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Iridium Saved?
The Mutant writes "Some good information here - the proposed purchaser will pay 900,000 US a month while the business plan is being reviewed - is that what ist costs MoTo to run Iridium? Also, they apparently will get Iridium for about two cents on the dollar.
How could not you make money with a deal like that? Even if you were NOT planning on replacing satellites as they deorbit due to age.
"
First post?
What we need is a public infrastructure effort to support Iridium and similar systems on a global scale. Some sort of a public consortium for effectively enabling communication for the masses...or am I dreaming?
It seems to me that the biggest value in Iridium isn't the network, it's the technical expertice of their engineers, who could be called upon to design the next generation of global orbital communications networking... by a company with sufficient resources.
Still, I'm not convinced that's the way to go. Ground based communication is getting some pretty high penetration, and until the tech gets good enough to compete with ground based, affordably, there's no market. On the other hand, if they managed to make Iridium work as well as it did in the first place, those techs are probably the kind of wiz needed to get broadband wireless up and running for a ground based system. I mean, wireless is close to replacing land line phones in places like college campuses and the like... can you imagine Iridium tech converted to wireless WAN?
-- Still waiting for the Nike endorsement
I suspect that Motorola may have missed some of the target markets for Iridium. They seemed to go after the worold wide roaming cell phone market; given the bicks the phones are hurts this effort. Perhaps they should have looked at markets such as small ships, outback overland truck traffic, and trains. These users could accept equipment that resembled current two-way radios to get mounted onto the vehicle. The cost is in the same range as alternative for those markets. From what I've heard, Iridium doesn't handle data traffic too well. Does anyone know if this is true ?
Irideum has already put in place a procedure for crashing and burning the entire fleat of Satalites shuld they not recive funding to keap them up.
Imagine a Mining company that as it's last gesture before going bancrupt initiates an environmental restoration.
This is responsible behavior and despite all the other things wrong with Iridium, this makes me simpathetic. All the best to them.
--= Isn't it surprising how badly I spell ?
'cause that would truly dictate how useful they are.
BlackNova Traders
I was watching some brainrot or other on the tele, probably CNN, and the discussion topic was portable phones, and why Motorola wasn't doing as well as they thought they would. The answer was, primarily, cash. How can you not make money on Iridium? Lack of market. I might buy a satphone if I eventually buy that sailboat and want to be able to telecommute from the sea. Those who find themselves out and about and in unreliable phone country might want one. The market is relatively small, compared to the cellular/pcs/digital market, whereby most people in a reasonably sized urban area have reliable service. Consider the cost of the system, as well. Sure, those who need it can afford it, but as a measure of how much revenue that will generate, the outlook isn't great. So, factors: What is the total cost to OPERATE (not purchase) the system, compared to the amount of revenue which can be generated? What is the total start-up cost for the average customer, and is that low enough to allow broad entry? How does Iridium rate when put next to any other phone carrier, in terms of cost and benefit? I said all that to say this: Most mobile customers aren't willing to pay a premuim rate for more mobility. Of course, I'm probably wrong. =) All remains to be seen.
-- build a man a fire and he'll be warm all day. set a man on fire and he'll be warm for the rest of his life.
Sure, if they buy Iridium they'll get a functioning satellite network for pennies on the dollar. And it can be run pretty cheaply, I'm sure - Motorola is still spending money to run it until they all get augered in, so it can't be too bad. But even if they can rescue it on the cheap and start suddenly selling the sat phones again for low prices, there's still one big problem.
Iridium has, essentially, an expiration date.
These satellites are all in LEO, and only have a lifespan of about 5-7 years or so before they flame out. The earliest launched satellites are already approaching their end of life, and even buying the network on the cheap doesn't do anything to relieve the replacement cost. Just because the current space assets are cheap doesn't get you out of the cost of building the network all over again over the next decade. It'll still cost billions to put 66 more of these in orbit.
Can they get the critical mass of users needed to make replacement viable before the capital drain gets too bad? Somebody must believe that's the case, but I really doubt it.
- -Josh Turiel
-- Josh Turiel
"2. Do not eat iPod Shuffle."
As impossible as it sounds to people who write .com business plans, it actually is possible to not make money if you're running a business wherein you're spending more money than people are giving you for your product or service.
Since they're spending close to $1m a month to keep it in the air, advanced quantum calculations reveal that it is possible for them to not make money if they don't generate at least that much revenue. For example, because most people spend most of their time in relatively urban areas, where the cellular infrastructure has been built up to ubiquitous proportions, and satellite phones don't work so well due to line-of-sight problems, multipath interference, etc.
Designing and building a satellite that will survive launch and the conditions of space is not trivial.
http://www.castleharlan.com
They don't seem to have any iridium news on their site. Looks like just another nameless, faceless corporation to me.
---
"It looks just like a Telefunken U47"
Okay. Here's a hint. Don't do your reseach from 1961 Popular Electronics magazine predictions of what things would be like by now.
. In any event, the satellite is actually pretty cheap - about $10-20k to put it into orbit with a nice transmitter and a few solar cells plus the mandatory stuff you'd find in a comm sat.Sure. And in 1961, they thought we'd have flying cars by now. And there'd be martian colonies, let alone lunar colonies.
I hate to break it to you, but most of the time, the $15-20k figure is *per pound* of launch weight. That's not to build the satellite - that's just to put it into orbit. Russian Soyuz rockets run along the cheap end, primarily because they're statistically more likely to blow up (and destroy your multi-million dollar satellite).
For a comms satellite, you need a receiver and a transmitter, all powered by a solar cell. Such an arrangement is actually called a "transponder", since it just basically mirrors back a given signal on a different frequency and orientation.
Even for the low-band microwave C and Ku band satellite TV systems (mass produced and therefore quite cheap in comparison), receivers are not inexpensive. (And I mean the LNA/downconverter in the feedhorn, not the the set-top box.)
Simply to run any device at frequencies as high as are required for use like this, requires tremendously tight mechanical and eletronic tolerances be enforced. This costs a lot, both in machine tools, skilled employees, and also in a reduced product yield rate.
For sake of example, I often buy magnetrons for work. These aren't microwave oven magnetrons (which aren't for communications and therefore don't have to be too precise). These are radar magnetrons, running in the 12GHz band. RMS power through them is 7 watts. And they operate at normal temperatures (-40c to +70c). And they're damned expensive. Some of the EEV and JRC models I use run in the range of $4,000 - $6,000 each.
Now, consider that most modern satellite transponders run 12W transmit power. That means a bigger magnetron than my $5,000 tubes. And there's another problem: a magnetron is a tube with a magnet around it. Tubes aren't reliable or compact enough to launch, and magnets don't like temperature extremes. We don't use high-powered solid-state magnetron-equivalents in our radar systems because they're just *way* too expensive. Even a small solid-state Gunn diode for a radar speed gun can set you back $5,000 - and that's not even 1/1000th of the power you'd need.
In short, what I'm getting at, I think, is that there's no way in hell you're ever going to find a transmitting device for one transponder, let alone the rest of the transponder, let alone every other part of the satellite, let alone... for anything in the price range you're quoting.
If you really want a Satellite, I have one. It's a chrome emblem off a 1960s Plymouth. It says "Satellite", in letters about 1" tall. And ya know what, just for irony's sake, I'll *give* it to you if you promise to pay to put the thing into geosynchronous orbit.
But you couldn't even get that Satellite into orbit for the money you're talking about.
Fire and Meat. Yummy.
I applaud all those creative technical minds trying to come up with interesting and useful applications for this networks, but without hard info, we're just pissing in the wind and blowing hot air.
There's a fairly recent and detailed IEEE report on the Iridium network
Here's a chart of competing systems that are up, or will be up soon
Here's a fairly complete description of several current satellite telephone systems with info on frequency allocations, ground stations, and other important network details [has a chapter on iridium]
Here's a article in Test System News testing Iridium handsets and network for real world performance
More to come....
If you can go to bed, knowing you did a valuable thing today, you're very lucky. If you can't... it's not bedtime
Did anybody actually read the linked artical @ CNET? Did anybody besides me notice that the writer placed links on certain promiscuious words? (Climax, Withdrew, etc...). Sorry this is a little off-topic, but it is somewhat funny to think about what was going through the writers mind...
Skiers and Riders -- http://www.snowjournal.com
Soon, on a DVB receiver card near you... Watch this spot...
Well presumably they could shut down such a transmission by using the laws of the country where the ground station is, but we could always claim it was just a test pattern...
Say no to software patents.
In April 1999, the Defense Department signed a $219M contract with Iridium for service, equipment, etc. I don't know thye exact terms (duration, etc.) but it had to be at least a year, and couldn't take effect much before June 1999. [Here's a link]
The DoD was involved from the beginning, sitting in on the design and planning for the network, and reportedly constructing a $100M DoD-only ground station.
If they stay on board, than the numbers for this new iridium venture could change. In the short term, the DoD money alone (assuming it was sensibly structures as monthly payments) could cover maintanance, taking much of the strain off the business plan, and allowing otherwise impractical applications to be profitable.
If you can go to bed, knowing you did a valuable thing today, you're very lucky. If you can't... it's not bedtime
Haiku all in bold
They mean person cares about
Cool image, my thoughts
--
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Anyway, my point is that we keep reading stories on Slashdot about Iridium and about people suing Napster. In both cases, you're increasingly getting more and more posts along the lines of, "Who cares?" or, "Again, I don't see the point in keeping Iridium going." I just don't see why you keep posting these stories, when there are so many more interesting things you could talk about.
140.000km round-trip would be for geosynchronous satelittes (4 * 36000). But these are low orbitting satelites, who are at an altitude more like 780km. That would make your round-trip 3000km, which is quite manageable (10ms).
Say no to software patents.
I remember when I read about Iridium, a couple of years ago in a WIRED. The funny thing was, it seemed like a good concept, but it didn't seem as if it was going to work. It seemed like one of those farfetched things that wasn't going to happen.
What they did, is they set a huge goal for themselves, and took all the right steps to form this company. I remember reading how they had a whole democratic heirarchy throughout the world, for their business. Yet, the only problem is, you need a working product to make money.
You have to let huge technological acheivements evolve on their own. That isn't to say, just everyone sit back and expect things to invent themselves, I'm just saying, things come about when your not looking for them.
"Success comes to those who are too busy to look for it."
Someone asked about bandwidth: it's about 4.3k/s per phone, but the technology allows you gang several connections for greater bandwidth.
Someone else was griping about the size of the handheld units: the most recent phone is about the size of a sony cordless phone that you might find in any household. Remember that for satphone communications you are limited to a certain length for the antenna, and require to certain gain to be able to communicate with the satellite.
Others have mentioned that the satellites will deorbit in the next year/5 years: this is just a misnomer, some of the satellites would need to be replaced, but many of them can be maintained beyond their specified lifespan.
As far as making a profit, the Castle Harlan is just the finance company, and they acting as a broker for another company that was set up specifically to take over the Iridium project. The largest projected source of revenue is government contracts (duh, who else needs to call anywhere, any time?), this alone should allow them the $1 million/month operating costs, and profit enough for future maintenance. Keep in mind that the deal is far more complex than the watered down version you see on CNET.
Last but not least, remember the story of chicken little...
I for one would love to see Iridium stick around for a while, and I wish them the best of luck.
-geek@large
There have been a lot of questions about the On-Board Processing available on Iridium. This article offers some information about Iridium's on-board Motorola hardware, compared to other systems, and discusses the networking structure (ground and orbital)
There's more info and actual data in an article called Supporting ATM on a Low-Earth Orbit Sattelite System covering the ATM switching network in iridium, including goodies like signal strengths in various ground settings and conditions, traffic capacities, and RF restrictions internationally.
If you can go to bed, knowing you did a valuable thing today, you're very lucky. If you can't... it's not bedtime
1) Equip all the satellites with death lasers.
2) Extort billions from every civilized country at death laser point.
3) When the secret agents show up to foil your plan and you capture them, shoot them in the head immediately and personally. Do not gloat about your plans. Do not leave them suspended over a pool of ravenous pirhanas. Do not trust some henchman to do the job for you. Do not show them the large and prominent satellite self-destruct button.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
This is very sad news indeed. I am very sorry that Iridium satelites may not be destroyed after all. These satelites are astronomers' worst nightmare, polluting in forbidden radio ranges, interfering with cold hydrogen frequencies (21.1cm). The world astronomer community was cheering to find out that Iridium satelites were supposed to be brought down and now this....
You can't handle the truth.
Buy? Why? Let Iridium Die
(sequel to "Bye, Bye, Miss Iridium Pie")
Long, long time ago I can still remember how their tech plan made me wince
And I knew if I had their cash
That I could buy the monster stash
It'd take to grasp all that's happened since.
But Motorola made me shiver
With every mission they delivered
Satellites in orbit,
I couldn't take one more bit.
I couldn't look, afraid I'd find
Wall Street had lost its bloody mind.
Something so awkwardly designed... I knew Iridium'd die.
But now it's:
"Buy! Buy! The Iridium pie!"
With just millions we'll get billions, though it's pie in the sky
The good ideas must've all gone dry
So the VC's and the bankers all buy
So the VC's and the bankers all buy
Do they know the specs we love?
Or do they have faith in stuff above
'Cuz the tech just say it's true?
Oh what a splendid fit they'd throw,
if they understood L.E.O.
And how the orbit's bound to crash real soon.
Do they know the facts and take a stand?
Or is it just an Accounting scam?
Another tax write-off?
A business 'loss' (*cough cough*)
I'm just an aging hardware hack,
with a calculator, and not smoking crack
So they had me rolling on my back
The day they shouted "Buy!"
And they were singing:
"Buy? Why? Let Iridium die!"
Why spend millions to get billions of just pie in the sky?
The good ideas must've all gone dry
So the VC's and the bankers all buy
So the VC's and the bankers all buy
Well for ten years they've been slick
And the business plan that made me sick
Is not what it's supposed to be.
When investors sang in the court of law
In a place where truth brings on awe
In a voice that sounds like Craig McCaw.
Debating "Should we just bring them down?"
(Scam websites sprouting all around)
The verdict was returned:
The system soon would burn!
And when Slashdot had a thread on use,
the clueless all were running loose
(Even trolls aren't that obtuse!)
"Don't let Iridium die!"
And I'm still singing:
"Buy? Why? Let Iridium die!"
Why spend millions to get billions that's just pie in the sky?
The good ideas must've all gone dry
So the VC's and the bankers all buy
So the VC's and the bankers all buy
Helter Skelter in the summer swelter.
The VC's offer last second shelter,
Fifty Mill and running costs
Until the plan is finally passed,
by a judge who must be smoking grass
What the heck, it's not like it's *his* cash
For months, we had sweet surcease
From addled threads and press release
Now I just want to cry.
This network just won't die!
Then Katz posts "can't you all see..."
(the tempers fly, as usually)
He compared it all to MP3... the way Iridium died.
We kept on screaming:
"Buy! Buy! The Iridium pie!"
Spend just millions to get billions though it's pie in the sky!
The good ideas must've all gone dry
So the VC's and the bankers all buy
So the VC's and the bankers all buy
Now don't get me wrong, I love space
It's a sanctified holy place
But here's our chance to start again
So let's get real, let's get smart.
Iridium soon will fall apart
And funding is this devil's only friend
So let's just watch the rockets flare,
the satellites plunge through the air.
While there still is time
(and rebuild it, right this time!)
As the flames all fall from the sky,
let's clap until we think we'll cry
Let's let Iridium die!
We should be singing:
"Buy? Why? Let Iridium die!"
Why spend millions to get billions that's just pie in the sky?
The good ideas must've all gone dry
So the VC's and the bankers all buy
So the VC's and the bankers all buy
I met a man who had a clue, and asked him what else we could do
But he just smiled and turned away.
I want to go up five hundred, miles, where I'd kept my tech dreams as a child,
But the man there said manned payloads wouldn't pay.
In the halls the techies sighed, the coders laughed, and the testers cried,
Not a word was spoken, the promises all were broken.
Like the other dreams they shot to hell, like anti-grav and FTL
and condos stationed at 5-L,
But they fund Iridium... why?
'Cuz they're still singing
"Buy! Buy! The Iridium pie!"
Spent just millions to get billions but it's pie in the sky
The good ideas must've all gone dry
So the VC's and the bankers all buy
So the VC's and the bankers all buy
If you can go to bed, knowing you did a valuable thing today, you're very lucky. If you can't... it's not bedtime
RMS, in statistics, refers to root mean square: square the signal, take the mean, and take the square root.
Will I retire or break 10K?
I guess I'm just not a shrewd enough business man to see the potential
- StaticLimit