Ready - Most folks know Iridium as the fiasco project that nearly killed Motorola... and lesser known that if had been up to Motorola, Iridium would have been killed and buried. There is a fascinating book about life and near-death of Iridium called Eccentric Orbits by John Bloom -
https://groveatlantic.com/book/eccentric-orbits/. But the Iridium of this era has been quietly entirely reinvented with 2020s technology and all the Iridium satellites now in orbit (and a few on standby for replacements) are vastly more capable than the original system.
As to the NextNav petition, their basic premise for the radical reconfiguration of 902-928 MHz is flawed. As you point out, we've eventually figured out how to do reasonable positioning without the NextNav (proprietary, paid) service. I'll be explaining that in Zero Retries for the next 1-2 months, so stay tuned to future issues of Zero Retries for that.
Ready - Do a web search for "Iridium Next" for the full story of just how different the current Iridium sats are from the originals which either used analog or first generation digital technology. The current Iridium sats host at least two other systems that aren't actually Iridium. One of the best new services on the new Iridium is Push To Talk, which I became aware of from Icom - https://www.icomamerica.com/lineup/products/IC-SAT100M/. What a cool concept - a PTT radio that works anywhere on the planet - just one talk group distributed all over the planet. I know Amateur Radio can do that with Internet linking, but for this "old radio guy", it's cool that they're doing that service entirely on RF, using Iridium's very mature (compared to Starlink) inter-satellite linking technology.
Ready - Most folks know Iridium as the fiasco project that nearly killed Motorola... and lesser known that if had been up to Motorola, Iridium would have been killed and buried. There is a fascinating book about life and near-death of Iridium called Eccentric Orbits by John Bloom -
https://groveatlantic.com/book/eccentric-orbits/. But the Iridium of this era has been quietly entirely reinvented with 2020s technology and all the Iridium satellites now in orbit (and a few on standby for replacements) are vastly more capable than the original system.
As to the NextNav petition, their basic premise for the radical reconfiguration of 902-928 MHz is flawed. As you point out, we've eventually figured out how to do reasonable positioning without the NextNav (proprietary, paid) service. I'll be explaining that in Zero Retries for the next 1-2 months, so stay tuned to future issues of Zero Retries for that.
Thanks for the book recommendation. I heard the constellation had been going though upgrades over the last few years, but still nothing like Starlink.
It's a big sky, plenty of room for everyone.
Ready - Do a web search for "Iridium Next" for the full story of just how different the current Iridium sats are from the originals which either used analog or first generation digital technology. The current Iridium sats host at least two other systems that aren't actually Iridium. One of the best new services on the new Iridium is Push To Talk, which I became aware of from Icom - https://www.icomamerica.com/lineup/products/IC-SAT100M/. What a cool concept - a PTT radio that works anywhere on the planet - just one talk group distributed all over the planet. I know Amateur Radio can do that with Internet linking, but for this "old radio guy", it's cool that they're doing that service entirely on RF, using Iridium's very mature (compared to Starlink) inter-satellite linking technology.