Per H3G ci mancava solo la rinascita dell'Iridium... leggete qui...

Remember those 'Iridium's going to fail' jokes? Prepare to eat your hat
Seems like just yesterday I was worried about getting bonked on the head by a piece of the defunct Iridium satellite phone system as it fell out of orbit.

But nobody ever got bonked, because Iridium never fell. Instead, it made like Batman escaping from a death contraption just after the commercial break. Iridium avoided certain satellite death two years ago and is becoming one of the few success stories in communications.

Now it's getting an added lift from the Iraq war. Thousands of U.S. soldiers and international media correspondents are making calls on Iridium phones from the Iraqi desert, where there are no land lines or cell towers.

The phones connect to one of Iridium's 66 operating satellites and help members of the military coordinate attacks, track supplies and talk to their moms. Thanks in part to that boost, Iridium will be operating in the black by year's end.

"The system is performing a lot better than any of the (new) investors expected it to," says CEO Gino Picasso.

Iridium was Motorola's $5 billion mistake — a punch line for jokes about corporate goofs. It was the Edsel of outer space. The Spruce Goose of communications. Iridium was to Motorola what Ishtar was to Dustin Hoffman's movie career.

Set up by Motorola as a separate company, Iridium charged $7 a minute for calls on handsets that cost $3,000. Takers were — duh! — few.

In spring 2000, Iridium filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. Nobody bought it, so the company decided to let the system — 66 satellites and eight spares — fall from orbit and burn up in the atmosphere.

Except that not all the pieces would burn. One odds maker figured there was a 1 in 249 chance that at least one person would suffer a direct hit. The whole escapade was such a parody of capitalism that it made giddy headlines in China's People's Daily.

When the bankruptcy judge offered one last chance for a buyer to step in, nobody could put together a deal that made all parties happy — except for Dan Colussy, who for the previous 10 years had run United Nuclear, a company that refurbished aircraft and made nuclear reactors for submarines. "Basically, he was retired but viewed it as a shameful waste to see an extremely valuable asset done away with," says Picasso, who Colussy hired to run Iridium.

So Colussy and a group of investors offered $25 million for a system that cost Motorola and its partners $5 billion to build. That's one-half cent on the dollar. It's like picking up a $150,000 Porsche 911 for $750. Or getting a $425-a-night room at the Ritz-Carlton in Laguna Nigel, Calif., for $2.

The last time anybody consummated a deal like that, the French wound up with just $15 million for the Louisiana Purchase, which is probably the underlying reason they're ticked off at us.

In an odd twist, the new Iridium is 24% owned by an investment firm controlled by Prince Khalid bin Abdullah bin Abdulrahman of Saudi Arabia.

The prince used to own a minority chunk of the old Iridium in partnership with the Saudi Binladen Group, the company run by Osama bin Laden's family. So in a way, some of the money that gave a start to the world's most notorious terrorist partly funded a communications system helping the U.S. military blast Saddam's army. Now that's globalization.

Anyway, the new Iridium — free of debt and operating at one-tenth the cost of old Iridium — could drastically cut prices and still turn a profit. Calls cost $1.50 a minute. Handsets are in the $1,500 range and dropping. It's like cell phone prices circa 1985.

The old Iridium needed 1 million users to break even. The new Iridium needs tens of thousands. Iridium won't say how many customers it has, but the military signed a deal for unlimited use for up to 20,000 soldiers, and the British army is another customer.

The media in Iraq were already using hundreds of Iridium phones — and are now using more.

Last week, the military banned the press from using a rival satellite phone from Thuraya Satellite Telecommunications because the Iraqis might have been able to track its signal to figure out the location of U.S. troops. Some reporters have turned to the more secure Iridium phones.

At this point, Colussy's deal is looking even better than it did at first. Motorola had estimated that Iridium's satellites would sputter out in 2007. Picasso's team tinkered with the system and launched an additional seven spares last year. It now believes the system will live until at least 2013.

Motorola has continued making the handsets, but that will end in June and Iridium will market its own. Motorola will finally be done with the ordeal. It will pass the last of its Iridium kidney stones.

Aside from being one of the best comebacks in tech, Iridium might offer a lesson. A bunch of no-name, second-tier investors paid pocket change for a huge, bankrupt communications system, then drastically dropped prices and made it into a viable business.

Down the road, others could use the same recipe on a Global Crossing, Qwest Communications, or any of the many telecom network companies that are or will be in bankruptcy reorganization.

Once a joke, Iridium might turn out to be a leader.

Kevin Maney has covered technology for USA TODAY since 1985. His column appears Wednesdays. Click here for an index of Technology columns. E-mail him at: kmaney@usatoday.com.

Non c'è ovviamente un grosso rischio di concorrenza da parte di Iridium.. però...
H3G rischia di fare come MOTOROLA...

Spende e spande... e dopo qualche anno deve svendere a quelli che fanno il vero bussiness...

Scusate ma che è Iridium?

E' un sistema di telefonia cellulare globale via satellite... prezzo comunicazioni attuale circa 1,5 US$/min.

hihih!!
nn ho letto l'intero postxkè mi seccavaa!!
cmq si lo penso anke io ke ci manca poko ed abbiamo gli stessi prezzi del satellitare!! ed un servizio ovviamente minoreE!!




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CiAoZ CiCcioX

hihi ora l'ho letto tutto!




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CiAoZ CiCcioX