[Asterisk-biz] Asterisk/SIP over satellite? Iridium=Teledesic?

[Dorn Hetzel]

On Tue, Dec 28, 2004 at 03:24:25PM -0500, Paul Rodan wrote:
> Curious. Iridium looks very similar to Teledesic which has all but
> disappeared. Are they one and the same?
>
Iridium got built and then the operator went bankrupt (and took
$5K of my money with them, lesson learned...).  There was actually
talk of de-orbiting the 66 operational satellites (plus some
on-orbit spares), but then miraculously (or not, depending on 
various conspiracy theories) someone stepped and in bought the
assets for a song (less than 1% of what they cost to build) and
set about continuing operations with Uncle Sam as customer #1.

Teledesic was the data-focused higher-bandwidth third-cousin
twice-remove of Iridium initially funded by Gates and pals, 
but once Iridium turned into a financial dirty bomb in the middle
of Wall Street and almost melted Motorola down with it,
that was the end of Teledesic getting a big pile of OPM to put
their birds up :)   [well, that's my bystanders interpretation,
anyway]...

For the true conspiracy theorist, wondering about the Uncle
Sam big customer rescue of Iridium, one needs only imagine
the potential usefullness of a network of satellites only
a few hundred miles up with virtually full-time coverage of
the whole earth.  What sort of not-publicly-disclosed features
could have been built into those birds?  Twould make a dandy
observation platform :)

-Dorn