Rocketlab acquires Iridium

https://investors.rocketlabcorp.com/news-releases/news-release-details/rocket-lab-acquire-iridium-historic-deal-creating-fully

by everfrustrated • 23 days ago

473 290 23 days ago

investors.rocketlabcorp.com

everfrustrated2• 23 days ago

RocketLab gains spectrum + profitable satellite company

espadrine• 23 days ago

Iridum gains 23 launches per year with 100% success rate in the past 12 months, a satellite manufacturing pipeline with 6 satellites produced and launched, and a cost-to-orbit of $25K/kg operational (with an in-development design targetting $4K/kg).

They are late compared to SpaceX, to be sure: 150 launches per year, 2400 satellites manufactured per year, $3K/kg operational with F9, target $200/kg in development with Starship.

panick21_9• 23 days ago

You act as if 'launch' is a thing. All Rocket Lab launches ever combined don't even fill a single SpaceX rocket. Those are not the same thing.

Lets see their reliability when they have a bigger rocket and if they can land reliably. Because their rocket will be quite expensive to build.

Symmetry• 23 days ago

The spectrum is the big thing. If they wanted a revenue stream they could just buy bonds.

NetMageSCW10• 23 days ago

A profitable satellite company with a lot of debt and satellites that target the previous model of bespoke terminals when the market is moving to satellite service on regular phones.

hobonation• 23 days ago

Iridium terminals can be very power-efficient. Consumer ones are the size of a deck of cards and can last for days.

amluto3• 23 days ago

the market is moving to satellite service on regular phones.

I don’t think there a unified “market” here. The fixed rooftop terminals and fixed-ish roaming terminals use high (tens of GHz) frequencies with correspondingly wide bandwidth, have excellent beamforming capabilities and some degree of MIMO to improve spectrum reuse, and consume an amount of power that would be outrageous for a phone. Phones don’t have reliably clear views of the sky and have much weaker RF capabilities.

Oh, and phones are well served by existing 4G and 5G networks in dense areas, with better spectrum reuse than seems practical for a satellite constellation.

I expect that we will actually see two separate markets that happen to share the same satellites and backhaul.

lxgr11• 23 days ago

Iridium is launching 5G standards-based direct-to-device capabilities this year: https://www.iridium.com/services/iridium-ntn-direct

numpad02• 23 days ago

I'm not sure if that kind of great replacement theories stand anymore. That happened once with iPhone, and... what else? All the direct-to-cell stuffs are limited to simple texts as well. IIUC they require the phones to be out in the wild with nobody around and patient with the rituals of sending messages, like how earliest forms of GPS receivers worked. I don't see that changing that much in coming few years.

wongarsu2• 23 days ago

And access to a customer base. A lot easier to sell them new services if they already have a big contract with you

davidpapermill• 23 days ago

Rocket Lab has secured commitments for a $3.6 billion bridge loan from Deutsche Bank and Wells Fargo to fund the cash portion of the acquisition.

Given the timing, this seems like a risky move as they'll be issuing debt in mid-2027 to refinance the bridge, at a time the market could be saturated / corrected.

https://www.reuters.com/business/media-telecom/rocket-lab-bu...

moralestapia4• 23 days ago

Crazy. I didn't know you could acquire things worth 20x more than you.

brookst4• 23 days ago

Look at GameStop’s quixotic attempt to acquire eBay. Which is actually not impossible.

moralestapia4• 23 days ago

Did GameStop acquire eBay?

ortusdux2• 23 days ago

5x the market cap!

zie2• 23 days ago

It's an interesting way to apply for the eBay CEO job for sure.

PierceJoy• 23 days ago

Rocket Lab's market cap is 57B and are buying Iridium for 8B. I'm assuming you're implying some other measure of worth, but it's not that crazy based on stock price.

ericmay6• 23 days ago

Also folks acquire things "worth" more than them all the time. That's in part why debt exists.

There are a lot of folks out there that are overly cynical and so they'll just write things like the OP from time to time which just don't make much sense or have much to do with how the real world works. What's more interesting is looking at or trying to understand strategically why Rocket Lab is making this move, especially if you are an investor.

pnw2• 23 days ago

RocketLab market cap is 57b.

Iridium market cap was 5.5b and this transaction values it at 8b.

sspiff2• 23 days ago

I'm guessing they acquired it mostly exchanging stocks. Which I guess is an indication that their stock is overvalued right now if they're willing to overpay by that much.

xgbi• 23 days ago

How is Rocketlab valued 57B? They made $500M of revenue in 2025. This is 100x their entire balance sheet.

bitwize• 23 days ago

This is one of those times you actually get to use "leverage" as a verb without sounding turbo cringe: a leveraged buyout is an acquisition with borrowed money; the hope is that you will be able to pay back the debt with the money you make off the acquired assets. Doesn't always pan out but sometimes it does.

malfist• 23 days ago

Dell bought EMC for 67b when they were worth 24b

panick21_9• 23 days ago

That never made sense to me, why not the other way around. Wasn't EMC the better business?

elzbardico3• 23 days ago

That's this thing called credit.

People do this all the time, that's how they buy their first house (or at least used to...). Your net worth is basically zero beyond what you saved for the down payment, but the bank advances you the money to buy the house because it believes your future income streams will allow you to pay the principal plus an interest.

dylan604• 23 days ago

being able to foreclose on the house/property is a pretty decent protection for the bank that doesn't exist for a business though

kps• 23 days ago

Remember when NeXT acquired Apple for negative 400 million?

phildenhoff• 23 days ago

Rocket lab used to be a New Zealand source of pride, having started there. From the press release, now it’s American. What happened?

ericmay6• 23 days ago

Needs access to American capital markets, contracts, governance structures, and jurisdiction (applicable law).

ortusdux2• 23 days ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rocket_Lab#United_States_move_...

MyelinatedT• 23 days ago

It was always an American company. In order to launch rockets from countries in the US sphere of influence (even from NZ), companies must obtain an FAA license.

Rocket technology itself is so intensely regulated by US export control laws that it’s practically impossible to develop an orbital launch vehicle without being a US- or Europe-registered company.

It is a real shame. It also looks like a lot of engineering work is shifting away from NZ — Auckland seems to be focusing more on operations and space systems, and the launch stuff is moving to the US with Neutron.

jackmott42• 23 days ago

Why do people reply with this "it was always american" response? Do you feel like it is necessary to protect RocketLab or something?

It was founded by a guy in new zealand with the first launch complex and first launches coming out of new zealand.

to characterize that as "always american" is so silly it makes you seem like a non serious person.

of course they would have had american resources and connections from the start.

elzbardico3• 23 days ago

Capital probably, market access. It is pretty hard to raise capital for high risk ventures like that everywhere in the world other than the US.

khurs2• 23 days ago

SpaceX previously said that are not allowed to hire foreign nationals generally.

So guess NASA told Rocket that if they want American contracts, they need to move?

https://qz.com/794101/elon-musk-explains-why-he-doesnt-hire-...

micromacrofoot• 23 days ago

same thing that always happens to companies, money

bell-cot3• 23 days ago

It sure doesn't help that New Zealand's housing market is one of the most unaffordable in the world.

rr808• 23 days ago

Compared to LA even NZ looks cheap

y0ssar1an• 23 days ago

at least it's still got a bunch of Kiwi engineers building the Rutherford engine.

generuso• 23 days ago

They do not like to talk about it too much in public these days, but Rocket Lab had somewhat shady beginnings. Once they moved past the semi-amateur phase, their first real project was weapons development on a DARPA contract. They were working on a paste-like semi-solid fuel for throttleable engines for munitions, and other similar things.

That pushed their main NZ investor away, and they somehow hooked up with the US intelligence community, which facilitated a rather unique series of inter-government arrangements for launching US reconnaissance satellites from NZ. That was probably always the appeal -- to launch over China with very little warning. A cheap, rapidly launchable vehicle was always a dream of the US agencies -- in 2003 this was FALCON program (Force Application and Launch from CONUS) run by DARPA and the Air Force, and today it is the Space Force's "Victus".

So, although the bulk of work was done in NZ, Rocket Lab functioned rather intimately with the US spooks from the very early on, including getting some funding from In-Q-Tel. Then in 2013, for the bulk of investment they just had to become a Delaware Corporation, for all the usual reasons. Very soon they moved engine manufacturing to a facility in California. More recently, with the large rocket (Neutron), their main manufacturing operations are in LA and the launch facility in Wallops. All in all, they are an international outfit.

postingawayonhn• 23 days ago

They still have significant NZ design, manufacturing, and launch operations.

For regulatory and capital raising reasons the parent company has been US based for quite a few years now. They've also been on a multi-year acquisitions spree and picked up quite a large US workforce through that.

JumpCrisscross2• 23 days ago

What happened?

ITAR. (From what I remember, Beck really tried to avoid it. But there isn’t a competitive solution for a New Zealand-based aerospace company.)

didntknowyou• 22 days ago

it needed to be American to get all their defense contracts.

the kiwi connection was just PR, and to access local launch sites.

JanSolo2• 23 days ago

I think they saw how SpaceX was using Starlink as launch lever to provide SpaceX a baseline of regular launches at bare-minimum cost. As RocketLab starts to scale up, being able guarantee a minimum number of launches is a significant hedge against the dips in the global satellite market.

Also, RocketLab builds their own sats and can add the Iridium constellation replacements to their order book. It's a win-win. A smart move by Peter Beck and his team.

myrmidon• 22 days ago

If you can afford to outright buy a customer to secure future demand for your product, does that not imply that this customer is "too small" to matter all that much? Because you could've just used the capital you spent on acquiring him on riding out demand fluctuations instead?

NetMageSCW10• 23 days ago

What does Tesla have to do with Starlink or launch services?

JanSolo2• 23 days ago

Derp; I meant SpaceX.

nonethewiser• 23 days ago

Might be one-in-the-same soon enough

pulse7• 23 days ago

This https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elon_Musk%27s_Tesla_Roadster ?

wateralien2• 23 days ago

“Rocket Lab” not “RocketLab”. Although I think the latter is better.

Centigonal3• 23 days ago

"Rocket Lab acquires Iridium" sounds like a notification out of Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri or Anno 2205.

pelorat• 23 days ago

I like RocketLab. Looking forward to Neutron etc. But this is a bad investment, no other way to put it.

Joel_Mckay5• 23 days ago

Uncertain what Iridium global RF band allocation holdings were worth.

If it is still pole-to-pole global monolithic coverage, than hardware/legacy-protocols are of secondary interest. Modern SDR transceivers with proper RF beam-steering front-ends could retrofit the business while slowly phasing out legacy hardware.

But I do agree, Iridium was too pricey for most consumer product markets, and there were several other satellite broadband services.

Additionally, Starlink Direct to Cell (VoLTE) service now leverages global cellphone client infrastructure. It would be extremely foolish to compete with something proprietary. =3

petesergeant• 23 days ago

But this is a bad investment

Brother, share with us a sentence or two of why you think so

gangstead• 23 days ago

One question I've tried to answer is: has Iridium ever made enough money to even pay back the cost to put the satellites up. Using Google for all these rough numbers the first constellation cost $5 billion before Iridium (the first company) went bankrupt. For the second generation constellation launched between 2017 and 2019 it says $3 billion (for sats and launch). Compared to $400 million cumulative net income for Iridium (the second company) since bankruptcy restructuring ended in 2009. So as a non-investor (I only have boring index funds, no individual stocks) it seems like Iridium is a bad investment because it's a company that has spent 21+ years to turn $8 billion into $400 million (depending on when you want to start counting).

When Amazon bought Globalstar a couple months ago I had the same question and it's pretty much the same answer. For Globalstar there was basically 0 net income so the return on investment looked like it mostly came from spectrum gambling. Maybe that's the value for Iridium as well? Iridium does have some net income of around $100 million last year, but I don't know if RocketLab's vertical integration is going to be enough to flip the script. If RocketLab could have built and launched the Iridium Next constellation for $2 billion in 2017 would $100 million of net income 10 years later be a success?

written-beyond• 23 days ago

I can't believe I bought a few shares of IRDM with a few hundred bucks in my trading account. Primarily because it was a RKLB adjacent company with decent fundamentals whos stock price wasn't scraping the sky.

I don't know how to feel about this acquisition though. Never thought IRDM would've been a bad investment.

Joel_Mckay5• 23 days ago

The market can't be timed (by honest players), as I remember buying into Ubiquiti Networks at around $12/share thinking I might see a 8% bump after the old legal event subsided. Then just sort of forgot about that tax-sheltered holding for a few years. I also don't do the 3 month portfolio shuffle dance 95% of stock investment people try to ride.

The heavy cost of putting stuff in space is still not solved, but broadband and space-LTE service businesses are proven cash flows. They just have to mimic the profitable parts of Starlink. =3

https://www.fool.com/investing/2026/06/29/rocket-lab-is-set-...

proee2• 23 days ago

We have a bright future full of endless "space-junk". As the price to orbit drops, people will inevitably send up more and more satellites that have questionable value. In 100 years will the sky at night just be a massive grid of dots moving across the sky?

Who will create the first advertisement in space using satellites as pixels to create their company logo? Maybe they can add some color and animations for kicks.

Edit: Another note on space junk is the effect on our atmosphere with all the "burning-up" of various materials. Apparently they don't just completely vaporize, but instead leave behind micro particles that float around for a long time. People are studying this and hopefully raising appropriate alarms (Making the case for wood satellites).

s0rce• 23 days ago

There is a legitimate concern with space junk hitting useful stuff or even manned spacecraft but I think space is big and the sky won't appear bright soon. Not all satellites are that reflective and they need to reflect the sun, they don't just glow visibly.

TheJoeMan2• 23 days ago

At present, I don't believe there are industry standards / codes mandating minimization of reflectivity. My understanding is that SpaceX has engineered for this from their own internal requirements and "goodness of their hearts" (which may be related to avoidance of public pushback). As we anticipate a major scale-up of LEO in the future, it follows that "cost pressures" may (mal)incentivize players to skip this concern.

saganus• 23 days ago

Isn't that kinda how we got the plastic pollution problem in the ocean?

At first, the ocean seems immense. So much so that dumping plastic and toxic chemicals makes no difference.

But then we humans are great at scaling things it seems, such that at some point ocean plastic pollution became a real problem.

I know that space is much much bigger than our oceans, but I wouldn't underestimate the ability of mankind to scale launches to the point where debris becomes a problem.

Centigonal3• 23 days ago

Hank Green did a video recently advocating for an "orbit value tax" -- like a Georgist Land Value Tax, but for orbits. This tax would, among other things, help fund orbital cleanup and internalize the externality of polluting orbital shells. It's an idea that deserves more discourse IMO.

Here is the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VLjW6zuYmos

nba456_3• 23 days ago

And who does the tax get paid to? Some mythical Global Government that will totally work this time?

nradov2• 23 days ago

Do you think Russia will be willing to pay a tax on their new Rassvet constellation?

iamtheworstdev• 23 days ago

Ugh. People already trying to find ways to gate keep space by raising the financial barrier to entry before we've even been able to capitalize on cheap space flights. I'm sure SpaceX and others will be against this until suddenly, they're not, when they realize they're one of the few that can even afford to pay it.

Like when Amazon finally had warehouses in all fifty states and suddenly quit campaigning against online sales tax.

mikepurvis• 23 days ago

Lots of cynical replies here unfortunately, but that proposal is similar to other ones that seek protection for various other natural commons. John Michael Greer discusses a bunch of this in Wealth of Nature [1], basically arguing that merely taxing "externalities" like pollution is insufficient, you need to see the true primary economies that generate the fundamental value of nature as being those that operate without human involvement at all, and also incorporate awareness of the different cycle lengths: a pollinator garden can establish in just a season or two, a forest takes decades, replenishing an aquifer takes centuries to millenia, and putting minerals and oil in the ground, millions of years.

Any human activity which degrades, disrupts, one of these cycles, or consumes an output from it needs to compensate the rest of us accordingly.

Now obviously governance is the tricky piece. The two obvious ones are to give the money back to the taxpayers or put it in a sovereign wealth fund to be invested on their behalf, since at the end of the day, the commons should be the equal entitlement of all citizens.

[1] https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/11382620-the-wealth-o...

mr_toad• 23 days ago

Difficult to tax something you don’t have jurisdiction over.

taneq• 23 days ago

It’s already starting to be like that. If you get far enough out into the bush away from light pollution and watch the stars for a bit, you can see the grid of satellites orbiting. It’s kind of cool but also kind of depressing.

bell-cot3• 23 days ago

"Unobstructed view of the stars" will soon be how space tourism companies upsell their customers to higher orbits.

nba456_3• 23 days ago

Oh great the NIMBYs are coming for space now.

umeshunni2• 23 days ago

Not Above My Back Yard - NAMBY?

Matumio• 23 days ago

Not a grid of dots, a ring! https://earthsky.org/human-world/kessler-syndrome-colliding-...

It's a tragedy of the commons situation. And given how well we are able to regulate those kind of situations globally, I'm rooting for the ring.

m4rtink2• 23 days ago

In practice the lower cost of access to space had made it viable to star requiring people to at least deorbit their upper stages, something that was long a no-go, with the excuse being that the extra fuel and redundancy would eat too much into the payload mass.

Nowadays it is generally frowned upon if you leave upper stages in orbit or if your satellite fragment spontaneously. There are of course exceptions (like some chinese launches leaving massive core stages in orbit that ten randomly fall back a couple months later) but AFAIK the situations seems to be actually improving due to the added robustness, that was only made possible by cheaper access to space.

stuxnet79• 23 days ago

On the positive side, clearing out all this space junk could end up being a meaningful contributor to global GDP. See also Planetes [1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planetes

wuliwong• 23 days ago

Thanks for reminding me, I started watching this and forgot about it!

throw-the-towel• 23 days ago

I wish clearing out all the CO2 from the atmosphere became a meaningful contributor to global GNP.

tonic_note• 23 days ago

Satellite broadband stonks in shambles after the inevitable Kessler syndrome

NetMageSCW10• 23 days ago

Gravity was not a documentary.

Lendal• 23 days ago

It's already a massive grid of moving dots. You can see it from the ground in certain dark-enough areas, but in order to see it in space you have to get outside LEO, like Artemis did. They don't have lights but they are shiny and they catch the sun, making them easily visible from certain angles, which the Artemis photos illustrated.

Mistletoe• 23 days ago

Dark night skies will probably be one of the main selling points for the off world colonies. I can see the Bladerunner-esque ads now.

Rover2222• 23 days ago

Incredible how the first instinct is just to complain about progress these days. The degrowth mindset is really taking hold.

There is a huge amount of "space" available even in low orbital shells. Which also naturally decay.

umeshunni2• 23 days ago

There's a reason most of the western world isn't capable of building anything these days.

Grosvenor• 23 days ago

A major plot point in the Red Dwarf books is about Coca-Cola sending a fleet of space ships out to blow up stars so they can spell "Enjoy Coca-Cola" in the sky.

One of those ships crashes and the boys from the Dwarf find the service mechanoid, which is how they get Kryten.

Dig1t2• 23 days ago

Junk yes, but think of the new science and industry it will enable as well. Microgravity experiments, new space stations, space tourism, new types of manufacturing in space, asteroid mining. Any technology is a double edged sword, but the benefits surely outweigh the drawbacks here.

cptaj• 23 days ago

This is on a similar scale to complaining about there being too many tennis balls on the surface of the earth.

Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space.

notahacker3• 23 days ago

Nah, it's more akin to complaining about the number of bullets crossing your path. They don't occupy much space, but the fact they're moving at 17,500mpg means you want to ensure you avoid them, and ideally for there to be fewer of them fired at more predictable intervals.

preg_match• 23 days ago

Low earth orbit is actually not very big. And that’s what we’re talking about here.

QuiEgo• 23 days ago

LEO satellites are the size of a car and are spaced apart by the size of a state. They also all are in slowly decaying orbits and will fall out of the sky on their own accord in 10 years or less (they are designed with intentional structural weak points to break apart and burn up on entry). The concerns you have are valid and very real, and shared by the people designing these things.

Dig1t2• 23 days ago

but instead leave behind micro particles that float around for a long time. People are studying this and hopefully raising appropriate alarms

The number of satellites required to create a measurable number of particles in the planet's atmosphere would be impossibly large. How much mass to orbit do you think is required to create a 1 PPM increase in earth's atmosphere of these "micro particles"?

I find it extremely disheartening how much anti-technology, anti-science, and anti-progress sentiment I read about lately.

proee2• 23 days ago

People are not worried about the mass increase in the entire atmosphere, but very selective layers of the atmosphere (mesosphere and stratosphere). These are delicate layers that are highly affected by nano particles created from satellite burn-up.

ck2• 23 days ago

https://satellitemap.space

seattle_spring2• 23 days ago

That map makes it look extremely crowded. Actual relative satellite size is many magnitudes smaller than each of those 1-pixel representations.

thatoneengineer• 23 days ago

Space is big and still very hard to get to. A kilogram of payload in orbit costs several times as much as a kilogram of silver on earth, even after SpaceX's aggressive scaling of capacity. No one's going to be spending that kind of money and effort carelessly. I was more worried about SpaceX becoming monopolistic, so I'm encouraged to see this deal.

Don't project your worries about pollution on Earth-- which is a much bigger problem!-- onto space industry which is at a much much earlier stage. The "burning-up" thing sounds extremely speculative, like you're looking around for reasons to dislike this. Space is exciting and inspiring-- and yes, that includes commercial uses, since realistically we couldn't afford to expand science or exploration in space much otherwise!

rekwah• 23 days ago

As long as we can launch a big trash ball to knock the other trash ball away...

panick21_9• 23 days ago

A gigantic amount of stuff from space hits the atmosphere. Most not made by humans.

robocat• 23 days ago

Cosmic dust influx estimates can range from 5 to 100 tonnes daily.

SpaceX is launching say ~10 tonnes of satellites per day

fredsmith219• 23 days ago

Isn't iridium already in orbit? So there would be no need for new launches due to this aquisition.

johnsimer2• 23 days ago

for what it's worth it would take the equivalent of launching 60 trillion cars into low earth orbit to blot out the sky

johnsimer2• 23 days ago

and that's assuming they are all in the same concentric plane as each other. you could stack them at different distances from the earth

marcosdumay• 23 days ago

Apparently they don't just completely vaporize, but instead leave behind micro particles that float around for a long time.

That's not clear. There's no empirical evidence of it, and the computer models we have don't have definitive results.

Those alarms are not really proper.

wolvoleo2• 23 days ago

Ignoring problems until they become too big to pooh-pooh away is how we got into the climate crisis. And some countries are still pooh-poohing it away.

failuser• 23 days ago

Wild that we already see “Kessler syndrome is a hoax” takes. I guess that should have been expected.

glohbalrob• 23 days ago

You are the equivalent person talking about apartment, app store, or website junk 10-20 years ago. and so, you going to invest or complain?

h4kunamata• 23 days ago

Who will create the first advertisement in space using satellites as pixels to create their company logo? Maybe they can add some color and animations for kicks.

Normal satellites can already be hacked, they provide zero to no security at all.

We are already full of ADs, this will be just another hobby for people into hacking. Imagine it displaying a gigantic pe** haha

On a serious note, as everything standards, they are already interfering with observations. Wait until we can no longer tell if it is an atificial sattelite or some massive asteroid coming from the direction of the son.

Humans are dooming their own existence lmao

Waterluvian• 23 days ago

Aliens made first contact this week and told us to “knock it off.”

bilsbie• 23 days ago

Seems pretty negative and pessimistic.

ninjagoo• 23 days ago

Another note on space junk is the effect on our atmosphere with all the "burning-up" of various materials.

Is this a huge concern? According to NASA [1], about 44 metric tons of meteors and meteorites enter the atmosphere daily, or about 16,000 tons annually, or about 35 million pounds. Of which 5000 tons is estimated to reach the ground. [2]

[1] https://science.nasa.gov/solar-system/meteors-meteorites/ [2] https://www.cnrs.fr/en/press/more-5000-tons-extraterrestrial...

tomaskafka• 23 days ago

I asked Claude to visualize 1M proposed SpaceX satellites in the night sky: https://static.tomaskafka.com/prototypes/1m-starlinks/

throwpoaster• 23 days ago

Looks awesome!

khurs2• 23 days ago

Good to see the competition making moves, SpaceX's huge lead isn't ideal.

Joel_Mckay5• 23 days ago

Starlink Direct to Cell (VoLTE) service now leverages global cellphone client infrastructure. It would be extremely foolish to compete with something proprietary. =3

ryandvm• 23 days ago

I dunno. I would be surprised if a 30 year old telecommunications network is going to be technically competitive with a SpaceX's LEO network that is still launching satellites as we speak.

How much market is there for people that just want low speed connectivity from the middle of nowhere?

ttul• 23 days ago

It’s not about Iridium. It’s about Iridium’s customers and partnerships. RocketLab hopes to launch their own satellites presumably and then can sell significantly improved services to them, without having to build a customer base from scratch.

denotes• 23 days ago

Sailors may be a small and dwindling community, but this is our core use case. When you are sailing offshore you need to download weather predictions so that you can chart your course to catch favorable winds. My experience with Iridium is that you open a targeted set of ports for the modem to feed your phone via, and then you don't have to think about it again. 100+ nautical miles offshore and it just works.

NetMageSCW10• 23 days ago

T-Mobile has weather available off-grid now on existing phones?

levl289• 22 days ago

How does starlink compare? Beginner sailor here, and I thought this was a solved problem, now.

kilroy123• 23 days ago

You realize they have a new network of satellites, right? It works much better than the old version with the 90s tech.

A lot of remote IOT devices use Iridium, as well as the US government or DoD.

lxgr11• 22 days ago

I think Iridium SBD, which is what a lot of IoT applications are based on, already worked with the old constellation, which is actually quite impressive given that it doesn't seem easy to retrofit that onto an in-space switched network.

m4rtink2• 23 days ago

AFAIK Iridium is part of some important airliner navigation systems and standards - while a niche, it can still be very lucrative business. and I would not be surprised if it was embedded like this into various other systems that are less cost sensitive.

cozzyd• 23 days ago

yes, for example it's used on high altitude balloons.

lxgr11• 23 days ago

Yep, it's one of only two satellite communications systems certified for both GMDSS/SOLAS and aviation operation and safety (ATC) use cases, and the only global one at that (the other one being Inmarsat/Viasat, which does not work near the poles due to being GEO based).

It took Iridium over a decade to get that certification; availability and political concerns are probably much larger in that segment than for e.g. home or passenger entertainment Internet use.

In the medium and long term, I can see the high-throughput LEO players eat Iridium's lunch for aviation, though; small antenna size (and the lower drag that goes with it) used to be their main advantage over Ku and Ka band offerings, but now most airlines want passenger connectivity anyway, and once you have that, the pressure to just get that certified for safety (with HF as backup, which you need anyway as far as I know) is going to be significant. The case for shipping is probably similar and even stronger.

lxgr11• 23 days ago

How much market is there for people that just want low speed connectivity from the middle of nowhere?

Militaries generally find this capability pretty relevant, among others, and they have deep pockets. They were the ones to bail out Iridium the first time around, after all.

omcnoe• 23 days ago

It's competing with Starlink in that market, which is a much stronger product today.

snarf21• 23 days ago

There is a huge market for people to connection while doing outdoor activities, including downloading maps, sharing current location, etc. It isn't just people who live in BFE looking for a downlink.

NetMageSCW10• 23 days ago

And that market is being covered by Starlink and AST SpaceMobile without requiring special equipment.

MikeNotThePope• 23 days ago

Rocket Lab wants the radio spectrum, which gives them a global license in every country to talk directly to cell phones.

Why the Satellite Race is No Longer About Satellites - https://youtube.com/shorts/hRxv4RggxLE

gigatexal• 23 days ago

Who? is buying who?

I guess good for them and for the folks who just got paid.

seany2• 23 days ago

Did they forget to read ecentric orbits first?

mNovak• 23 days ago

I enjoyed that book. But which part are you referring to?

seany2• 23 days ago

Mostly the crazy financing and capital needed to pull it off well.

BrandoElFollito• 23 days ago

As an ex-Motorolan (1998-2008), I sometimes look at what remains of the big mighty company and there is not much.

Here in Europe it is even less, at least in the US you see the umpires (or somebody else, not sure as I fo not know baseball) with their half-headsets with the Motorola logo.

It is a shame, I liked this company very much.

Scoundreller4• 23 days ago

Our big Canadian oligopoly telecom sold their land mobile radio division to Motorola for some hundreds of millions of dollars, so I guess they still do stuff?

https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/business/2026/03/27/bell-to-dive...

panick21_9• 23 days ago

Just got a Motorola phone and I love it. 3.5mm audio jack and cheap.

0x59• 23 days ago

My mobile is a Motorola as well!

silisili• 23 days ago

Not a knock against your phone, but different company. Lenovo now owns and makes the cell phone line.

Motorola Solutions, the successor of the original Motorola, does the headsets/radios and such.

hyperbrainer• 23 days ago

One of the best books I have read in recent years, somehow immensely relevant now: _Eccentric Orbits: The Iridium Story_ by John Bloom, that explores exactly what went wrong, the bankruptcy filing and so on. I wonder if you might find your experiences reflected there.

dreamcompiler4• 23 days ago

I just made the same recommendation before I saw yours. Great book.

reactordev• 23 days ago

They can have it, Iridium is so slow.

dreamcompiler4• 23 days ago

I highly recommend the book Eccentric Orbits: The Iridium Story by John Bloom. The story of how Iridium came to be and how difficult it was to keep Motorola from literally destroying the whole constellation (which they had originally built!) is quite fascinating.

Tidbit: Author is also the real-life person behind the comedic persona Joe Bob Briggs. If you ever lived in Texas you know that name. And yes the guy can write seriously good nonfiction.

Slartie• 23 days ago

I second that recommendation. Hugely informative and entertaining book!

nixosbestos• 23 days ago

God I hate hate hate hate justified text. Just ridiculously stupid.

ozmaverick72• 23 days ago

Isn't this a bit weird? Has Rocketlab launched payloads for Iridium ? Is Iridium adding to their constellation or are they just trying to make a few dollars out of their existing satellites by suppling messaging for things like Garmin SPOT etc. Iridium satellites aren't in LEO orbits - can Rocketlab satellites even deploy payloads to those orbits ? Maybe the newer bigger rocket they are working on can but i don't think the current Electron rocket can.

I guess it only has to make sense to Wallstreet types ....

kha1n3vol3• 23 days ago

SpaceX will acquire Rocketlab.

eps• 23 days ago

Seeing how Beck operates, this is far removed from being a certainty.

itsthecourier2• 23 days ago

I have used iridium before, IIRC I paid 1 usd per KB, PER KILOBYTE (!!!), to track some stratospheric globes we launched in like 2014

itsthecourier2• 23 days ago

seems they charge almost usd2 per KB now. oh well.

epsteingpt• 23 days ago

Good buy

georgeecollins• 22 days ago

Just came here to mention that "Eccentric Orbits" the book about the creation of the Iridium system is an amazing book. It's a business heavy book so probably more interesting to people trying to start business or do deals, as opposed to space fans.

ge96• 22 days ago

I listened to that audio book while riding a bike to work through woods/back roads was great

nektro• 22 days ago

saw this title on the front page and thought it meant the element, not a company

Rocketlab acquires Iridium

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