Compared to the cost of installing conventional telecoms Iridium's $6Bn looked very cheap. Their big mistake was assuming that mobile phone usage would be a li

Compared to the cost of installing conventional telecoms Iridium's $6Bn looked very cheap. Their big mistake was assuming that mobile phone usage would be a limited special market alongside landlines. They didn't consider that much of the 3rd world would simply skip over the cost of installing landline infrastructure and cell phones would be the cheap alternative so leading to a much larger demand and cheaper phones and calls.