Company: IRDM
Filing Date: 2025-02-13
Form Type: 10-K
Source: 0001628280-25-005302
Chunk: 39

Company: Iridium Communications Inc.
Filing Date: 2025-02-13
Form: 10-K
Item: Item 1
Chunk 39
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 real-time coverage area. ORBCOMM’s principal focus is low-cost data and IoT services, where it directly competes with our IoT offerings. Because a ground station may not be within view of a satellite, ORBCOMM’s LEO-based services may have a significant amount of latency, which may limit their use in some mission-critical applications. ORBCOMM does not offer voice service or high-speed data services. 

We also compete with regional mobile satellite communications services in several geographic markets. In these cases, the majority of our competitors’ customers only require regional, not global, mobile voice and data services, so our competitors may present a viable alternative to our services. All of these regional competitors operate or plan to operate GEO satellites. Our regional mobile satellite services competitors currently include Thuraya, principally in Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Australia and several countries in Asia. 

In addition, there are a number of more recent entrants to the mobile satellite services industry, including Starlink and OneWeb, with varying constellation designs and business models. These newer entrants are primarily focused on commodity broadband services, whereas we often operate as a complementary or companion service. We also see some of these other companies 

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investing in direct-to-device services that in the future may expand the current terrestrial cellular footprint in some countries, reducing the size of the market that requires mobile satellite services.

While we view our services as largely complementary to terrestrial wireline and wireless communications networks, we also compete with them indirectly. We provide service in areas that are inadequately covered by these ground systems. To the extent that terrestrial communications companies invest in underdeveloped areas, we will face increased competition in those areas. We believe that local telephone companies currently are reluctant to invest in new switches, landlines and cellular towers to expand their networks in rural and remote areas due to high costs and limited usage. Many of the underdeveloped areas are sparsely populated, making it difficult to generate the necessary returns on the capital expenditures required to build terrestrial wireless networks in those areas. We believe that our solutions offer a cost-effective and reliable alternative to terrestrial-based wireline and wireless systems in these remote regions.

Research and Development

Our research and development efforts have focused on the development, design and testing of our new constellation and new products, such as Iridium Certus, Iridium Messaging Transport, Iridium Edge, Iridium PTT, Iridium Burst, Iridium GO!, Iridium GO! exec, transceiver