Sailors may be a small and dwindling community, but this is our core use case. When you are sailing offshore you need to download weather predictions so that you can chart your course to catch favorable winds. My experience with Iridium is that you open a targeted set of ports for the modem to feed your phone via, and then you don't have to think about it again. 100+ nautical miles offshore and it just works.

It’s not about Iridium. It’s about Iridium’s customers and partnerships. RocketLab hopes to launch their own satellites presumably and then can sell significantly improved services to them, without having to build a customer base from scratch.

AFAIK Iridium is part of some important airliner navigation systems and standards - while a niche, it can still be very lucrative business. and I would not be surprised if it was embedded like this into various other systems that are less cost sensitive.

Rocket Lab wants the radio spectrum, which gives them a global license in every country to talk directly to cell phones.

Why the Satellite Race is No Longer About Satellites - https://youtube.com/shorts/hRxv4RggxLE

> How much market is there for people that just want low speed connectivity from the middle of nowhere?

Militaries generally find this capability pretty relevant, among others, and they have deep pockets. They were the ones to bail out Iridium the first time around, after all.

There is a huge market for people to connection while doing outdoor activities, including downloading maps, sharing current location, etc. It isn't just people who live in BFE looking for a downlink.

You realize they have a new network of satellites, right? It works much better than the old version with the 90s tech.

A lot of remote IOT devices use Iridium, as well as the US government or DoD.