This week, Amazon’s Project Kuiper, which aims to provide mobile broadband services direct to devices or to CPE from space, got the first 27 of its target of 3,200 satellites into space. SpaceX’s Starlink, so-called “meme stock” AST Space Mobile and Lynk are also after parts of the same market.
But it is another older name in the LEO market, one that has seen its fair share of ups and downs, that thinks that it can leverage cellular NTN standards to capture meaningful revenues, and says it stands ready to do so.
That name is Iridium, which already has a thriving proprietary satellite IoT business and customers in the aviation, maritime, land, and government sectors. Over the past few years the company came to the end of a $3 billion refresh of its LEO satellite fleet, which covers the entirety of the globe via a constellation that it says will be in operation until 2035.
Two years ago the company was ready to push on with its proprietary satellite IoT business, looking to secure a deal to see its technology enabled in Qualcomm’s Snapdragon chips. Following “a shift in market dynamics”, to borrow a phrase from VP Brian Aziz, the company decided instead to “entrench itself in the standardised world”. That shift in dynamics was the decision of Qualcommm to not proceed, and instead to back the integration of cellular (3GPP) standards with Non-Terrestrial Networks which would enable devices and equipment with a cellular SIM to connect to a satellite network, either using spectrum owned by the satellite provider or by the provider’s MNO partners.
And so in 2024 Iridium announced “Project Stardust”, which would see the company adopt NTN NB-IoT standards as its technology of choice. In Aziz’s telling, the company’s contributions – or as Aziz puts it, ”modifications that would allow MNOs and their users to roam onto our network” – were accepted in 3GPP within nine months.
A little later the company said that Nordic Semiconductor would be adopting its technology, integrating Iridium’s NTN Direct with its Nordic’s modules and chipsets. Further chipset companies are lined up, Aziz says, as are partnerships with mobile operators.
The company cannot share names on MNO partnerships, but Aziz said there are “several”. “We’re very focused on partnerships with larger global MNOs that have a desire for both consumer and IoT”
MNOs will be in trials this summer (2025) and then the service will be fully launches in 2026, Aziz said. That would give Iridium a rival capability to LEO IoT startup Skylo, a company that Aziz clearly respects. Iridium sees its advantage as being both established and low risk, and in being able to provide global coverage.
“People see us as a stable, low risk satellite operator. We’re not a startup. We see ourselves as a true differentiated offering, but also a low risk offering for these very large global MNOs.”
There are crazy numbers out there on NTN and D-2-D
Consumer opportunity
Aziz adds that the company won’t just be using the NB-IoT connectivity for IoT.
“People think it’s just IoT, but we’re going to use that protocol to operate on consumer devices as well. Nb-IoT can be used to deliver messages, so we’ll be able to do things like Emergency SOS two way messaging, or peer-to-peer messaging, location tracking and location services as well.”
But even if Iridium is moving quickly to try and capture the NTN IoT market, it doesn’t see rival moves as massively threatening to its own business, according to Aziz.
“We’re very diversified and we don’t see these [established] businesses shrinking or going anywhere over the next several years. We have to make an incremental investment to enable this capability on our network, so we don’t have a huge need of a massive ROI.
“We want to play in the market. We want to grow our IoT business. We’d like to get into the consumer space. Whatever we get out of it is kind of icing on the cake. It’s not going to necessarily alter the way Iridium looks in 10 years. It is part of our strategic growth plan, but it’s just a slice of it.”
As for the other, publicity-hugging names in the D-2-D space, Aziz remains politely sceptical.
“If they deliver on what they say – broadband on a cell phone from space – it’s going to be a different capability to what we’re going to deliver. I’d love to see it; if it meets users expectations, that would be great. We think it’s quite challenging to deliver broadband from space to a smartphone in a way that a user actually can accept it.
“There are crazy numbers out there on NTN and D-2-D; absolutely absurd. We don’t believe those numbers, to be honest with you, because we have had exposure to this market for a very long time and we know what users are and are not willing to pay.
“So, yes, this could be a $100 million business. I don’t think it’s a $35 billion business.”
