The problem is that Irridium was sort of an all or nothing design. You needed the whole fleet of birds to have global coverage. Geo-sync birds might have red

The problem is that Irridium was sort of an all or nothing design. You needed the whole fleet of birds to have global coverage. Geo-sync birds might have reduced the count but they cost more to launch and have a very noticeable lag. I'll make a different assertion, at the time they dreamed it up, the business model had no chance of working. There were no pivots or re-adjustments. There weren't a lot of great data options at the time. Most importantly, if you launched half the fleet and then decided to re-tool for data support or something else, you'd have partial and inconsistent coverage during that retooling and then you're data coverage would be partial and inconsistent. The gamble was voice was good enough and global coverage was a big enough seller that they'd re-coup the investment and become one of the largest telcos in the world and then by the time the birds died they'd launch next gen ones. It's a dynamic equation, there is tremendous demand for voice, unfortunately there isn't tremendous demand where there is no service. The only "agile" choice they could have made was to stop. The real choices for the business were to wait (but they had money lined up, how many businesses raise the money and then call it off?) or to go forward. Personally, I just think it couldn't have worked, wrong idea at the wrong time. No agile vs. waterfall debate can change that or make a bad idea a good one.