In the Spotlight: Matt Desch, Iridium Satellite

Matt Desch--former CEO of Telcordia, 13-year veteran of Nortel’s executive ranks and a long-time fixture in the mobile and broadband worlds--was recently named CEO of Iridium Satellite. The commercial satellite operator, once a Motorola-backed venture that went bankrupt and was reorganized with private investment in 2000, has a constellation of 66 satellites and 10 spares in low-earth orbit, 155 miles above the earth. Its voice and data applications serve government, maritime, aviation, mining, oil, transportation and other sectors. Telephony’s Jason Meyers talked to Desch about Iridium’s legacy, the capabilities of its network and what the future holds.

On Iridium’s past: I was one of the loudest voices in those days saying the business model as it was constructed wouldn’t work. That business model didn’t work, in fact. The company went bankrupt, but the network was still operational. The service was a bit ahead of its time--there was one phone and there were no other applications besides voice. Since that time we’ve created hundreds of applications for all these niches.

On the network: Nobody operates pole-to-pole like we do--we’re the only truly global network. We think of ourselves as a voice and data umbrella for the whole planet. There’s constantly a satellite over every part of the globe. It provides a unique and critical service to its customers, and I believe it’s synergistic with the growth of all the voice and data applications in the mobile world that I was a part of for the past 26 years. We’re not trying to compete with terrestrial wireless services.

On the applications: It’s a niche service, but it’s a very important service that doesn’t exist anywhere else in the world. Seventy percent of our business is commercial, and 30 percent is government. Government is important, but the fastest-growing part of our business is commercial. General aviation, corporate aircraft, first responders and emergency services--Iridium phones are in a log of people’s emergency response plans.

On what’s next: We’re going to evolve our terrestrial network, which was build on a GSM core, to IMS. We’ve moving from a circuit-switched network to all-IP. And we’re fortunate that our satellite systems are truly flexible: We’re able to upload software that dramatically changes the system. The satellite constellation will continue to be operational through 2014, at which point we’ll have a next-generation constellation. We see our service as a niche business growing into a super-niche business.