Case study About The Rise and Fall of Iridium

What is Iridium
The Iridium satellite constellation is a large group of satellites providing voice and data coverage to satellite phone, pagers and integrated transceivers over Earth's entire surface. To build the satellite network, Iridium spent $5 billion. Motorola also served as the projects prime contractor.

History
Iridium communications service was launched on Nov 1, 1998 and went into bankruptcye on August 13, 1999 The first Iridium call was made by then-Vice President of the United States Al Gore Motorola provided the technology and major financial backing.

Reason to downfall
Insufficient demand for the service, coupled with a massive initial capital cost The increased coverage of terrestrial cellular networks (e.g. GSM) and the rise of roaming agreements The cost of service was also prohibitive for many users The bulkiness and expense of the handheld devices Mismanagement has also been cited as a major factor

Disadvantages of GEO:
The first and foremost limitation of GEO satellites is round trip latency The second limitation of GEO schemes is cost. Because the orbit is 36,000 km above the equator, you need to use a big satellite with powerful transmitters, high performance receivers and large antennas Increasing complexity the potential for hardware failure increases poor performance in the polar regions

Low earth orbit (LEO) is used for iridium Advantages of LEO:

LEO model satellites are placed into a circular inclined orbit several hundred kilometres above the earth's surface This model are very low launch costs per satellite Modest demands on antenna, receiver and transmitter performance Very low propagation latency times

Disadvantages of LEO
Global coverage will require many satellites Cannot build a LEO constellation to cover one part of the world alone The limited life of the satellites

Background on Motorola and Kyocera

In 1930 the company introduced the first practical and affordable car radio. Motorola was composed of three business units: Integrated Electronic Systems, Semiconductor Products, and the Communications Enterprise. Kyocera introduced the worlds lightest CDMA cellular handset, the worlds smallest satellite phone,and the worlds first wireless, handheld videophone with color display

Iridium Costs and Financing

The capital cost consisted of two components: 1) the Space System contract for the design, development, production, and delivery of the satellites into orbit 2) the Terrestrial Network Development contract to design the gateway hardware and software. The Canadian firm, COMDEV, was responsible for the antennas for intersatellite and gateway links . Three suppliers from around the world were used to launch the satellites:

Iridium Service
Motorola eventually launched 66 satellites into lowearth-orbit. Motorola developed an assembly line production process that allowed up to ten satellites to be under assembly at one time. Each satellite carried its own phone switching system and the network used complex satellite-to-satellite links that permitted phone calls to be switched in the sky.

 Improved coverage and performance, the weight of the satellite increased very little because of advances in electronics. Based on statistical analysis, the satellites were expected to last about six years before they would burn up in the earths atmosphere, although sufficient fuel was provided for eight years.

 The handsets were manufactured by Motorola and Kyocera and were seven inches long (plusantenna), weighed approximately one pound (Iridium promotional material described the handsets assmall, lightweight, hand-held telephones), and retailed between $2,200 and $3,400 Service fees ranged from just under $2 per minute to as much as $7 per minute for some international calls