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The Iridium Telephone
Terry Wood delivered his from-the-trail reports while using a one-pound Iridium satellite telephone, which relayed telephone signals via a
low-orbiting grid of 66 satellites (roughly 485 miles above the
earth's surface). The satellites work essentially as
cell towers in the sky, designed to provide global wireless telephone access
from anywhere on earth.
Although the Iridium system had about 20,000 global customers (including military,
government workers, marine specialists and U.S. Forest Service personnel) its parent company, Iridium LLC, filed for bankruptcy protection in August 1999 and the satellite system eventually went out of service on March 17, 2000. A new satellite-telephone service, Globalstar, has since been launched and Bellevue-based Craig McCaw hopes to introduce a $10 billion, 288-satellite system named Teledesic in 2005.
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