9505A handset is entering its End of Life stage

Iridium has formally announced that the Iridium 9505A handset is now entering its End of Life stage. The End of Life stage begins once a product is no longer being manufactured or the product is being replaced by a newer model.

This announcement affects all Iridium 9505A handset kits including the Iridium 9505A Essential Kit, Iridium 9505A Complete Kit, Iridium 9505A Grab & Go Kit and also the Iridium 9505A Refurbished Kit.

New Iridium Satellite Phone - 9555

Iridium's latest satellite phone - the Iridium 9555 - is a vast departure from most existing "brick" satellite phones and appears well on its way to looking like a cell phone. With its hand-friendly form factor and bright screen, the 9555 is expected to find a large audience among first responders and public-safety users.

The handset was introduced at this week's Iridium Partner Conference and is expected to be available for customers next month. With its hand-friendly form factor and bright screen, the 9555 is expected to find a large audience among first responders and public-safety users. The phone has a mini USB port and features e-mail capability.

Iridium phones are the only handsets that can be used in absolutely any location, in any condition, instead of cellular, landline, or radio services that can become inoperable when towers go down or telecommunications infrastructure is compromised. The 9555 is the phone that first responders will want to have on hand for backup emergency communications in case of natural or man-made disasters.

While still expensive by cell phone standards, the 9555, along with new calling plans, is expected to bring the phone into the affordability range of more U.S. rural users, who can't get traditional cell phone service. A refurbished Iridium phone can cost less than $1,000, while some corporate calling plans enable users to call for as little as 15 cents a minute, although typical calls range from 99 cents to $1.49 a minute.

Iridium on the up-and-up as sales grow by 41 per cent

Iridium Satellite, that phoenix from the ashes, has posted a 41 per cent increase in Q1 revenue to US$74.3 million. The satellite operator says subscriber numbers grew by 37 per cent year-on-year to reach 250,000 in the three months through to the end of March as voice and data traffic, simply rocketed. North American services doubled and traffic in the Asia Pacific region shot up by 61 per cent. On the revenues front, EBITDA income surged by 80 per cent to $24.4 million.

It is a remarkable turnaround for a company that only a few years ago was generally regarded as a hopeless basket case. Iridium first went into service on November 1, 1998 and went into Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection just nine months later, in August, 1999. Iridium's original business case was predicated on the availability of global wireless communications being provided via a constellation of 66 satellites in low earth orbit that would allow phone calls to be made to and from (literally) anywhere on the planet, including the high seas, deserts and tundra and even the North and South Poles. i.e. areas almost entirely devoid of humans. Whilst iridium struggled to solve a myriad of technical problems and combat some very bad press, global roaming on terrestrial GSM handsets took off and left Iridium without a reason for existence.It failed financially because there was insufficient demand for the service, coupled with a massive initial capital cost running into the billions of dollars.

When Iridium went into Chapter 11 protection, it had a knock-on effect on other planned commercial satellite constellation projects and was the kiss of death for the likes of Teledesic. Other schemes, including Orbcomm, ICO Global Communications, and Globalstar followed Iridium into bankruptcy protection, while a number of other initiatives got no further than the drawing board.At that time it was expected that the Iridium constellation would have to be de-orbited but whilst the debate on how when and where to bring the whole scheme literally down-to-earth was at its height, the service was restarted in 2001 by the newly founded Iridium Satellite LLC, now owned by a group of private investors. For them it was the bargain of the new millennium. Iridium cost the original investors somewhere in the region of $6 billion, while the new boys bought it at the incredible fire sale price just US$25 million.

The system is now being used extensively by the US Department of Defense (DoD) through its gateway in Hawaii. Meanwhile , spooks apart, there is also a commercial gateway in Tempe, Arizona, that provides voice, data and paging services for commercial customers on a global basis. Iridium customers include maritime, aviation, government, the oil, petroleum and gas industries, scientists, and some well-heeled frequent world travelers. And now the revived Iridium is beginning to make good money. Indeed, calls to Iridium phones remain notoriously expensive, with charges ranging from $2 to S$14 per minute.