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“We are offering something quite unique because of our spectrum, of our history,” says CEO, Matt Desch
For the past couple of years, the satellite industry has been a hotbed of activity with newcomers entering to fill emerging niches and established ones adapting and forging strategic transitions. One such story is Iridium’s, the first commercial operator of low Earth orbit (LEO) satellites that introduced direct-to-device (D2D) connectivity before it became a buzzword.
The satellite industry wasn’t always this buzzy
In the 90s when Iridium entered the satellite space, it was a “sleepy” little industry that not many cared to follow.
In the latest episode of Pulse, CEO, Matt Desch, remembered, “there were very defined interests, devices were quite expensive…And there was a lot of failures in the industry because it was so expensive, so much capital to develop before you could even be in business.”
But as connectivity went from a nice-to-have to must-have, the realities of the industry too have changed.
“Cell phones still, on the terrestrial basis, only cover 10 to 14% of the Earth’s surface and not in the air,” Desch noted.
This seemingly minor fact has started a land grab of spectrums and satellites, that big operators, like Starlink and Amazon Leo, and smaller players, like AST SpaceMobile and Skylo are scrambling to get.
Eye on IoT
Iridium does not operate in the same space as these satellite operators, and that’s its quiet edge in the crowded LEO market.
“We are offering something quite unique because of our spectrum, of our history,” Desch said. Iridium exclusively controls 7.775 MHz of the L-Band spectrum, and shares 0.95 MHz.
Today Iridium identifies as an IoT company, with over 500 partners that have embedded its service across maritime, aviation, agriculture, government, energy, and transportation applications. Their satellite service powers 2 million IoT devices that are used for management, monitoring, and tracking of assets in remote environments. The company has recently started expanding to Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs).
The company is set to launch Iridium Direct NTN later this year, a service that will connect IoT devices and smartphones directly to its satellite network. The service was announced at CES in January
— after a prior attempt to launch failed in 2023 — with alpha and beta testing currently underway with mobile network operators (MNOs). The standards-based IoT system is based on Iridium’s LEO constellation and L-band spectrum.
“Iridium is quite profitable today. We’re successful, and we continue to grow,” Desch said.
One of Iridium’s biggest growth areas is positioning, navigation, and timing (PNT). The company offers Satellite Time and Location (STL) data service, a PNT alternative satellite-based time synchronization service, delivered using Iridium’s broadcast paging channels.
“That channel was something that we realized 10 to 15 years ago could be used to deliver timing correction signals and we could encrypt that information,” Desch said. “We could deliver it a thousand times more powerfully than GPS…[and] be very difficult to jam or spoof. And even could just be a timing reference signal inside buildings where it’s difficult to get a GPS timing source.”
The service was originally built by Boeing Phantom Works, a research and prototyping division of Boeing Defense, Space & Security, and was later spun off before Iridium bought it back recently to launch the STL service. The service is commercially available across North America, Europe, and Asia Pacific today.
Desch is optimistic about adoption of satellite-based synchronization services. “It’s being implemented across the world right now, in maritime applications…we’re seeing [it in] drones…and other kinds of autonomous vehicles. We’re seeing it put into cell towers to protect critical infrastructure. It’s going into the New York Stock Exchange, the NASDAQ…We’re seeing critical infrastructure of all types be protected via this kind of technology.”
On D2D and growing LEO constellations
Regardless of the frenzy around D2D, the industry today still faces the same problem that Iridium did when it introduced its D2D service back in the 90s, Desch noted. Adoption is nowhere near where operators would like.
“I think mainstream is still a couple years away,” Desch estimated, when asked about the timeline for D2D entering mainstream. “You could say what you can get on your iPhone is mainstream today. I don’t think many people have necessarily tried it or use it often. Certainly given that it’s free and its occasional capability, it hasn’t moved the needle necessarily in terms of device sales or things like that. So I don’t think it’s really achieved the potential that justifies valuations and investment and everything today,” he added.
Commenting on the growing number of LEO satellites in space today, Desch said, “Obviously, people are concerned about things running into each other — we’re worried about that as well — but frankly, we’re all doing a good job of keeping ourselves apart from each other.”
However, he added that a bigger constellation is justified only when operators can generate massive amounts of revenue and remain successful in the long run.
