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Comment by diek | Hacker News Reader

Iridium exists today, refreshed their constellation with Iridium NEXT just a few years ago, and was just bought by Rocket Lab for $8 billion.

(disclaimer: my Dad worked there for years)

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Fun Iridium trivia: it was originally designed to need 77 satellites, hence the name. By the time they deployed they’d figured out they’d only need 66, but for some reason didn’t change their name to Dysprosium.

This kind of trivia can be discovered in the very interesting and entertaining book "Eccentric Orbits: The Iridium Story" by John Bloom. Highly recommended read (if you're generally into tech/business/startup chronicles)!

And while you're at it, read "Chip Wars" by Christopher R. Miller as well. Extremely good read to understand tomorrows' most relevant geopolitical conflict.

the person you are responding to seems to have massively massively downplayed iridium then….

Surprisingly they're profitable, but still saddled with a lot of debt. I know to people over at Iridium that have stayed through the past 15 years or so. They have a niche they're serving that seems stable for now.

I half expect Amazon to keep making acquisitions to try and accelerate their satellite efforts. I don't think it's a net negative thing, there's so much more we can do.

There are countless niches like this in telematics, one of the only industries I've encountered where a seemingly established company will be doing a "Series K" round, typically as a means to buy or build out the infrastructure they need for whatever customer.

I am surprised that Starlink didn't eat their lunch. I think the only thing keeping them alive is inertia and the fact that Starlink still has regional lockouts and doesn't work in the most remote parts of the world.

Iridium still has a monopoly on high latitudes, too, AFAIK. Their USP is being the only network that works literally anywhere on the surface of the earth.

Starlink works at high attitudes. It was a big deal when they got it at McMurdo 4 years ago. Same in Utqiagvik (formerly Barrow) Alaska.

Garden variety Starlink requires a big, expensive, high-powered phased-array antenna, and there are lots of low-power/IoT-type applications served by Iridium for which Starlink is not suitable. Once the Starlink direct-to-cell technology matures, presumably that'll serve those usecases, but it still seems pretty nascent.

Under SOLAS, GMDSS equipment is mandatory on ships. Iridium (and Inmarsat) meet that requirement, starlink does not - hence Iridium is still very much around...

And they have: https://www.wsj.com/business/telecom/rocket-lab-buys-satelli...

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