We spent billions of dollars, they didn’t have to build it,” he said. That said, Desch explained that one of the advantages of Iridium’s broadband network for the Space Force is that it is already built. And we work with others like a Starlink, and a OneWeb: they’re providing the big pipes and we’re providing highly reliable service.”
“We kind of consider ourselves a very niche, unique capability of highly reliable, very resilient network. Scheimreif also stressed the fact that Iridium doesn’t see itself as a competitor to big broadband providers like SpaceX and OneWeb. For this reason, Iridium won’t be offering its various-speed broadband services, called Iridium Certus, under an unlimited data for a fixed-price contract. Thus, broadband is used to provide not just voice communications, but high-speed internet connectivity that can rapidly transmit images and video.ĭesch said that there is a lot of interest in broadband as a service, too, but that is more difficult to make a business case for because it is more costly. “We make everybody else jealous, because we are the only satellite company with a fixed-price model,” he said.”Now, that’s for our narrowband services, because we can afford to do that, be sort of all-you-can-eat.”īroadband SATCOM, on the other hand, is capable of higher data rates, meaning it can transmit much more data than narrowband in a given amount of time. Narrowband SATCOM is optimized for applications/customers that need highly reliable, low power, and long-range communications - it eats up less of the bandwidth available, and transmits at a higher power level than broadband, thus the high reliability. Indeed, the bulk of DoD’s SATCOM services and bandwidth comes via the Enhanced Mobile Satellite Services (EMMS) program, for which Iridium Communications was awarded a $738.5 million, seven-year, fixed-price contract in December 2019.īut that, Iridium CEO Matt Desch explained, is a contract for narrowband services, not broadband. Iridium is one of the few firms that already has a long-term fixed price contract for SATCOM with Space Force. “We really do need a long term partnership so that as owner/operators we can invest in the capabilities the US government wants and needs, but we also have an incentive to do so - longer term contracts, Other Transaction Authority, so we’re more flexible.” “We have much more work to do,” Pete Hoene, CEO of SES Government Solutions, told the SATELLITE 2022 conference on March 23.
And up to now it’s not done a lot of contracting on a true fee-for-service basis, according to industry officials. However, CSCO doesn’t have a budget or program of record for buying bandwidth access rather funds are found in the Overseas Contingency Operations fund when a need for a surge in connectivity is required by operators. Space Force’s Space Warfighting Analysis Center (SWAC) is working on a so-called force design aimed at creating a “space data backbone” that integrates SATCOM across military, commercial and even allied networks, SWAC Director Andrew Cox told Breaking Defense in an exclusive interview in January that effort includes looking at a “fee for service” acquisition model.įurther, the Commercial Satellite Communications Office (CSCO) shared a draft request for proposals with industry last fall looking for feedback on how the Space Force might be able use such a services-based acquisition model to tap into the large constellations of broadband Internet satellites being built in LEO, such Iridium NEXT, the Starlink network being built by SpaceX or a similar network being built by OneWeb.ĬSCO serves as a middleman between commercial satellite operators and then matches the needs of various operational commands and other DoD customers to a provider - helping manage the contracting process.
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