At Sea Or On Safari, Satellite Phones Hook Users
from the quite-a-comeback dept
While Iridium is still considered one of the most spectacular business failures of all-time, the new Iridium (along with a number of other satellite phone providers) appears to making quite a comeback. While the folks behind the original Iridium overestimated the demand for their service (and misread the market for mobile phones), it turns out there really is a market for satellite phones – though, mostly among (wealthy) leisure travelers and those whose jobs regularly take them to out-of-the-way places. The phones have also become smaller, better, and less expensive – which probably helps. It doesn’t sound like the revenue from such phones will repay the initial capital expenditure it took to build Iridium, but since the “new” Iridium got all those assets for a mere $25 million, it might not be such a bad deal. Of course, the article doesn’t discuss what’s going to happen when these satellite need to be replaced, but that’s a problem the company will have to deal with in the relatively near future.
