RE: What about the Iridium satellite phones?
According to Wikipedia:
Iridium Satellite LLC merged with a special purpose acquisition company (GHQ) created by the investment bank Greenhill & Co. (NYSE: GHL) in September 2009 to create Iridium Communications, Inc.
The public company trades on NASDAQ under the symbol “IRDM”. The company had 611,000 subscribers as of the end of December 2012 (compared to 523,000 in December 2011). Revenue for the full year 2012 was US $383.5 million.
The system is being used extensively by the U.S. Department of Defense through the DoD gateway in Hawaii. The service revenue to governments made up 23% of Iridium’s revenues in 2012. An investigation was begun into the DoD contract after a protest by Globalstar, to the U.S. General Accounting Office that no tender was provided. A hold against the contract was lifted at the request of the Department of Defense, which cited national security reasons. This allows the continued use of the network during the investigation.
The commercial gateway in Tempe, Arizona, provides voice, data, and paging services for commercial customers on a global basis. Typical customers include maritime, aviation, government, the petroleum industry, scientists, and frequent world travelers.
Iridium satellites are now an essential component of communications with remote science camps, especially the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station. In December 2006, an array of twelve Iridium modems was put online, providing continuous data services to the station for the first time. Total bandwidth is 28.8 kbit/s.
It was a failure for Motorola, but the Government got to pick it up on the cheap. It’s also nice for making a phone call on my brothers Boston Whaler 15 miles out to sea.
As a commercial venture, the original Iridium system failed. That led to bankruptcy and the merger cited in the article. If you notice a good bit of the business in the re-born Iridium is government-subsidized (ie. defense & research).