Data A High-Flyer For Iridium Satellite

Iridium Satellite, after successfully digging its way out of bankruptcy, has found a surprising savior--data--and the company Tuesday announced a new data-only transceiver that it believes will capitalize on the growing demand for satellite-based data.

The 9600 data transceiver, based on Iridium's Short Burst Data (SBD) technology, will be offered later this year and the firm believes it will open up a whole new set of markets.

"The data side of our business is growing rapidly," said company spokeswoman Liz DeCastro in an interview. "Iridium was originally a [voice] handset company. But now we have customers who want data only."

The firm's original business plan anticipated a world that wanted wireless voice communications for consumers. What wasn't anticipated, however, was that the terrestrial cell-phone business would take off and satisfy most consumers, negatively impacting satellite-voice handset applications in the process.

Four years ago, a group of private investors bought Iridium's assets in bankruptcy proceedings. The firm changed its focus and targeted three major markets: maritime, aviation, and defense/government. The company works with OEM partners to address vertical markets. The new-generation data transceiver will offer data services featuring global coverage, low-latency, and two-way communication."Iridium saw dramatic growth in data traffic during the past 12 months, with an increase of 49 percent over 2003," said the firm's executive vice president Don Thoma in a statement. "We expect the 9600 to continue to accelerate market adoption--particularly in industries such as heavy equipment, over-the-road transportation, oil and gas, maritime, rail, utilities, and government applications."

The firm isn't neglecting voice applications, though. Also on Tuesday, Iridium announced a group-call push-to-talk voice-and-data service that it envisions seeing heavy use in government, emergency services, and Homeland Security applications. "We're the only provider that can provide two-way global service, and it's secure," said DeCastro. "We're at our best when it comes to rescue operations."

She noted that the satellite service saw heavy use in the aftermath of the recent tsunami disaster and, before that, following the hurricanes in Florida. Iridium's 66 satellites provide worldwide coverage.

The push-to-talk voice/data service is versatile, allowing one user to talk or transmit data to several persons simultaneously, or to enable the establishment of dispatch centers in emergencies. It further enables instantaneous alerts to be sent in emergencies. The service's handsets function normally when users are not in a group-call mode.

"The Iridium group-call push-to-talk communications service will be able to link three, four, a dozen, or even hundreds of users together into an effective network," said Greg Ewert, Iridium executive vice president, in a statement. "This Iridium service will offer the virtual equivalent of repeater stations in space. The need to position a repeater station on a mountaintop or a tall--and vulnerable--structure will no longer exist."As a private company, Iridium doesn't release financial statements, but the firm's chairman and chief executive officer Carmen Lloyd said last month that the company had positive EBITDA in 2004, reversing the previous year's negative EBITDA.