Technologically it is a marvel. The fact that you can create this kind of system with 66 satellites flying up there at 17,000 miles an hour and somehow the whole system works. Mr. Sisodia says Iridium and its backers are victims of their own escalating commitment to a losing cause. Iridium, he says, overestimated how much users were willing to pay for the service and dramatically underestimated the competitive threat from cell phones. So it really became a case of over- kill.
Cellular phones are lighter and cheaper.
But investment analyst Kevin Perry of Jurika and Voyles in Boston says it is premature to write off Iridium, even though it has debts of three billion dollars, high operating costs, and its satellites last only seven years. And it is not necessarily economical to do so, but there are a lot of people there. And the economics of that are somewhat different than what you would have for simple cell phones. At least, for now, I can see there is a reason for having this kind of technology out there in one form or another. But it is not clear to me that this business plan is the one that makes it a commercially successful venture.