Slashdot Mirror
Iridium Saved?
Ekeron writes: "Spaceflightnow.com reports that:
'The U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the
Southern District of New York today
approved the bid of Iridium Satellite LLC
to purchase the operating assets of
Iridium LLC and its subsidiaries.
Iridium Satellite LLC will continue to provide commercial satellite
communications to the U.S. Government and plans to re-launch
affordable satellite communications services to those industry
segments that have a particular need for satellite communications
(government, military, humanitarian, heavy industry, maritime,
aviation, adventure) within 60 days.'
Get the full story at: Spaceflightnow."
Let's suppose for a moment that Iridium really gets bought out, and operation is resumed. Will it work? No.
Iridium's design is flawed by nature, and instead of maturing their product before launching, they just threw a bunch of money on dozens of satellites, and relayed this cost to the users of the service -- how does it cost anyway? US$ 10 a minute, I've heard? Unless you're climbing the Everest or something like that, plain old cell phones will cover most of the locations you'll need, with a smaller cost, plus you're not required to carry along the "mobile" unit -- if you can regard that as mobile, even my SC-750A case could!
We are down to only a few cellular standards, and as long as one or two out of these standards is chosen (which is far beyond utopic, but hope springs eternal), dual-mode cell phones (supporting say GSM and CDMA 3G) were manufactured, and companies launched calling card-like plans, most Iridium users' needs would be fullfiled -- plus you won't pay as much while carrying a single phone.
I can't stress enough how utopic this is -- but then again, so was Iridium.
Join the NFSNET. Our prime goal is making little numbers out of big ones. http://www.nfsnet.org/
The original Iridium business model failed because they couldn't recoup their investment (pay back the debt) in the satellites.
Now that they are bankrupt, it only makes sense that someone would pick them up for next to nothing. Now the new company doesn't have the debt overhead from launching all those satellites. This means that they only have to maintain operational break-even to stay alive. They don't have to pay the interest on their debt.
Of course, this only works until the satellites run out of fuel (they have to periodically adjust their orbits or go down in flames). Then they have to start launching replacement satellites. However, if they can build up enough of a user base before then, they might be able to pull it off. (And the replacement satellites could provide all sorts of additional capabilities.)
Intellectual property also might refer to their software for running the system, which is quite necessary.
Russia's cabinet just approved plan to crash Mir into the Pacific in February, 2001.
Mir should be a bit more eventful than de-orbiting Iridium satellites since "Much of the giant spacecraft will burn up on re-entry into the Earth's atmosphere before most of the remainder ditches into the sea. Officials have said that parts of the craft could hit land."
Work for Change & GET PAID!
It turns out that the Russians have finally decided (for the 5th time) to let Mir fall out of the sky (oh my God! They killed Kenny!)
I heard it on NPR's "All Things Considered" this morning on my way into work.
Funny, but yesterday I heard a report that the Russians were getting ready to send up a couple of cosmonauts to play Mir rangers again.
worse still, I've read that astronomers HATE Irridium, because these satellites are exceptionally bright, and have this flaring behavior, which has been known to put a damper on observation.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
AKAIK the US Government was one of the biggest customers of Iridium. It makes sense for them to try to go after specific segments of the market. It was a dumb move in the first place to offer it as they did - as a service for anyone. The majority of people will never need 100% coverage. Any good business will go after a specific niche and dominate it. What they're doing now is what they should have done in the first place.
My blog: http://jkratz.dyndns.org/~jason/blog/
> so unless someone's got a great use for them, why bother?
...
...
... but the point is that Iridium has the capability of bringing phone service to the parts of the world that are still years or decades from being able to afford the infrastructure necessary to run a local phone system.
... something that can have much more of a positive impact than the size of the negative impact of the flares on the astronomers of the world.
... but they almost definitely shot their burn rate through the stratosphere because of paying AC's rates.)
Well, actually
One of the high-up muckety-mucks from Iridium used to visit the Andersen Consulting office writing the rating software for Iridium. He liked to relate they had an awfully hard time getting lots of the world's non-industrialized nations to agree to allow Iridium satellites to beam the bandwidth assigned to them within those countries' airspace. So they had to resort to various negotiations to get this to pass
One of the bargaining points used in much of Africa and the far east (such as India) was that Iridium LLC would plant phone kiosks in any village or town over some minimum population X (X was, I believe, in the hundreds, or even dozens, not the thousands). These kiosks would be available for free use by anyone in the village, to call anywhere in the world.
Admittedly, the folks in those small villages in the middle of Africa might have very little reason to call Topeka, KS
Bring down those satellites, and we're back to something like 60% of the world's population once again waiting for their local area to somehow be able to afford to lay (what they would consider) very expensive copper wire out to the middle of BFE, as well as setting up the substations in the local villages for running the local phone system.
So I'd say that's one potentially valuable use for the existing multi-billion dollar satellites
(And I know that Iridium didn't fail because of paying Andersen's prices
LLP means "Limited Liability Partnership." It's been used for much longer than three years. I know of one US firm that has been in business for 75 years with that suffix.
PLC means "Private Limited Company" and is the British equivalent of "Co." Again, far from being an innovation.
While it is hard to dispute your use of "moronic" when referring to the behavior of executives, I think it's probably not a fad to tell people what kind of company you have.
Get your teeth into a small slice: the cake of liberty
We'll call it the "Alan Parsons Project".
How many times must we stake this undead beast?
I mean, here I am, I've come up with a means to provide global telephone coverage (the description of which is to large to fit into this margin), so how can I deploy my monopo^H^H^H^H^Hcompetitive service with this sword of Damocles over my head?
Somebody call the Slayer....
www.eFax.com are spammers
How much money do they have to lose before they get shut down? These satellites are polluting our view of OH masers in the galaxy.
Idol Star Astronomer
A financing company called Silver tried to bid on Iridium's assets (on behalf of SSC/Parallax) but the bid was allegedly ignored while Wilber (the law firm representing the debtor) allegedly organized a "backroom deal" with Colussy/Iridium Satellite LLC (even though Silver's bid was higher).
Words like "fraud" and "collusion" were used... Anybody know what the real deal is???
How much bandwidth can an iridium connection carry? If they planned for voice only then i guess its not too much but if the design allows for more than just voice data then why not make it a wireless broadband service?
This could bring broadband to remote areas. I'm sure you could easily charge upwards of $80 - $100 / month for broadband in areas where there are no other alternatives.
..doesnt anyone talk about why the court gave the network away for 25 million when it had offers of up to 100 million... ???? Go figure.. Slmcav
Now if we could only scrape up what's left of those other failed dot-coms. At least NetPliance gave us these neat-o socket 7 bare-bones systems with an LCD screen!
"Ancillary does not mean you get to rule the world." --U.S. Circuit Judge Harry Edwards, speaking to the FCC's lawyer
My business plan is to shoot down crazy satellites one by one with a "laser". I'll hire a bunch of Anonymous Cowards to build it, then launch it into space.
If it works especially well, I'll start shooting down normal satellites one by one, also, and if I ever get to shooting down satellites owned by companies that make money, I'll demand ransom before shooting them down, and maybe you can get some return on your investment.
If you are modding me down because you disagree with me, use the "Flamebait" category, not the "Troll" one.
--
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
You're right, Iridium didn't focus on the right market segment for this service. They went with the whole nine yards, in fact. They needed to focus on ONE segment, then get on another one. Sounds like Motorola to me, heh. (Don't try to understand that one, I was a cellular dealer for a while, and it's somewhat of a running joke in the business.)
One of their problems: VERY expensive equipment (but they do come in fancy trapezoidal boxes with a neat holographic design), and frankly, if Iridium had come up with better marketing and maybe a little bit better support from other companies in the industry (for example, Globalstar has Qualcomm, Ericsson and some other manufacturer to support them) they might have been fine.
The other problem with Iridium was their high pricing for service. Believe me, 150CDN$/mo (?) for 2 sat zones of paging coverage with VoiceNet (PageNet's voicemail/dispatch service) is a lot of dough. 4 zones would cover North America including Alaska, if I recall correctly. I can get that type of service with PageMart (now Weblink Wireless in the USA, Bell Mobility in Canada) for a bit less. Don't quote me on that price though, it's been long since I got my last Iridium bill.
It's nice that people want to save Iridium... and Mir too, for that matter... but...
This is kind of a pack rat mentality with satellites, don't you think?
I mean, I see all these Slashdotters who don't want to see all these satellites end up in the Pacific Ocean somewhere, but can we actually think of a good use for any of these things? Probably not. Mir is/was useful, but it's old, slightly dangerous, and about to become obsolete by the ISS (or any other future projects like it). On the other hand, Iridium was practically useful to almost no-one, although their sale now indicates that someone thought of something it could do...
And it does have a substantial cost to government/commercial agencies to keep track of and control these things in orbit. "Sentimental value" means pretty much nothing to taxpayers and stockholders...
But... more importantly... we have to realize the concept of sunk costs, and we must make practical decisions for the future... that is, do we spend money keeping these satellites up, or do we use that money for better satellites down the line?
In this particular case, it would have been interesting to see Iridium make it as a company. But if they didn't, and we had to de-orbit the satellites, why boo-hoo about it? It's a responsible decision. And no one's going to be operating a ham-radio network or something like that off of all those very expensive satellites, so unless someone's got a great use for them, why bother?
The upside is that we get to see more Iridium Flares... (if someone remembers what I'm talking about, there's a website for it, but I forgot the link...)
Iridium could go on to be as successful as Federal Express -- it just didn't meet early expectations and while that isn't death for business in the long run, it is highly damaging for the early participants.
Seastead this.
The story is here.
Work for Change & GET PAID!
We are listening you, we are tracing you! and we know damn well what you did last summer (TM).
:)
Why - oh why won't you use our fine network?! Please?
Now - seriously - why would anyone think that someone in their right minds would want to bring down such a network while it can be so easily used "for fun and profit(tm)".
--
Nobody likes the idea of a bunch of unused satellites... Government and industry groups will keep trying to find ways to prop-up an Iridium company because they want all those satellites...
;->
;-)
The government never has enough satellites, really, maybe this is the first reverse pork: government somehow conned industry into pissing away a whole lot of money on something for them for a change
But seriously, I think the original Iridium tried to move too quickly into too broad of a market. They frittered away a lot of money on ads and PR to people who had no use for the stuff, and didn't concentrate on a smaller, specialist market that could actually use the system.
The military likes to subcontract to commercial providers, and will probably be happy to have unsecure comms moved off their proprietary network. Humanitarian? Most groups have no money, but the UN does... So do shipping companies, and constant contact with your vessels (whatever they may be) can cut costs drastically by allowing for more precise dynamic rerouting of whatever your cargo is through your system. The adventure industry is also quite wealthy - hey, I bet Survivor III producers will sign up immediately
You and I may not need this service, but some people do, and maybe Motorola, in addition to lack of focus, just put the wrong people on selling it...
o/~ we are pissed, we are pissed, we have to resist... o/~ - ec8or
Oh well. The Russians want to sink the Mir into the Pacific Ocean.
Why couldn't they have targeted the Millennium Dome instead?!
-- Soruk
riiiiight, and Mir was going to be saved by MirCorp... unless space exploration/exploitation starts getting some real commercial sense, and stops the sentimentalism, we're stuck to the ground except for the selected few.
sure i know people will start telling me how it's cheaper to use iridium satellites than to launch new ones, and to those i say: research! why do you think it didn't work in the first place?, they're technically flawed and too expensive to maintain. yes on a 5-8 year plan, it's chepaer to launch new equipment.
There are two kinds of people in the world: Those with good memory.
The Army is using Iridium. The US government may have lots of satellites, but they don't have anything like the Iridium constelation, and noone else has been crazy enough to think they could make it work.
The new Iridim Satellite LLC probally got the satellites cheep enough to justify the limited target market.
Please note that we have linked the article "Iridium Saved?" in error. It should go to:
At Last, Mir to be Ditched
In fact, Mir has yet again been saved, and Iridium has once again been ditched.
Slashdot apologizes for continuously reporting the news before happens on these two issues.
Iridium, mir, all the same. They go, they stay, they go, they stay, they go, they stay, they go, they stay, they go, they stay, they go, they stay, they go, they stay, they go, they stay, they go, they stay, they go, they stay, they go, they stay, they go, they stay, they go, they stay, they go, they stay, they go, they stay, they go, they stay, they go, they stay, they go, etc etc etc etc etc. Can someone use them for target practicing now or so?
In early 1999, I visited Motorola and spoke to some of their engineers. One of them laughingly referred to the Iridium (or "Satellite Series Phone") division as the place where "old engineers go to die." I didn't exactly understand what he meant until I actually used the equipment.
Don't get me wrong, it's a great idea, I, personally, believe there is some (albeit limited) market for direct-to-satellite communication, but it's only as good as the implementation. Has anyone else actually used iridium? It's miserable!
Besides being big and clunky, there are fundamental problems that haven't been addressed.
- Satellite handoff is still shaky; in areas where as little as 10% of the sky is occluded (the world ain't flat... most of you have hills or buildings blocking some part of the sky), you can miss handoff. Some of the pass times for the satellites are about 2 minutes... I had a phone at my disposal for about six weeks, and it was rare that I was able to make a call longer than 30seconds. Usually I'd get through "I'm using Iridium, so if I get cut off..."
- It seems the handset designers failed to build in any multipath rejection. Even when the signal quality was high, calls routinely had an echo or ended up garbled. I'm no expert on the topic, but one of my friends who designs GPS equipment says that MPR is pretty-much a straightforward process that was clearly ignored.
- Service is subject to the hiccups of the "local" telephone service. For political reasons, Iridium put one terrestrial downlink on each continent. As part of their licensing agreements with all of the countries, calls have to be routed through the nearest downlink. Calls go up, they come right back down. I was in the Himalaya and my calls went up and down... to India! More than once, disturbances of the land lines in India blacked out central Asia for hours on end.
- Iridium won't do data, at least not well. Each sattellite connection has a maximum of 2400 baud... and only if you route through the US downlink (which, if you were paying attention, means that you have to be in North America). Once upon a time, a long time ago, the Mot engineers were trying to build a data module to allow multiple connections and load balancing, but I don't think it ever materialized.
And the economic challenges:- Globalstar, a competitor is on the verge of closing its doors from lack of clients. How does dividing a client base of essentially zero generate revenue?
- Back when Iridium first declared bankruptcy, the original loaning institutions feared that they may have to pay more to deorbit the satellites. It sent the debt price for Iridium LLC to nothing. Not only did investors go to $#!^, the banks were now liable for the costs of keeping the birds up or bringing them down. Whoever bought it must have assumed those liabilities...
- The constellation reqires maintenence. Even if they don't have any (or much) initial cost left to recoup, the satellites have a 5-15 year lifespan. Starting in about 2003, they're going to have to start replacing birds if they have any chance of maintaining service.
It seems to me that Iridiums "assets" are inferior, expensive equipment, with a limited lifespan and big price tag. What do they have of real value? Military contracts and communication licenses with almost every nation. The real question: do those assets offset the liability assumed by the constellation. It will be interesting to see what Iridium Satellite LLC will do with the contracts.Keep watching /. My bet is that we see another "Iridium Crashes" headline soon.
On another note, the (already suffering) Globalstar (GSTRF) didn't change on this news.
Nobody seems to care about this one.
Adjacent Slashdot stories today:
Howzabout we break Mir into nice small pieces, safe for de-orbiting, by smashing Iridium satellites into it? Both Motorola and the Russian space program could make some money filming the fireworks, perhaps from a shuttle parked a safe distance away. Maybe stuff Mir full of brighly colored plastic beads first, so they can spray out like from a broken pinata when one of the satellites finally cracks the hull open.
Just a thought...
When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a skull.
- Under the agreement, Iridium Satellite LLC will purchase all of the
existing assets of Iridium LLC, including the satellite constellation,
the terrestrial network, Iridium real property and intellectual
property owned by Iridium LLC.
I've heard that despite costing billions, Iridium was disposable because of the tens of billions of dollars in related technology that was developed alongside of it, which basically paid for the experiment many times over. Investement recouped, next project please. No problem.But is that going to happen again? Does Iridium Satellite LLC really want to use the system, or are they only able to get at the wonderful intellectual property through buying the whole damned thing? Is Iridium Satellite small enough that it can find profit where others thought it wasn't to be found before?
I'm kinda glad that they're staying up.. although it would have made some excellent viewing, watching each satellite plunge through the atmosphere...
"There's a party," she said,
"We'll sing and we'll dance,
It's come as you are."
Wow.. check out this portable atari!!!!
:P
Heh.. nevermind... that was another story on slashdot that I am sick of reading about... hmm reminds me of this iridium thing tho it does.
I am Jack's HTTP Server
So much for the hopes of the astronomers who wanted to stop Iridium from blocking their view of a special wavelength in the sky...
Remember "Bring 'em on"? *sigh
Wouldn't it be better if you built said laser into the space station itself and shot down to earth instead. If you're able to buy Mir and build a laser in it you can even tell the FBI it was the fungus...
People replying to my sig annoy me. That's why I change it all the time.
Here's what I predict for the next iridium post (and MIR post too)... "Iridium Scrapped to save MIR" since it seems like every couple of weeks we hear that one or the other will be scrapped/saved. I wanna see something crash into the ocean!
Blink
Does anyone have any verification that this company exists? A search on Google doesn't produce any results, and on other search engines there are just dead end links to the old Iridium LLC pages.
Yep, here too. I can use my GSM phone wherever i want to :-). If you want to be alone, you have either to switch the mobile off or to find an bunker.
Thought these were due for burnup ages ago? :( ! There's beauraucracy for you.
We miss out on fireworks
Well, time to wait for Mir...
So their target groups are
The Goverment... who already own loads of their own sats.
Humanitarian Groups, who just have LOADS of spare cash... not.
and a few others.
Am I the only one who thinks that the fact that the humble mobile (GSM) will work over a goodly proportion of the globe and is cheap and reliable is quite an effective way for those that require such communication to get it. Put up a few more cells in a country and you shut out the need for a very very expensive satellite.
What will the satellite offer... 100% coverage. And how many organisations need that, bugger all. And for the cases where they are out of touch with mobile will they use the sat solution everywhere else as well as just the out of touch places... probably not.
And boo.com is back as well.
Are we seeing another period in economics, there was boom and bust, now we have stupidity and sanity cycles.
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
The former president, chairman and CEO of Canadian Airlines. I guess he jumped ship from one defunct company to kill another defunct company.
If you are modding me down because you disagree with me, use the "Flamebait" category, not the "Troll" one.
Good for them! Although, you know it would have been impressive to watch them burn up in atmosphere on the way back down. Of course this still leaves the question of what do you do with a satallite phone that is too big and too expensive for mere mortals to use.......well at least I'll know my tax dollars are being spent on something that's cool. ehhh.....no.
-"You'll have plenty of time to sleep when you're dead."
Maybe they could combine the Mir and Iridium space projects somehow to save them. Both are on-again off-again to be crashed into the sea.
...one day it is saved, then it is scheduled for destruction, then it is saved again, then it is ...blahblah...
i am beginning to think that all this story exists only too keep some balance in the worldwide economy policy of taking advatage and things. like, a drain or something.
did you know that lots of (edible) food is thrown away while it could very well be given to the poor? think the rest yourself
Looking for people to chat about multicopters, coding, music. skype: gtsiros
Now I can be available again at all the places I don't want to go.
"Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former."
- if you love something, set it free; if it doesn't come back, hunt it down and kill it
Maybe they can drop Iridum and Mir at the same time, and the specific combination of space fungii they've accumulated can get together and breed and form a new breed of earth-eating space fungus. That would be an amusing end to an anoying couple of stories...
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
I hope the new company will streamline how things get done so it could be more effiecent. I do not want to see this new company go bankrupted agian. I hope they target thier market the right way.
Enough! When they devised those three about two years ago, every single new company used them (Saitek PLC, Iridium LLC, etc.). This only goes to show that when moronic executives get their hands on obscure acronyms, chaos ensues.
"Ancillary does not mean you get to rule the world." --U.S. Circuit Judge Harry Edwards, speaking to the FCC's lawyer
The only thing that could really be added to this is another good luck wish for another attempt. If this company thinks they can turn the Iridium network into a profitable business, good luck and godspeed.
...
If, however, this is simply a buch of VC ho's looking for a handout while they run another Iridium company to the ground, I hope someone calls thier bluff before the technology is squandered (again!)
-Ross
So basically Iridium LLC spawned Iridium Satellite LLC and bought their assets from themselves in a different name? Hmmm. The article is sparse on details about where the money came from. http://www.iridium.com/ isn't working for me. Slashdotted? Or was that even the right URI? Any way, I want some more details.
funny munging
If this is for real (believe me, I've heard "Iridium is Saved" many times), I won't have to sell my 9501 pager on eBay as a "collection item". Every day I see someone trying to sell their Iridium stuff as "collectible satellite equipment". I originally decided to keep it until it would stop working, but I still have 4 bars of signal on my pager in my basement (where standard VHF POCSAG doesn't go through)... which is kinda ironic because I've heard from fellow users that usage of an Iridium satellite phone/pager inside a building/house/etc. is practically impossible due to the lack of signal strength. Oh well, now I can ditch the big-ass Advisor and wear my fat pager again. ;)
We have just learned that our earlier projection of Irididium going to 'crash and burn' may have been premature. Latest reports indicate that 'salvation' may indeed be holding a slight lead. Therefore, we at Slashdot News Network are moving Iridium back into the 'too close to call' category. Once again, Iridium is 'too close to call'.
---
Good judgment comes from experience.
Experience comes from bad judgment.