cards were activated and pre-loaded with airtime allowances.

Source: Inmarsat

Indonesia receives BGAN help

A wave 3-metres (10ft) high was triggered by a 7.7 magnitude undersea earthquake, smashing into the islands and devastating at least 10 villages. As many as 394 people were killed and another 300 reported missing.

The TSF team has deployed BGAN broadband connectivity at the government’s co-ordination centre in Sikakap and is providing IT support to the relief workers there – mainly governmental agencies.

TSF spokesman Myriam Annette said: “At the request of the government TSF is providing satellite lines to three search and rescue teams to enable them to communicate assessments of the on-the-ground situation and humanitarian needs as quickly as possible.”
Bad weather and rough seas are making it difficult for rescuers, and supplies of tents, blankets, food, water and medicines to reach the islands.

Source: Inmarsat