Iridium May Have To Reinvent Itself Again

prgrmr writes "The Washington Post has this article on the latest wrinkle in the Iridium saga. There may be a conflict between new competition and existing contractual obligations for putting up the next generation of sattelites. This could become a milestone for making the service more ubiquitous, or the millstone that finally sinks it."

Heh

[BrianGa]

Not only will they have to reinvent themselves, but they will have to dodge falling satallites [washingtonpost.com].

A compliment for Hemos

[AndyChrist]

"This could become a milestone for making the service more ubiquitous, or the millstone that finally sinks it."

This is the cleverest turn of a phrase I have ever seen on Slashdot.

Re:A compliment for Hemos

[Carbonite]

Since the line was italicized, I believe it was the submitter, not Hemos, who wrote that clever phrase.

Iridium Flares

[PK_ERTW]

One of the very cool things about the Sattelites is the Iridium Flares [satobs.org]. Basically, they look like a slow moving, super bright shooting star.

I have had the opportunity to see these first hand a couple of times, and I can say they are super neat. If you are ever out camping, look it up and see if one is gonna pass over head. The above mentioned site has lots of resources on where they can be found.

pk

Re:Iridium Flares

[ozbird]

Huh? A complaint about Iridium's pollution of radio frequencies is moderated "3, Insightful" but a complaint about Iridium's light pollution gets "-1, Offtopic"? Fair go!

Re:Iridium Flares

[PK_ERTW]

Sorry, I didn't have the site handy before. Go to Heavens Above [heavens-above.com] for a really good free resource on finding the flares. you don't need to register to get good results, just head through the "select" your location link.

For example, I easily got these [heavens-above.com] results for where I often go camping.

pk

Re:Iridium Flares

[Boulder Geek]

I'll gladly trade all of the Iridium Flares I've seen (including a couple of -7's) for some clear spectrum for radio astronomy.

Iridium

[totallygeek]

Interesting enough if anyone cares, iridium the element was discovered when dissolving platnum using aqua regia (acid).

Re:Iridium

[tramm]

totallygeek wrote:

Interesting enough if anyone cares, iridium the element was discovered when dissolving platnum using aqua regia (acid).

Iridium [mit.edu] has an atomic number of 77, which is how many satellites were in the Iridium(tm) [iridium.com] initial design. It was later reduced to only 66 birds, but the name Dysprosium [mit.edu] doesn't have the same ring.

Re:Iridium

[TheLink]

Not a good start :).

dysprosium

[New Latin, from Greek dusprositos, difficult to approach : dus-, dys- + prositos, approachable (from prosienai, to approach : pros-, toward + ienai, i-, to go; see ei- in Indo-European Roots).]

Iridium enhancement

[binaryDigit]

If the widespread use of Iridium can be had, then (given their close ties with DOD, and therefore other branches of the govt, like, say, the NSA), Iridium can be initimately linked with Echelon. This combined with a tiny explosive placed within every Iridium phone, would allow Echelon to automatically eliminate anyone who, through their own words, would represent a threat to the security of the peoples of the US. It would also be an excellent incentive for those who use their phones but are behind in payments.

Re:Iridium enhancement

[raider_red]

And that would have been a great way to get rid of bin Laden.

Re:Iridium enhancement

[Coz]

It would also be a good anti-theft mechanism:

Hello, Iridium customer service? My phone was stolen two hours ago in the Hong Kong airport... what's that? My customer ID? Phone number? Sure... it's where? Shanghai? Yes, I authorize anti-theft deterrence...

and somewhere in downtown Shanghai, a head explodes....

Leniency?

[datastew]

Iridium is planning to abide by the July deadline and sign a contract for the satellites, but it hopes the FCC will grant it leniency if its plans change and the contract needs modifying, he said.

Isn't the whole point of contracts to sign them once you are sure that you don't need to modify them? If you may require modification of a contract, why not design it into the contract at the start? On the other hand, I am not a satellite communications company, so they may know more about dealing with the FCC than me.

Re:Leniency?

[binaryDigit]

Isn't the whole point of contracts to sign them once you are sure that you don't need to modify them? If you may require modification of a contract, why not design it into the contract at the start?

The FCC doesn't want to sign an open ended contract with anyone, and it's a damn good thing. What if this iteration of Iridium were to also go under and it's assets (including their open ended use contract) falls into the hands of some other company. With the open ended contract, this company could use their alloted spectrum for what ever they wanted.

It's hard to see any compromise at this point in time. The FCC should stick to their guns and I think Iridium knows this since their statement was that they "hoped" that the FCC would be flexible in the future. This might be hoping for a lot though since if the FCC does allow some leeway, then they (the FCC) have just opened up a new can of worms as I'm sure other companies with whine about needing to get their contracts re-negotiated.

A bit of a touchy spot really.

Re:Leniency?

[Coz]

The contract is with the satellite builder and launcher - the FCC is being picky, all right. This is SOP for geosync comsats, but Iridium's a different model - the FCC's having to stretch to accomodate the changes. Unfortunately, stretching isn't something they do particularly well.

Life as it's supposed to be vs. life as it is

[xmark]

Right, a contract once signed should not ever ever ever be subject to modification. People who sign contracts should have a firm grasp of all future events and circumstances or should just put down the pen. Next thing you know, we'd have divorce laws, the dissolution of the ABM treaty, Poland joining NATO, and Enron re-upping their accounting contract with Arthur Andersen.

As Ralph Waldo Emerson said, "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of a small mind."

Technological advances driven by wireless networking (both telecom and datacom) are starting to render obsolete the idea that spectrum is a severely limited resource that must be lorded and hoarded by the FCC. Ten years ago, during its planning, Iridium seemed like a technological miracle solution to an intractable problem. No one foresaw ubiquitous digital cell networks and two-cents-a-minute rates. Now these guys are supposed to peer another decade forward and once again envision what not only doesn't exist, but hasn't been invented...and then bind themselves to a cool billion or two of investment.

Stuff like this doesn't encourage innovation, it encourages entrenchment and protection of obsolete technologies.

Re:Leniency?

[g4dget]

What have they got to lose? Their default action is to go bankrupt, but they can do that with or without the contract. Nobody who signed for the contract is going to be held personally responsible.

If they sign the contract, they keep competitors from using the spectrum, they keep a tiny chance open of actually using it for its intended purpose, and they have the option of lobbying and bribing their way into using it for other, more lucrative purposes.

Companies aren't behaving ethically, they do whatever they can get away with. The institution to put a stop to this is the FCC: if Iridium doesn't look like a plausible candidate for using the spectrum in its intended way, the FCC should give the spectrum to someone else.

I hope they don't put satellites in polar orbit

[Anonymous Coward]

That was stupid. Iridium satellites gave each degree of latitude the same coverage, making the coverage densest (per km^2) at the poles, even though that's where it was the least needed! Let's have a few low inclination satellites where people need them.

Re:I hope they don't put satellites in polar orbit

[Skuld-Chan]

This is one of the things you learn as an amateur radio operator (because you get the chance to actually play around with real satellites) - you can have an eliptical orbit around the equator (phase 3), but a lot of the time the satellite can be as far as 50,000+ km away.

Polar orbiting satellites are nice because A) they maintain a pretty much constant height/velocity above the earth, and B) they can be recieved with handheld transcievers. Also its easier to predict passes. Disadvantage being that if you want 24-7 coverage you have to have a lot of them floating around (which is what iridium does, as well as a few other services)

BTW - just for your info phase 4 sattelites (geo stationary) suffer the same problem as Phase 3 sattelites - most of the time they can only be recieved with a fixed station using high gain antennas.

Re:I hope they don't put satellites in polar orbit

[henrym]

The ironic thing is that at the South Pole, our service isn't all that great. We get lots of dropped calls, and lots of low signal levels. I've heard that they shut off the transceivers on some of the satellites as they pass over us to save power, but I don't know for sure.

We've also experimeted with data transfers over the irridium constellation, but so far nothing more than 1200 baud.

It's spelled 'satellite'

[essell]

I saw it spelled two different ways in the threads here, but this is the correct spelling.

damn

[Graspee_Leemoor]

When I saw the headline I thought they were bringing back the classic C64 game.

You know the one, sideways scrolling shoot-em-up but you can go left or right at your whim, (a la defender), also you can flip sideways to fit through tight spots.

It really needed fast reactions (which I no longer have), but was a lot of fun at the time.

I suppose if they did do it now it would be in full 3D and probably suck. Then again, the original would probably suck if I played it again now.

Better leave it alone and save those nice memories.

graspee

Re:damn

[Sniser]

Hmm, do you by any chance mean Uridium [passagen.se]?

Re:damn

[fistynuts]

Bizarrely, I thought of the exact same game despite the difference in spelling. I wonder if there's a market for a remake? ;)

Damn: Iridium

[1984]

You know this is just for the sake of twattish pedantry, but it was called "Uridium", not "Iridium".

I remember because I was so impressed by it on the C64, not least the noise the bay door made when you launched. I had an Amstrad CPC, and the Amstrad version was (as was all-too common) ported from the Spectrum, and was thus piss poor.

Christ, I must be bored.

Maintenance Costs

[Detritus]

I've always wondered what Iridium planned to do when it became time to start replacing the existing satellites. Satellites and launch services are insanely expensive.

It reminds me of a used Porsche I almost bought. After some calculations, I found that I could afford to buy the car but I couldn't afford to keep the car on the road.

Re:Maintenance Costs

[Coz]

There were two lines of growth there. Motorola thought they could assembly-line satellites and bring the per-unit cost down dramatically; almost all satellites today are custom-made, even the big "families" like the Boeing 601 and 702. Motorola was going to mass-produce identical Iridium satellites and get their per-uit cost down.

There was also going to be a boom in cheap launch technology. Companies like Rotary Rocket, Beale Aerospace, and Kistler were growing to compete for the business of keeping Iridium, ICO, Globalstar, and especially Teledesic in space. Since all four have scaled back or disappeared, the funding for the new launch technology development disappeared too. If they'd succeeded, the cost per pound to low orbit would have been 20% of the current price - making a large constellation affordable.

bait and switch

[g4dget]

Iridium signed up for providing satellite phone service. If Iridium doesn't want to build those satellite services, fine, they should be let out of the contract. Then, the regulators should decide whether that spectrum should be kept in reserve for future satellite services or whether it should be made available for terrestrial services, or whether the decision should be up to the market. Once the policy has been decided, then there should be competitive bidding on that spectrum.

Iridium originally got that spectrum under the conditions they got it because they promised satellite service. If they are not going to provide that, there is no reason to give them a lucrative government handout of spectrum for terrestrial uses.

An analogy would be that the government gives a company a piece of land for $1 under the condition that the company turns the land into a park. A few years later, that company hits financial problems and says "oh, wouldn't it be so much more profitable to put a factory here".

My thoughts.

[AX.25]

Iridium is old technology. It is not the best quality, but if your in a third world country and you need to tell someone your in trouble what else are you going to use that is cheap?

They've dropped the dual service and brought there rates down (about $1.50 a minute). Their network is paid for so they seem to be in a pretty good position if you ask me.

Motorola is a sinking ship

[Gizzmonic]

Iridium is just one more example of Motorola overreaching its bounds. Like the classic manic depressive, Mot has grandiose plans but lacks the wherewithal to carry them to fruition.

The PowerPC lags behind its Intel and AMD competitors despite IBM's remarkable innovations in fabricating technology. The cellphone market, once Motorola's bread and butter, has been taken by the younger and hungrier Nokia. And we won't even get into the allegations of Motorola selling parts to make landmines to governments like Indonesia and Pakistan.

Motorola needs a drastic change in management, or it's not going to be around much longer. Last week I convinced my grandmother to dump all her Mot stock and go with Big Blue. I offer the same advice to all of you...

Iridium LLC: a ship pointed in the wrong direction

['Aikanaka]

The original problem with Iridium wasn't Motorola. The service worked (and still works) as designed. What went wrong, in my opinion, is that Iridium LLC targeted the wrong customer base! So, basically, the failure of the original Iridium can be chalked up to bad marketing. I should know...I used to work at the INA-H facility. 'Aikana

Iridium Costs

[RNLockwood]

You may be absolutely certain that the military and other government users don't pay nearly $1.50 a minute. In fact it's les expensive than the cellular costs that I am familiar with.

I tested the data service by using FTP to move some files this week and got a data throughput of about 4 seconds a kilobyte. The service compresses the data to get this rate. The rate was the same if I zipped the file and then sent it.

Iridium also provides secure encryption for the military and qualified governmnet users. A nice touch for those that need it.

Re:Iridium Costs

[morcheeba]

> Iridium also provides secure encryption for the military and qualified governmnet users. A nice touch for those that need it.

Yeah, I'm sure [fas.org] the association with [euronet.nl] the government will [cryptome.org] assure your privacy. [cryptome.org]

Re:Iridium Costs

[RNLockwood]

Sugar Grove, West Virginia, is not where my data go and, in any case, since it is governmnet data it's immaterial if it is intercepted by some other branch of the government.

Re:Iridium Costs

[swdunlop]

Is it? And can you be sure that the organization that intercepts is free of individuals whose sole loyalty is to the state? Agents have been found in high level positions in the CIA in the past, indicating that there could be other compromised individuals there, and in other intelligence agencies. Indeed, the large number of individuals involved make it a statistical likelihood.

Probably your data isn't anything particularly worthy of espionage, but it is careless to assume that automatically everyone who could intercept your communications is friendly. Corporations tend to make this mistake as well, allowing potentially harmful information to travel their intranets in plaintext.

I hate to preach, but don't trust encryption methodologies you can't examine closely, and try to ensure that only the endpoints involved in a communication can determine the data being passed.

Re:Iridium Costs

[ActiveSX]

The service compresses the data to get this rate. The rate was the same if I zipped the file and then sent it.

If you get the same rate sending compressed and uncompressed data, then the data isn't being compressed on the way there. If it was, then the uncompressed data would transfer at a higher rate.

Re:Iridium Costs

[RNLockwood]

Perhaps I wasn't clear. The system tries to compress all data but the ZIP file, already compressed, doesn't compress any more so the speed for the compressed and uncompressed is about the same.

Bad.

[Decimal]

I never paid much attention to the Iridium company so I don't know if they fell out of the sky or not... but if they did and they want to put up a new, even more advanced generation of satellites then this isn't good for Radio Astronomers. If the original Iridium was interfering with their observations before, imagine how much trouble this new system will bring.

iridium has no competition

[Anonymous Coward]

in certain situations such as offshore sailing iridium has the best cost/performance. other systems like globalstar don't reach offshore, and inmarsat is too expensive and bulky and requires too much power.