It can not be seized, it will be protected from EMP, no need ever for pen and paper private keys by mail or ham radio, lol.
No one ever thought text messaging would take off, including this entire company bankrupting themselves in pursuit of the same goal, they were just 5-10 years too early. Surely their fleet of aging satellites eventually became massively profitable... I wonder how this would have played out if there was not an easy money monetary policy.
Iridium Communications Inc. (formerly Iridium Satellite LLC) is a company, based in McLean, Virginia, United States which operates the Iridium satellite constellation, a system of 66 active satellites used for worldwide voice and data communication from hand-held satellite phones and other transceiver units. The Iridium network is unique in that it covers the whole Earth, including poles, oceans and airways. The company derives its name from the chemical element iridium. The number of satellites projected in the early stages of planning was 77, the atomic number of iridium, evoking the metaphor of 77 electrons orbiting the nucleus.
The satellites are frequently visible in the night sky as satellite flares, a phenomenon typically observed as short-lived bright flashes of light.
History
Iridium SSC, Iridium communications service was launched on November 1, 1998. The first Iridium call was made by then-Vice President of the United States Al Gore.[1] Motorola provided the technology and major financial backing.[2] The logo of the company was designed by Landor Associates, and represents the Big Dipper.[3] In 2008, as part of a rebranding campaign the wordmark would be de-capitalized.
The founding company went into Chapter 11 bankruptcy nine months later, on August 13, 1999.[4] The handsets could not operate as promoted until the entire constellation of satellites was in place, requiring a massive initial capital cost running into the billions of dollars.[5] The cost of service was prohibitive for many users, reception indoors was difficult and the bulkiness and expense of the hand held devices when compared to terrestrial cellular mobile phones discouraged adoption among potential users.[4]
Mismanagement is another major factor cited in the original program's failure. In 1999, CNN writer David Rohde detailed how he applied for Iridium service and was sent information kits, but was never contacted by a sales representative. He encountered programming problems on Iridium's website, and a "run-around" from the company's representatives.[6] After Iridium filed bankruptcy, it cited "difficulty gaining subscribers".[7]
The initial commercial failure of Iridium had a damping effect on other proposed commercial satellite constellation projects, including Teledesic. Other schemes (Orbcomm, ICO Global Communications, and Globalstar) followed Iridium into bankruptcy protection, while a number of other proposed schemes were never constructed.[4]
At one stage there was a threat that the Iridium satellites would have to be de-orbited; however, they remained in orbit and operational.[8][9] Their service was restarted in 2001 by the newly founded Iridium Satellite LLC, which was owned by a group of private investors. Although the satellites and other assets and technology behind Iridium were estimated to have cost on the order of US$6 billion, the investors bought the firm for about US$25 million.[5]
On February 10, 2009, Iridium 33 collided with a defunct Russian satellite, Kosmos 2251, 800 kilometres (500 mi) over Siberia.[10] Two large debris clouds were created.[11]
Present status [edit]
Iridium Satellite LLC merged with a special purpose acquisition company (GHQ) created by the investment bank Greenhill & Co. (NYSE: GHL) in September, 2009 to create Iridium Communications, Inc. The public company trades on NASDAQ under the symbol "IRDM". The company has approximately 523,000 subscribers as of the end of December, 2011 (compared to 427,000 in December, 2010). Revenue for the full year 2011 was US $384.3 million with Operational EBITDA of US $190.4 million.[12]
The system is being used extensively by the U.S. Department of Defense through the DoD gateway in Hawaii.[13] The DoD made up 23% of Iridium's revenues in 2010. An investigation was begun into the DoD contract after a protest by Globalstar, to the U.S. General Accounting Office that no tender was provided. A hold against the contract was lifted at the request of the Department of Defense, which cited national security reasons.[14] This allows the continued use of the network during the investigation.
The commercial gateway in Tempe, Arizona, provides voice, data, and paging services for commercial customers on a global basis. Typical customers include maritime, aviation, government, the petroleum industry, scientists, and frequent world travelers.
Iridium satellites are now an essential component of communications with remote science camps, especially the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station. In December 2006, an array of twelve Iridium modems was put online, providing continuous data services to the station for the first time. Total bandwidth is 28.8 kbit/s.[15]
