Iridium: Company Profile

Based in Bethesda, Maryland, U.S.A., Iridium Satellite LLC, a privately held company, is the only provider of truly global satellite voice and data communications solutions with complete coverage of the entire Earth including oceans, airways and even Polar Regions. Iridium delivers reliable, secure, real-time, mission-critical communications services to and from areas where landlines and terrestrial-based wireless services are either unavailable or unreliable.

Iridium's constellation consists of 66 low-earth orbiting (LEO), cross-linked satellites operating as a fully meshed network and supported by multiple in-orbit spares. It is the largest commercial satellite constellation in the world.

The Iridium service is ideally suited for industries such as maritime, aviation, government/military, emergency/humanitarian services, mining, forestry, oil and gas, heavy equipment, transportation and utilities. For example, tens of thousands of aircraft are currently equipped with Iridium-based systems and nearly half of the traffic on the Iridium network comes from international waters. Iridium provides service to subscribers from the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD), as well as other civil and government agencies around the world. The company also designs, builds and sells its products, solutions and services through a worldwide network of more than 150 partners.

Iridium manages several operations centers including those in Tempe, Arizona and Leesburg, Virginia, U.S.A. In addition, through its own gateway in Hawaii, the U.S. DoD relies on Iridium for global communications capabilities.

The company supplies both voice and data connections. Voice services are provided via dedicated handsets, or through a variety of installed communications systems onboard ships, aircraft and land-based vehicles. Increasingly incorporated into hundreds of applications, Iridium's 9601 short burst data (SBD) transceiver provides packet data connections to every corner of the Earth, transferring location information, weather reports, email, or any other data requiring a reliable, global, two-way connection. At a current annual growth rate of 137 percent, Iridium's most rapidly expanding business segment is the machine-to-machine sector, in which the Iridium constellation provides mobile data links for asset tracking and other monitoring applications.

Iridium is a profitable company and has been since 2004. Business is growing at an impressive rate with the constant acquisition of new customers and partners both domestically and abroad in some of the furthest reaches of the planet. These individuals recognize the value of a system that is global, secure and guaranteed to work.

Iridium is also planning for the future sustainability of its constellation, making major investments in network enhancements and launching the Iridium NEXT initiative, its next generation satellite constellation, which will be fully operational by 2016.