1.

Iridium’s system design is marked by technological sophistication but a lack of appreciation for financial practicality. The system comprises a large number LEO satellites designed to communicate with each other and relay information (voice, pages, data, etc.) to land based gateways which then relay calls to phones on the network. In this design and with this large number of satellites, Iridium allows for near ubiquitous telephone coverage around the world. From a purely technical standpoint, the design is to be admired as the realization of the musings of engineers thinking about what is possible in telecommunications. At each hurdle, the engineers overcome obstacles by innovating technology beyond what had existed before. With little oversight though, the costs of implementing and successfully commercializing and generating profit from the new technology fades as a priority for the engineers. At each stage of development, the goal of making the technology the absolute best it can be causes the venture’s costs to spiral up and require unreasonable adoption rates in order to pan out financially.

2.

Iridium’s business organization is flawed in that the goal of developing the absolute best technology possible is never adequately weighted against the costs incurred and management seems to fall asleep is carefully monitoring competing technologies or consumer demand and willingness to spend. Ultimately, Iridium’s falls prey to the classic problem of recognizing a market but failing to accurately and completely size and price the market before moving on to the R&D and product development stage. Iridium’s main benefit is its ability to function anywhere on earth – a noble and impressive feat, but one with a clearly limited market, especially given the advances in cell coverage during the years of development prior to Iridium’s release. Factoring