IRDM Company Profile

We are the only commercial provider of communications services offering true global coverage, connecting people, organizations and assets to and from anywhere, in real time. Our unique L-band satellite network provides reliable communications services to regions of the world where terrestrial wireless or wireline networks do not exist or are limited, including remote land areas, open ocean, airways, the polar regions and regions where the telecommunications infrastructure has been affected by political conflicts or natural disasters.

We provide voice and data communications services to businesses, the U.S. and foreign governments, non-governmental organizations and consumers via our satellite network, which has an architecture of 66 operational satellites with in-orbit spares and related ground infrastructure. We utilize an interlinked mesh architecture to route traffic across our satellite constellation using radio frequency crosslinks between satellites. This unique architecture minimizes the need for local ground facilities to support the constellation, which facilitates the global reach of our services and allows us to offer services in countries and regions where we have no physical presence.

We are in the process of replacing our first-generation constellation with our Iridium® NEXT satellite constellation, which will support more bandwidth and higher speeds for new products. We have completed four of eight planned launches, and we expect to complete the four remaining launches in 2018. Iridium NEXT will maintain the same interlinked mesh architecture of our first-generation constellation, with 66 operational satellites, as well as in-orbit and ground spares. Thales Alenia Space France, or Thales, is producing the Iridium NEXT satellites, which are compatible with our first-generation constellation and current end-user equipment, so that as we replace each first-generation satellite in our constellation with an Iridium NEXT satellite, we do not affect service to our end users. In addition to the 40 satellites we have already launched on four dedicated rockets, we plan to deploy 35 additional satellites on three dedicated Falcon 9 rockets and one shared Falcon 9 rocket, each launched by Space Exploration Technologies Corporation, or SpaceX. We estimate the costs associated with the design, build and launch of Iridium NEXT and related ground infrastructure upgrades through 2018 to be approximately $3 billion. Our funding plan for these costs includes the substantial majority of the funds under our $1.8 billion credit facility, or the Credit Facility, which was fully drawn in February 2017, together with cash on hand and internally generated cash flows, including cash flows from hosted payloads. As described in this report, we also anticipate raising additional capital through the issuance of debt, which may take the form of debt securities, credit facilities or other forms of indebtedness.

The Iridium NEXT constellation will also host the AireonSM system to provide a global air traffic surveillance service through a series of automatic dependent surveillance-broadcast, or ADS-B, receivers on the Iridium NEXT satellites. We formed Aireon LLC in 2011, with subsequent investments from the air navigation service providers, or ANSPs, of Canada, Italy, Denmark and Ireland, to develop and market this service. Aireon has contracted to provide the service to our co-investors in Aireon, as well as NATS (En Route) PLC, the ANSP of the United Kingdom, and other ANSPs around the world. Aireon is offering the service to ANSP customers worldwide, including the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration, or FAA. Aireon has contracted to pay us a fee to host the ADS-B receivers on Iridium NEXT, as well as data service fees for the delivery of the air traffic surveillance data over the Iridium NEXT system. In addition, we have entered into an agreement with Harris Corporation, the manufacturer of the Aireon hosted payload, pursuant to which Harris pays us fees to allocate the remaining hosted payload capacity to its customers and data service fees on behalf of these customers.

Our commercial business, which we view as our primary source of long-term growth, is diverse and includes markets such as emergency services, maritime, aviation, government, utilities, oil and gas, mining, recreation, forestry, heavy equipment, construction and transportation. Many of our end users view our products and services as critical to their daily operations and integral to their communications and business infrastructure. For example, multinational corporations in various sectors use our services for business telephony, e-mail and data transfer, including telematics, and to provide mobile communications services for employees in areas inadequately served by other telecommunications networks. Commercial enterprises use our services to track assets in remote areas and provide telematics information such as location and engine diagnostics. Ship crews and passengers use our services for ship-to-shore calling, as well as to send and receive e-mail and data files, and to receive electronic media, weather reports, emergency bulletins and electronic charts. Shipping operators use our services to manage operations on board ships and to transmit data, such as course, speed and fuel stock. Aviation end users use our services for air-to-ground telephony and data communications for position reporting, emergency tracking, weather information, electronic flight bag updates and fleet information.