[written-beyond]

I can't believe I bought a few shares of IRDM with a few hundred bucks in my trading account. Primarily because it was a RKLB adjacent company with decent fundamentals whos stock price wasn't scraping the sky.

I don't know how to feel about this acquisition though. Never thought IRDM would've been a bad investment.

[Joel_Mckay]

The market can't be timed (by honest players), as I remember buying into Ubiquiti Networks at around $12/share thinking I might see a 8% bump after the old legal event subsided. Then just sort of forgot about that tax-sheltered holding for a few years. I also don't do the 3 month portfolio shuffle dance 95% of stock investment people try to ride.

The heavy cost of putting stuff in space is still not solved, but broadband and space-LTE service businesses are proven cash flows. They just have to mimic the profitable parts of Starlink. =3

https://www.fool.com/investing/2026/06/29/rocket-lab-is-set-...

[Scoundreller]

I thought starlink would do something to grab the terrestrial market: put up a “satellite” on a tall building and everyone in the city could hammer down self-aiming CPEs as long as they had line-of-sight

[Joel_Mckay]

RF Bandwidth is finite, and stronger broadcast transmission means fewer concurrent users are supported in wider service areas.

Most older cell towers could only cover small 3km client service areas, and would max out at a few thousand users. However, as the broadcast power dropped more cells could be installed in busy city centers. The base-stations themselves were often direct fiber service for lightning strike isolation.

Modern beam forming networks with G5 and newer... greatly increased the bandwidth, mobile battery life, and total user capacity of the smaller broadcast cell areas.

Starlink offers budget telecom connectivity in areas that didn't support normal telecom infrastructure, and these sparsely populated wide areas make sense for a LEO uplink.

The terrestrial telecom infrastructure is a different business, and firms have embedded themselves politically for over a century. Starlink would need to risk a great deal for locations to get the density necessary to disrupt the entrenched market, and ultimately could just become another telecom merger in the process.

Iridium tried to enter consumer markets with emergency and industrial coverage options. However, at its core it is an antiquated technology requiring large popcan sized circularly polarized antenna modules, scheduled >5W RF message uplinks, and $3.15/kB service rates.

Part of Starlink success was correlated with how bad Iridium serviced customers. In general, buying a laggard is an opportunity, but I personally don't think Iridium can escape its entrenched business model. They are 20 years too late, burned consumer goodwill, and have competitors already in profit mode. =3

[NetMageSCW]

F9 has dropped the cost 10x. Starship will drop it another 10x. When will it be solved?

[Joel_Mckay]

When both businesses reach a profit mode. Unlikely to happen within the next few years. =3