Peplink and Iridium Partner to Bring Pepidium Satellite Bonding to the Masses … Watch your Wallets!

Peplink, that plucky SD-WAN vendor best known for duct-taping multiple ISPs together, just high-fived Iridium, the satellite overlord whose business model is: “Expensive, because where else are you going to go?”

They’ve formed a strategic technology partnership. Translation: Peplink found a way to duct-tape L-Band to their routers and Iridium gets to pretend it’s part of a seamless digital future rather than the emergency fallback plan it really is. This brave union of terrestrial tinkering and orbital obsolescence is being pitched as the next big thing, unless you’re streaming video, transferring large files, or doing literally anything that requires more than 704 kbps of bandwidth.

“We’re thrilled!” screams Iridium’s marketing exec, undoubtedly excited about billing you $14 per megabyte to check your inbox.
“Truly unbreakable connectivity,” Peplink promises, as if falling back to a data stream slower than 2003 DSL counts as progress.

They’re offering automatic failover. Which, if you squint hard enough, is just a nice way of saying, “We’ll quietly switch you to the most expensive and least useful connection imaginable without asking.”

If you understand bonding as being “combine multiple fast pipes into one mega-pipe.” then this is more like the IT equivalent of keeping a rotary phone in your glovebox in case 5G goes down. You’re not bonding bandwidth, you’re bonding with despair.

Would you trust a “smart router” that calls in a $10/MB lifeline every time it gets confused by a weak signal?