Iridium is basically the stubborn weed of satcom: everyone assumed it would die in the late 90s, but instead it sprouted out of bankruptcy, shrugged off decades of ridicule, and now quietly prints money off narrowband services that nobody else wanted to bother with. Its “secret” is not glamorous technology but brutal persistence.

While the GEO giants obsessed over TV distribution and then fell on their faces trying to chase broadband, Iridium kept doing the same thing it always did, low data rates, truly global coverage, and service where nothing else works. Oil rigs, polar expeditions, defense contracts, aviation tracking, the niches too small for billion-dollar HTS satellites but too vital to ignore.

The system itself is hilariously unfashionable if you’re used to slick LEO broadband decks. 66 crosslinked satellites in polar orbit, no Ka-band, no terabit hype. The replacement constellation, Iridium NEXT, was one of the last things SpaceX delivered on time for a customer, and it gave Iridium a clean slate just as everyone else started panicking about LEO. The fact that NEXT actually works as advertised is almost a novelty in this industry.

Strategically, Iridium thrives because it’s boring. It doesn’t need to promise Netflix from orbit; it just needs to keep the Pentagon happy, sell push-to-talk to government customers, and make sure airlines don’t lose planes over oceans again. The US military loves it precisely because it’s old-school and hardened, and Iridium knows better than to bite the hand that feeds it. Investors, meanwhile, enjoy the fact that it isn’t spending itself into oblivion trying to match Starlink.

The irony is that Iridium now looks more “future-proof” than half the companies hyping constellations ten times its size. It has spectrum that actually works, operational experience others are still fumbling toward, and a business model immune to TikTok latency demands. Of course, Iridium’s growth ceiling is low: it will never be the platform for mass broadband, and its forays into IoT are modest compared to the breathless forecasts others print. But unlike, say, OneWeb or Kuiper, Iridium isn’t gambling its existence on markets that may never materialize.

In short: Iridium is not exciting, which is exactly why it’s still alive. Everyone else is chasing the next big LEO revolution; Iridium is the satcom equivalent of a reliable old diesel truck, ugly, noisy, but it starts every morning and gets the job done while the shiny Teslas are still waiting for a firmware update.