[myself248]

It's really a shame. Iridium could sell best-effort hobbyist-grade service in their excess capacity, which would get the hardware into people's hands, but they don't.

Cynically I assume this is because it would be no different than their expensive service in practice, and cannibalize their premium offerings.

[wkat4242]

Yeah there were some other hobbyist-friendly budget offerings like swarm but they were acquired by starlink and pretty much deprecated.