Eccentric Orbits: The Iridium Story
John Bloom, Grove Atlantic, 537 pages, $27.50. Iridium was among the most ambitious projects in the history of technology. Yet it soon led to one of the world's biggest bankruptcies. Today, 17 years on, Iridium is a remarkable comeback story: a global communications tool of last resort for soldiers, sailors and others who happen to find themselves where there is no mobile-phone reception. John Bloom's "Eccentric Orbits" tells the exhaustive tale of how it came to be, from the technology (originally meant to compete with cellphone technology) to finding a business plan that worked. The technology launch — involving a constellation of 66 satellites covering the earth — took place without a major hiccup. But its big, $3,795 phones with their even bigger antennae, calling costs of $4 per minute and a much cheaper terrestrial mobile phone system did the company in. By the time its bosses went to the bankruptcy court in August 1999, Iridium had cost more than $6 billion to build. It had just 63,000 customers and revenue of a few million. Motorola, which had hampered the spinoff company with $45 million monthly charges, was going to destroy the constellation until Dan Colussy, an American businessman who had previously restructured United Nuclear Corporation, stepped in, also persuading investors, including an elusive Saudi prince and the Pentagon. Fast forward to today, instead of competing with mobile networks, satellite phone systems have become a complement. Exhausting details aside, "Eccentric Orbits" not only offers good corporate drama, but is an enlightening narrative of how new communications infrastructures often come about: with a lot of luck, government help and investors who do not ask too many questions.
Economist
