*Iridium Operating Costs* Thomas, sorry, I don't have them accurately, but I guess it is similar to Globalstar for satellite operations and maintenance though their in-orbit failures seem to have been fairly high. Also, they are doing more of the marketing around the world rather than leaving it totally to service providers as Globalstar is doing. I suppose annual costs [with no interest payments or depreciation or handsets but with constellation maintenance] would be about $300m per year.
That's just a guess though, based on what I recall of Globalstar's costs. With 10,000 subscribers, that's $30,000 per year per subscriber. If they get up to 20,000 subscribers, that drops to $15,000. Still not an attractive proposition.
Say it's only $100m per year [executives pay being cancelled until they make it work], then right now they are eating up $10,000 per subscriber per year and that will certainly exceed the revenue per subscriber. Say they get subscribers up to 20,000, that will be $5,000 per year cost. This is NOT a pretty picture. I really can't see how they can even cover the operating costs.
But as I say, I'm no longer specially interested in Iridium as I've written it off as a serious competitor, even though they might sell the 1.2bn minutes at 20c a minute after a liquidation sale. To repeat, those few minutes aren't enough to disrupt the satellite market even if they can persuade people to pay a lot for a handset.
Maurice |
