Lance, I don't know precisely how it's enforced, especially for very small countries/islands, nor how far out to sea a country's license rights extend, but G* and Irid are supposed to respect national boundaries, and not provide service where it is not licensed.
If I recall correctly, the problem Cramer had was related to exactly that problem, not a technical deficiency on Irid's part, but to a regulatory issue.
BTW, a pet peeve of mine is that G* coverage maps available on the web never make this distinction and a user could easily get the impression that service will be available in places like Cuba or N. Korea, when in fact that's highly, highly unlikely. Even "friendly" countries, for example Israel, Poland and South Africa have been slow to accept Iridium service, at least. Probably G* will fare better than Iridium in these places, since it doesn't try to bypass the local PTT, but there are sure to be some countries that will withhold licenes. |
