Iridium Communications Inc. (formerly Iridium Satellite LLC) is a publicly traded

American American(s) may refer to: * American, something of, from, or related to the United States of America, commonly known as the "United States" or "America" ** Americans, citizens and nationals of the United States of America ** American ancestry, p ...

company headquartered in McLean, Virginia, United States. Iridium operates the

Iridium satellite constellation The Iridium satellite constellation provides L band voice and data information Pass (spaceflight), coverage to satellite phones, satellite messenger communication devices and integrated transceivers. Iridium Communications owns and operates the ...

, a system of 80 satellites: 66 are active satellites and the remaining fourteen function as in-orbit spares. Iridium Satellites are used for worldwide voice and data communication from handheld

satellite phone A satellite telephone, satellite phone or satphone is a type of mobile phone that connects to other phones or the telephone network by radio link through satellites orbiting the Earth instead of terrestrial cell sites, as cellphones do. Therefo ...

s, satellite messenger communication devices and integrated transceivers, as well as for two-way satellite messaging service from supported conventional

mobile phones A mobile phone or cell phone is a portable telephone that allows users to make and receive calls over a radio frequency link while moving within a designated telephone service area, unlike fixed-location phones ( landline phones). This radio ...

. The nearly

polar orbit A polar orbit is one in which a satellite passes above or nearly above both poles of the body being orbited (usually a planet such as the Earth, but possibly another body such as the Moon or Sun) on each revolution. It has an inclination of abo ...

and communication between satellites via inter-satellite links provide global service availability.

History

The Iridium communications service was launched on November 1, 1998, formerly known as Iridium SSC. The first Iridium call was made from

Vice President of the United States The vice president of the United States (VPOTUS) is the second-highest ranking office in the Executive branch of the United States government, executive branch of the U.S. federal government, after the president of the United States, and ranks f ...

Al Gore Albert Arnold Gore Jr. (born March 31, 1948) is an American former politician, businessman, and environmentalist who served as the 45th vice president of the United States from 1993 to 2001 under President Bill Clinton. He previously served as ...

to Gilbert Grosvenor, the great-grandson of

Alexander Graham Bell Alexander Graham Bell (; born Alexander Bell; March 3, 1847 – August 2, 1922) was a Scottish-born Canadian Americans, Canadian-American inventor, scientist, and engineer who is credited with patenting the first practical telephone. He als ...

and chairman of the

National Geographic Society The National Geographic Society, headquartered in Washington, D.C., United States, is one of the largest nonprofit scientific and educational organizations in the world. Founded in 1888, its interests include geography, archaeology, natural sc ...

Motorola Motorola, Inc. () was an American multinational telecommunications company based in Schaumburg, Illinois. It was founded by brothers Paul and Joseph Galvin in 1928 and had been named Motorola since 1947. Many of Motorola's products had been ...

provided the technology and major financial backing. The logo of the company represents the

Big Dipper The Big Dipper (American English, US, Canadian English, Canada) or the Plough (British English, UK, Hiberno-English, Ireland) is an asterism (astronomy), asterism consisting of seven bright stars of the constellation Ursa Major; six of them ar ...

. The company derives its name from the

chemical element A chemical element is a chemical substance whose atoms all have the same number of protons. The number of protons is called the atomic number of that element. For example, oxygen has an atomic number of 8: each oxygen atom has 8 protons in its ...

iridium Iridium is a chemical element; it has the symbol Ir and atomic number 77. This very hard, brittle, silvery-white transition metal of the platinum group, is considered the second-densest naturally occurring metal (after osmium) with a density ...

, which has an

atomic number The atomic number or nuclear charge number (symbol ''Z'') of a chemical element is the charge number of its atomic nucleus. For ordinary nuclei composed of protons and neutrons, this is equal to the proton number (''n''p) or the number of pro ...

of 77, equaling the initial number of satellites which were calculated to be required for global coverage. However, due to optimizations of orbit trajectories, technology updates and real-world conditions, only 66 are required for global coverage. A total of 95 satellites were launched in this constellation, with 66 active and the remaining 29 satellites operating as spares. On August 13, 1999, nine months after the launch of the organization, the founding company went into

Chapter 11 bankruptcy Chapter 11 of the United States Bankruptcy Code ( Title 11 of the United States Code) permits reorganization under the bankruptcy laws of the United States. Such reorganization, known as Chapter 11 bankruptcy, is available to every business, w ...

. The handsets could not operate as promoted until the entire constellation of satellites was in place, requiring a massive initial

capital cost {{no footnotes, date=December 2016 Capital costs are fixed, one-time expenses incurred on the purchase of land, buildings, construction, and equipment used in the production of goods or in the rendering of services. In other words, it is the total ...

of billions of dollars. The cost of service dissuaded many potential users. Reception indoors was difficult and the handheld devices, when compared to terrestrial cellular

mobile phone A mobile phone or cell phone is a portable telephone that allows users to make and receive calls over a radio frequency link while moving within a designated telephone service area, unlike fixed-location phones ( landline phones). This rad ...

s were bulkier and more expensive, both of which discouraged adoption among potential users. Mismanagement is another major factor that was cited in the original program's failure. In 1999,

CNN Cable News Network (CNN) is a multinational news organization operating, most notably, a website and a TV channel headquartered in Atlanta. Founded in 1980 by American media proprietor Ted Turner and Reese Schonfeld as a 24-hour cable ne ...

writer

David Rohde David Stephenson Rohde (born August 7, 1967) is an American author and investigative journalist. He is the former online news director for ''The New Yorker'' and now the senior executive editor on national security for NBC News. While a repor ...

detailed how he applied for Iridium service and was sent information kits, but was never contacted by a sales representative. He encountered programming problems on Iridium's website, and a "run-around" from the company's representatives. After Iridium filed bankruptcy, it cited "difficulty gaining subscribers." The initial commercial failure of Iridium had a damping effect on other proposed commercial satellite constellation projects, including

Teledesic Teledesic was a company founded in the 1990s to build a commercial broadband satellite internet constellation. Using low-Earth-orbiting satellites small antennas could be used to provide uplinks of as much as 100 Mbit/s and downlinks of up t ...

. Other schemes (

Orbcomm ORBCOMM is an American company that offers industrial IoT solutions designed to track, monitor, and control fixed and mobile assets in markets including transportation, heavy equipment, maritime, oil and gas, utilities and government. The compan ...

ICO Global Communications Pendrell Corporation (formerly NASDAQ:PCO, delisted Nov 2017) is an intellectual property (IP) investment, advisory services and asset management firm. The company develops and implements strategies to acquire, commercialize, manage, divest and li ...

, and

Globalstar Globalstar, Inc. is an American telecommunications company that operates a satellite constellation in low Earth orbit (LEO) for satellite phone, low-speed data transmission and earth observation. The Globalstar second-generation constellation con ...

) followed Iridium into bankruptcy protection, while a number of other proposed schemes were never even constructed. In August 2000,

announced that the Iridium satellites would have to be deorbited. Despite this, they remained in orbit and operational. In December 2000, the US government stepped in to save Iridium by providing US$72 million in exchange for a two-year contract. They also approved the

fire sale A fire sale is the sale of goods at extremely discounted prices. The term originated in reference to the sale of goods at a heavy discount due to fire damage. It may or may not be defined as a closeout, the final sale of goods to zero inventor ...

of the company from US bankruptcy court for $25 million in March 2001. This erased over $4 billion in debt. Iridium service was restarted in 2001, by the newly founded Iridium Satellite LLC, which was owned by a group of private investors. On February 10, 2009, the

Iridium 33 Iridium 33 was a communications satellite launched by Russia for Iridium Communications. It was launched into low Earth orbit from Site 81/23 at the Baikonur Cosmodrome at 01:36 UTC on 14 September 1997, by a Proton-K rocket with a Block DM2 u ...

satellite collided with a defunct Russian satellite, named

Kosmos 2251 Kosmos-2251 ( meaning ''Cosmos 2251'') was a Russian Strela-2M military communications satellite. It was launched into Low Earth orbit from Site 132/1 at the Plesetsk Cosmodrome at 04:17 UTC on 16 June 1993, by a Kosmos-3M carrier rocket. The ...

, over

Siberia Siberia ( ; , ) is an extensive geographical region comprising all of North Asia, from the Ural Mountains in the west to the Pacific Ocean in the east. It has formed a part of the sovereign territory of Russia and its predecessor states ...

. Two large debris clouds were created.

Iridium NEXT launch campaign

Iridium replaced its original constellation by sending 75 new Iridium satellites into space on SpaceX Falcon 9 rockets in a series of 8 launches. The campaign also consisted of upgrades to Iridium ground infrastructure. The

Iridium NEXT The Iridium satellite constellation provides L band voice and data information coverage to satellite phones, satellite messenger communication devices and integrated transceivers. Iridium Communications owns and operates the constellation, addi ...

launch campaign was announced in 2007. Within three years, Iridium completed financing and began work on launching new satellites. In June 2010, Iridium announced a fixed-price contract with

Thales Alenia Space Thales Alenia Space () is a joint venture between the French technology corporation Thales Group (67%) and Italian defense conglomerate Leonardo (company), Leonardo (33%). The company is headquartered in Cannes, France. It provides space-based ...

for the design and construction of the next-generation satellites for the upgraded constellation. Two weeks later, Iridium announced a $492 million contract designating the

Falcon 9 Falcon 9 is a Reusable launch system#Partial reusable launch systems, partially reusable, two-stage-to-orbit, medium-lift launch vehicle designed and manufactured in the United States by SpaceX. The first Falcon 9 launch was on June 4, 2010, an ...

as a major provider of launch services for the Iridium NEXT campaign, becoming the largest single commercial launch deal ever signed (simultaneously representing a benchmark in cost-effective satellite delivery to space). On January 14, 2017, 10 years after the campaign was first announced, the first of eight Iridium NEXT launches took place with

SpaceX Space Exploration Technologies Corp., commonly referred to as SpaceX, is an America, American space technology company headquartered at the SpaceX Starbase, Starbase development site in Starbase, Texas. Since its founding in 2002, the compa ...

from

Vandenberg Air Force Base Vandenberg may refer to: * Vandenberg (surname), including a list of people with the name * USNS ''General Hoyt S. Vandenberg'' (T-AGM-10), transport ship in the United States Navy, sank as an artificial reef in Key West, Florida * Vandenberg S ...

in California. Over the next two years, Iridium sent an additional 65 satellites into low Earth orbit to completely replace the original satellite constellation. The final

launch took place on January 11, 2019, less than two years after the first launch. The

network covers the entire

Earth Earth is the third planet from the Sun and the only astronomical object known to Planetary habitability, harbor life. This is enabled by Earth being an ocean world, the only one in the Solar System sustaining liquid surface water. Almost all ...

, including poles, oceans and airways, with 66 satellites, with the remaining nine acting as active backups, for a total of 75 launched. Six remain on the ground as spares for a total of 81 built.

Present status

Iridium Satellite LLC merged with a

special-purpose acquisition company A special-purpose acquisition company (SPAC; ), also known as a blank check company or a blind-pool stock offering, is a shell corporation listed on a stock exchange with the purpose of acquiring (or merging with) a private company, thus taking ...

(GHQ) created by the investment bank Greenhill & Co. in September 2009 to create Iridium Communications Inc. The public company trades on

NASDAQ The Nasdaq Stock Market (; National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotations) is an American stock exchange based in New York City. It is the most active stock trading venue in the U.S. by volume, and ranked second on the list ...

under the symbol "IRDM". The company surpassed one million subscribers in March 2018. Revenue for the full year 2018 was $523.0 million with operational

EBITDA A company's earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization (commonly abbreviated EBITDA, pronounced ) is a measure of a company's profitability of the operating business only, thus before any effects of indebtedness, state-mandat ...

of $302.0 million, a 14% increase from $265.6 million in the prior year. Iridium manages several operations centers, including

Tempe, Arizona Tempe ( ; ''Oidbaḍ'' in O'odham language, O'odham) is a city in Maricopa County, Arizona, United States, with the Census Bureau reporting a 2020 population of 180,587. The city is named after the Vale of Tempe in Greece. Tempe is located in t ...

and

Leesburg, Virginia Leesburg is a town in and the county seat of Loudoun County, Virginia, United States. It is part of both the Northern Virginia region of the state and the Washington metropolitan area, including Washington, D.C., the nation's capital. European se ...

, United States. The system is being used by the

U.S. Department of Defense The United States Department of Defense (DoD, USDOD, or DOD) is an executive department of the U.S. federal government charged with coordinating and supervising the six U.S. armed services: the Army, Navy, Marines, Air Force, Space Force, t ...

. Matt Desch is the current CEO of Iridium LLC.

Hosted Payload Alliance

Iridium is a founding member of the

Hosted Payload A hosted payload is a module attached to a commercial satellite with communications circuitry that operates independently of the main spacecraft but which shares the satellite's power supply and transponders. The concept has been also been referred ...

Alliance (HPA), a satellite industry alliance program. Membership in the HPA is open to satellite operators, satellite manufacturers, system integrators, and other interested parties.

Air safety communications

In July 2011, the

Federal Aviation Administration The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is a Federal government of the United States, U.S. federal government agency within the United States Department of Transportation, U.S. Department of Transportation that regulates civil aviation in t ...

(FAA) issued a ruling that approves the use of Iridium for

Future Air Navigation System The Future Air Navigation System (FANS) is an avionics system which provides direct data link communication between the pilot and the air traffic controller. The communications include air traffic control clearances, pilot requests and position rep ...

(FANS) data links, enabling satellite data links with air-traffic control for aircraft flying in the FANS environment, including areas not served by

Inmarsat Inmarsat is a British communications satellite, satellite telecommunications company, offering global mobile services. It provides telephone and data services to users worldwide, via portable or mobile terminals which communicate with groun ...

(above or below 70 degrees latitude) which includes polar routes.

Global Maritime Distress and Safety System

In January 2020, the

Iridium constellation The Iridium satellite constellation provides L band voice and data information Pass (spaceflight), coverage to satellite phones, satellite messenger communication devices and integrated transceivers. Iridium Communications owns and operates the ...

was certified for use in the

Global Maritime Distress and Safety System The Global Maritime Distress and Safety System (GMDSS) is a worldwide system for automated emergency signal communication for ships at sea developed by the United Nations' International Maritime Organization (IMO) as part of the SOLAS Convention ...

(GMDSS). The certification ended a

monopoly A monopoly (from Greek language, Greek and ) is a market in which one person or company is the only supplier of a particular good or service. A monopoly is characterized by a lack of economic Competition (economics), competition to produce ...

on the provision of maritime distress services that had previously been held by

since the system became operational in 1999.

Adoption of standard-based solutions for cellphones

In 2023,

Qualcomm Qualcomm Incorporated () is an American multinational corporation headquartered in San Diego, California, and Delaware General Corporation Law, incorporated in Delaware. It creates semiconductors, software and services related to wireless techn ...

and Iridium announced an agreement that was supposed to bring two-way satellite messaging service to

Android Android most commonly refers to: *Android (robot), a humanoid robot or synthetic organism designed to imitate a human * Android (operating system), a mobile operating system primarily developed by Google * Android TV, a operating system developed ...

smartphones. The service, called Snapdragon Satellite, should have been supported starting with devices that feature

Snapdragon ''Antirrhinum'' is a genus of plants in the Plantaginaceae family, commonly known as dragon flowers or snapdragons because of the flowers' fancied resemblance to the face of a dragon that opens and closes its mouth when laterally squeezed. They ...

8 Gen 2 chipsets, which was expected to be launched in the second half of 2023. The solution for smartphones was supposed to utilize Iridium's

L Band The L band is the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) designation for the range of frequencies in the radio spectrum from 1 to 2 gigahertz (GHz). This is at the top end of the ultra high frequency (UHF) band, at the lower en ...

spectrum for downlink and uplink. On November 9, 2023, Iridium announced that Qualcomm had notified them about the end of their partnership due to a lack of interest in Qualcomm's and Iridium's proprietary solution by smartphone manufacturers. A Qualcomm spokesman stated "Smartphone makers have indicated a preference towards standards-based solutions for satellite-to-phone connectivity. We expect to continue to collaborate with Iridium on standards-based solutions while discontinuing efforts on the proprietary solution that was introduced earlier this year." In 2024, Iridium introduced Project Stardust, a

3GPP The 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) is an umbrella term for a number of standards organizations which develop protocols for mobile telecommunications. Its best known work is the development and maintenance of: * GSM and related 2G and ...

standard-based satellite-to-cellphone service focusing on messaging, emergency communications and IoT for devices like cars, smartphones, tablets and related consumer applications. The solution will be supported using a version of the NB-IoT standard for 5G non-terrestrial networks (NTN). Scheduled for launch in 2026, it won't replace the company’s proprietary solution for voice and high-speed data; instead it will co-exist with that offering on the Iridium's existing global low-earth orbit satellite network.

Russo-Ukrainian War

From 2015–2022, Iridium Satellite was selling navigation systems directly to its Russian subsidiary, Iridium Communications. In 2022, the Moscow-based subsidiary gave the

National Guard of Russia The Federal Service of Troops of National Guard of the Russian Federation (), officially known as the (),#Official website, Official website is a federal executive body which is responsible for law enforcement, internal security, counter-terro ...

access to the satellite constellation. Following the

2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine On 24 February 2022, , starting the largest and deadliest war in Europe since World War II, in a major escalation of the Russo-Ukrainian War, conflict between the two countries which began in 2014. The fighting has caused hundreds of thou ...

, Iridium structured their operations to comply with US sanctions and stopped shipment of end-user equipment to Russia. Despite this, In 2023, Iridium Communications, via some unknown intermediaries, imported machines made by the American parent company for receiving and converting voice and images.

Iridium satellite constellation

The Iridium system requires 66 active satellites in

low Earth orbit A low Earth orbit (LEO) is an geocentric orbit, orbit around Earth with a orbital period, period of 128 minutes or less (making at least 11.25 orbits per day) and an orbital eccentricity, eccentricity less than 0.25. Most of the artificial object ...

to complete its constellation and 9 spare satellites are kept in-orbit to serve in case of failure. The satellites are in six

al planes at a height of approximately . Satellites communicate with neighboring satellites via

Ka band The Ka band (pronounced as either "kay-ay band" or "ka band") is a portion of the microwave part of the electromagnetic spectrum. The designation "Ka-band" is from Kurz-above, which stems from the German word ''kurz,'' meaning "short". There ...

intersatellite links to relay communications to and from

ground station A ground station, Earth station, or Earth terminal is a terrestrial radio station designed for extraplanetary telecommunication with spacecraft (constituting part of the ground segment of the spacecraft system), or reception of radio waves fr ...

s. The original constellation was launched in the late 1990s before the company went through bankruptcy. In January 2017, Iridium began to launch its next-generation satellites through its $3 billion launch campaign,

. The new satellites were sent into space on SpaceX Falcon 9 launch vehicles from

Vandenberg AFB Space Launch Complex 4 Space Launch Complex 4 (SLC-4) is a launch and landing site at Vandenberg Space Force Base, California, U.S. It has two pads, both of which are used by SpaceX for Falcon 9, one for launch operations, and the other as Landing Zone 4 (LZ-4) for S ...

in California over the course of eight launches between January 2017 and January 2019. On January 14, 2017, SpaceX launched 10 of the new Iridium satellites into orbit. The second launch of

satellites took place on June 25, 2017 on a

Falcon 9 rocket Falcon 9 is a partially reusable, two-stage-to-orbit, medium-lift launch vehicle designed and manufactured in the United States by SpaceX. The first Falcon 9 launch was on June 4, 2010, and the first commercial resupply mission to the Internat ...

out of

Vandenberg Space Force Base Vandenberg Space Force Base , previously Vandenberg Air Force Base, is a United States Space Force Base in Santa Barbara County, California. Established in 1941, Vandenberg Space Force Base is a space launch base, launching spacecraft from the ...

. This was the second of eight scheduled launches. The third launch of 10 NEXT satellites took place on October 9, 2017. On December 22, 2017, ten additional satellites were deployed after a successful launch on a SpaceX

. On May 22, SpaceX successfully launched an additional five

satellites from

. On January 11, 2019, the final ten satellites were placed in orbit by

Subscriber equipment

Handsets

Iridium offers four satellite handsets: the 9555, 9575A (which is only available to US government customers), the Extreme, and the Extreme PTT.

Wi-Fi Hotspots

In 2014, Iridium began to offer the Iridium Go!

hotspot Hotspot, Hot Spot or Hot spot may refer to: Places * Hot Spot, Kentucky, a community in the United States Arts, entertainment, and media Fictional entities * Hot Spot (comics), a name for the DC Comics character Isaiah Crockett * Hot Spot (Tr ...

, which can also be used as a distress beacon under certain circumstances. As of September 2020, Iridium's manufacturing contractor, Beam Communications, had built 50,000 of these devices.

One-way pagers

Two

pagers A pager, also known as a beeper or bleeper, is a wireless telecommunications device that receives and displays alphanumeric or voice messages. One-way pagers can only receive messages, while response pagers and two-way pagers can also acknow ...

were made for the Iridium network – the

9501 and

Kyocera is a Japanese Multinational corporation, multinational ceramics and electronics manufacturer headquartered in Kyoto, Japan. It was founded as in 1959 by Kazuo Inamori and renamed in 1982. It manufactures industrial ceramics, solar power genera ...

SP-66K. These are one-way devices that could receive messages sent in the form of

SMS Short Message Service, commonly abbreviated as SMS, is a text messaging service component of most telephone, Internet and mobile device systems. It uses standardized communication protocols that let mobile phones exchange short text messages, t ...

. Messages are delivered to pre-selected "MDAs" which cover a certain geographic area. Three of these MDAs may be selected on a web-based portal or updated automatically if the paging service is bound to an Iridium phone. Each country has its own MDA based on its

country code A country code is a short alphanumeric identification code for countries and dependent areas. Its primary use is in data processing and communications. Several identification systems have been developed. The term ''country code'' frequently re ...

; some of the larger countries are divided into several MDAs, while separate MDAs exist for sections of ocean and common aeronautic routes. Pagers are assigned with telephone numbers in

area code 480 __NOTOC__ Year 480 ( CDLXXX) was a leap year starting on Tuesday of the Julian calendar. At the time, it was known as the Year of the Consulship of Basilius without colleague (or, less frequently, year 1233 ''Ab urbe condita''). The denomina ...

and can also be contacted using email, SMS and the web-based interface used to send messages to Iridium phones.

Two-way satellite messengers

In 2017,

Garmin Garmin Ltd. is an American multinational technology company based in Olathe, Kansas. The company designs, develops, manufactures, markets, and distributes GPS-enabled products and other navigation, communication, sensor-based, and information ...

announced inReach SE+ and inReach Explorer+ satellite communicators, which use Iridium satellite network for global coverage. Garmin inReach mini, a satellite messenger, was announced a year later. These devices can send and receive text messages with any cell phone number, email address or another inReach device, as well as to provide location sharing, navigation and direct communication options to emergency services. ZOLEO satellite communicator uses global Iridium network when cellular or Wi-Fi coverage is unavailable. It does so by means of Bluetooth connection to provide two-way messaging to connected smartphone or tablet devices.

Other satellite phones

Several other Iridium-based telephones exist, such as

payphone A payphone (alternative spelling: pay phone or pay telephone or public phone) is typically a coin-operated public telephone, often located in a telephone booth or in high-traffic public areas. Prepayment is required by inserting coins or tel ...

s, and equipment intended for installation on ships and aircraft. The DPL handset made by NAL Research combined with a 9522 transceiver is used for some of these products. This handset provides a

user interface In the industrial design field of human–computer interaction, a user interface (UI) is the space where interactions between humans and machines occur. The goal of this interaction is to allow effective operation and control of the machine fro ...

nearly identical to that of the 9505 series phones.

Standalone transceiver units

These can be used for data-logging applications in remote areas (as in

data collection satellite A communications satellite is an artificial satellite that relays and amplifies radio telecommunication signals via a transponder; it creates a communication channel between a source transmitter and a receiver at different locations on Earth. ...

s). Some types of

buoy A buoy (; ) is a buoyancy, floating device that can have many purposes. It can be anchored (stationary) or allowed to drift with ocean currents. History The ultimate origin of buoys is unknown, but by 1295 a seaman's manual referred to navig ...

s, such as those used for the

tsunami warning system A tsunami warning system (TWS) is used to detect tsunamis in advance and issue the warnings to prevent loss of life and damage to property. It is made up of two equally important components: a network of sensors to detect tsunamis and a communic ...

, use Iridium satellites to communicate with their base. The remote device is programmed to call or send short

burst Burst may refer to: *Burst mode (disambiguation), a mode of operation where events occur in rapid succession **Burst transmission, a term in telecommunications **Burst switching, a feature of some packet-switched networks **Bursting, a signaling mo ...

data (SBD) messages to the base at specified intervals, or it can be set to accept calls in order for it to offload its collected data. The following transceivers have been released over the years: *Iridium Core 9523 – Similar to the 9522B, a modular transceiver released in 2012 *Iridium 9522B – A transceiver released in late 2008, is smaller than the 9522A and has similar features. It also supports Circuit-Switched Data (CSD), not just SBD. *Iridium 9522A – Based on the 9522, some variants have built in GPS and autonomous reporting functions. Supports SBD. *Motorola 9522 – Last Motorola transceiver, supports outgoing SMS but no SBD. *Motorola 9520 – Original transceiver module, does not support outgoing SMS or SBD. Designed for use in vehicles with accompanying handset

Short burst data modems

These devices support only SBD for

Internet of things Internet of things (IoT) describes devices with sensors, processing ability, software and other technologies that connect and exchange data with other devices and systems over the Internet or other communication networks. The IoT encompasse ...

(IoT) services and do not use a SIM card. *Iridium 9601 – Supports only SBD, several

tracking device A tracking system or locating system is used for tracking persons or objects that do not stay in a fixed location, and supplying a time-ordered sequence of positions (track). Applications A myriad of tracking systems exist. Some are 'lag ...

s and other products have been built around this modem. It was an Iridium manufactured product designed as an OEM module for integration into applications that only use the Iridium Short Burst Data Service. Short Burst Data applications are supported through an RS-232 interface. Examples of these applications include maritime vessel tracking or automatic vehicle tracking. *Iridium 9602 – Smaller, cheaper version of 9601 (released in 2010). *Iridium 9603 – One-fourth the volume and half the footprint of 9602

Iridium OpenPort

Iridium OpenPort is a broadband satellite voice and data communications system for maritime vessels. The system is used for crew calling and e-mail services on sea vessels such as merchant fleets, government and navy vessels, fishing fleets and personal yachts. Iridium operates at only 2.2 to 3.8

kbit/s In telecommunications, data transfer rate is the average number of bits ( bitrate), characters or symbols ( baudrate), or data blocks per unit time passing through a communication link in a data-transmission system. Common data rate units are mu ...

, which requires very aggressive voice

compression Compression may refer to: Physical science *Compression (physics), size reduction due to forces *Compression member, a structural element such as a column *Compressibility, susceptibility to compression * Gas compression *Compression ratio, of a ...

and decompression

algorithm In mathematics and computer science, an algorithm () is a finite sequence of Rigour#Mathematics, mathematically rigorous instructions, typically used to solve a class of specific Computational problem, problems or to perform a computation. Algo ...

s. (By comparison, AMR used in 3G phones requires a minimum of 4.75 kbit/s, G.729 requires 6.4 kbit/s, and

iLBC Internet Low Bitrate Codec (iLBC) is a royalty-free narrowband speech audio coding format and an open-source reference implementation (codec), developed by Global IP Solutions (GIPS) formerly Global IP Sound (acquired by Google Inc in 2011). It w ...

requires 13.33 kbit/s.) Latency for data connections averages 1800 ms round-trip, with a mode of 1300 to 1400 ms and a minimum around 980 ms. Latency is highly variable depending on the path data takes through the satellite constellation as well the need for retransmissions due to errors, which may be around 2 to 3% for mobile originated packets under good conditions.

Iridium Certus

One of the Iridium NEXT services is Iridium Certus, a globally available satellite broadband which is capable of up to 704 Kbps of bandwidth across maritime, aviation, land mobile, government, and IoT applications. Terminals for the service are provided by Cobham, Intellian Technologies and

Thales Thales of Miletus ( ; ; ) was an Ancient Greek philosophy, Ancient Greek Pre-Socratic philosophy, pre-Socratic Philosophy, philosopher from Miletus in Ionia, Asia Minor. Thales was one of the Seven Sages of Greece, Seven Sages, founding figure ...

Iridium STL

Iridium is providing Satellite Time & Location (STL) service. It was developed by Satelles company, which was later acquired by Iridium Communications in April 2024. According to the company, it is the only

LEO Leo is the Latin word for lion. It most often refers to: * Leo (constellation), a constellation of stars in the night sky * Leo (astrology), an astrological sign of the zodiac * Leo (given name), a given name in several languages, usually mas ...

satellite based commercial positioning, navigation, and timing (PNT) service (as of April 2024).

References

External links

*
Application of Iridium telecommunications to oceanographic and polar research

''Iridium Data Modem''
(PDF)
''Technical success and economic failure''
(PDF), MIT {{Authority control Companies that filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 1999 2009 initial public offerings Satellite telephony Companies based in McLean, Virginia Communications satellite operators Mobile phone companies of the United States Companies listed on the Nasdaq Satellite Internet access Data collection satellites Companies in the S&P 400