Geography is History

In November 1998, Iridium launched its vaunted satellite phone service with a full page advertisements in a number of newspapers across the world. The $60 million ad-campaign was based on the catch line, "Geography is History." At least Iridium got one of two things right.

Legend has it that the idea behind Iridium was conceived when the wife of Barry Bertiger, a Motorola executive, complained that she could not call the US from an island in the Caribbean. Motorola's can-do engineering prowess was soon brought to bear on this problem and they came up with a primary design involving 77 satellites, that could provide round-the-globe coverage. Even though the system was eventually launched with 66 satellites, they had already chosen the name Iridium. Besides, Dysprosium (66) does not roll off the tongue with quite the same elan.

In hindsight, Iridium's business plan was grossly optimistic. They had expected to garner 500,000 customers within a year of launch. but with handsets costing more than $2000 and talk-time billed at $5 per minute, they found themselves hard pressed to get even 10,000 customers to sign up. Two major issues contributed to the bankruptcy of Iridium in 1999. One, regular cellular phone service was getting cheaper by the minute, pun intended, and two, the Iridium solution required a direct line-of-sight between the handset and the satellite, meaning that it could not be used indoors or inside a vehicle. The only places where Iridium made sense was where regular cellular phone service was not available, like in the open ocean, or in the open desert. In the open ocean, shipping companies had a cheaper alternative in Inmarsat. And in the open desert, the Bedouins did not seem to care much for satellite telephony.

The part that Iridium did get right, is that today, Geography is indeed history. More tomorrow.