4 ms·

Reminds me a lot of the introduction of the Iridium phone. "Worldwide coverage! No more dead zones! This will change communications globally!" Then they saw t

Reminds me a lot of the introduction of the Iridium phone. "Worldwide coverage! No more dead zones! This will change communications globally!" Then they saw the phone. And its antenna. And learned it only worked outdoors. And cost $2,000. ~$6B in satellite costs. It wasn't a failure (I still use mine once in a while), but it sure wasn't what people were expecting.

walrus01 8y ago
The second corporate incarnation of Iridium, which bought the whole network out of bankruptcy, has been extremely successful, however. It's the only truly global network that will function equally well in mountainous regions of northern Afghanistan, on the Antarctic polar ice cap plateau, in the middle of the south Indian Ocean, or elsewhere. The architecture and technology was way ahead of its time, with Ka-band satellite-to-satellite trunk links between satellites following each other in polar orbits. And voice codecs built with 1996-1997 technology that can fit intelligible voice into about 3000 bps. I agree that the late 1990s marketing which was trying to sell Iridium phones to international business travelers was ridiculous, however. Once the new Iridium corporation settled on the actually useful market of government, military, disaster response, maritime, expeditions and M2M data they've been wildly successful. The second and third generation handsets (9555 and Extreme) are much more reasonably sized and closer in user interface to a modern cellphone.
- forapurpose 8y ago
  > It's the only truly global network that will function equally well in mountainous regions of northern Afghanistan, on the Antarctic polar ice cap plateau, in the middle of the south Indian Ocean, or elsewhere. Interesting. I only know a little about the market and products and always have been curious (and on the occasions I needed it, good info was hard to find): What about names like Intelsat, Inmarsat, Globalstar ...?
  - walrus01 8y ago
    Globalstar is an epic turd, network architecture wise.
- nakedrobot2 8y ago
  Right! Nothing like buying an already-deployed $6B satellite network for pennies on the dollar to bootstrap a successful company ;)
FPGAhacker 8y ago
When iridium started, cell coverage was just about nonexistent. In the time it took to go from idea to launched satellite networks, cellular expanded so much that the opportunity vanished. If they had gotten things running just a few years earlier, it may have had a chance. Probably not a great one, given the slowness of iteration cycles of satellites vs terrestrial.

walrus01 8y ago

The second corporate incarnation of Iridium, which bought the whole network out of bankruptcy, has been extremely successful, however. It's the only truly global network that will function equally well in mountainous regions of northern Afghanistan, on the Antarctic polar ice cap plateau, in the middle of the south Indian Ocean, or elsewhere. The architecture and technology was way ahead of its time, with Ka-band satellite-to-satellite trunk links between satellites following each other in polar orbits. And voice codecs built with 1996-1997 technology that can fit intelligible voice into about 3000 bps. I agree that the late 1990s marketing which was trying to sell Iridium phones to international business travelers was ridiculous, however. Once the new Iridium corporation settled on the actually useful market of government, military, disaster response, maritime, expeditions and M2M data they've been wildly successful. The second and third generation handsets (9555 and Extreme) are much more reasonably sized and closer in user interface to a modern cellphone.

forapurpose 8y ago
> It's the only truly global network that will function equally well in mountainous regions of northern Afghanistan, on the Antarctic polar ice cap plateau, in the middle of the south Indian Ocean, or elsewhere. Interesting. I only know a little about the market and products and always have been curious (and on the occasions I needed it, good info was hard to find): What about names like Intelsat, Inmarsat, Globalstar ...?
- walrus01 8y ago
  Globalstar is an epic turd, network architecture wise.
nakedrobot2 8y ago
Right! Nothing like buying an already-deployed $6B satellite network for pennies on the dollar to bootstrap a successful company ;)

FPGAhacker 8y ago

When iridium started, cell coverage was just about nonexistent. In the time it took to go from idea to launched satellite networks, cellular expanded so much that the opportunity vanished. If they had gotten things running just a few years earlier, it may have had a chance. Probably not a great one, given the slowness of iteration cycles of satellites vs terrestrial.