Iridium Communications

                           Iridium Communications

What was it..??

Iridium began as a pet project of Motorola executive Barry Bertinger and some engineers in the mid-1980s after the former's wife famously complained of not being able to phone the US while on holiday in the Caribbean.

Purpose/Motive..??

Its main motive was to ring the world, allowing, in theory,

 phone calls to be transmitted and received from the furthest corners of the earth. In the 90s, it was considered to be one

of the best ideas ever.

It was thought to be a revolution in technology and the best Startup ever.

What actually went wrong..??

 Iridium's first mistake was to build a stand-alone network in space. A call from an originating handset accesses the network at the nearest satellite, travels through space from satellite to satellite before beaming down to its destination on Earth.

·         Unsurprisingly, all that technology came at a stiff price. Iridium handsets cost pounds 1,900 and calls were as much as pounds 5 per minute. Worse still, the Iridium handsets were clunky, weighed about 1lb, and harkened back to Motorola's infamous brick phones, common a decade ago.

·         Those shortcomings proved fatal. Indeed, nine months after its highly publicised launch and a pounds 60m international marketing campaign, Iridium had managed to attract less than 20,000 customers compared with a guarantee of 52,000 specified in lending covenants with a syndicate of bankers

·         Unlike conventional mobile phones, that Iridium won't work indoors. Worse, dropped calls are common, completion rates low, while other network functions perform unevenly.

In Actual it was an INTERNATIONAL Bang Failure.