[aprssig] Iridium humbles APRS

[Jason KG4WSV]

On Fri, Apr 6, 2012 at 4:06 PM, Bob Bruninga <bruninga at usna.edu> wrote:

> $950 unit cost...

> leverage off the DOD Gateway... $250/mo... all the bandwidth you want...
> NSF paying $1.2M per year for irridium.. "paying for SIM cards"...

>  THey just got $2.3B to build the next
> network..

That sounds cool if you've got the application and the budget, but
looking at it another way: for the price of an expensive unit, plus
monthly service fee, using only a few billion $$ in infrastructure,
you can be connected.  Sounds like cell phones.

I don't see how this can "humble" or even compare to APRS; they are
very different communications systems.  As I tell my students, if I
have two D7s I have a complete digital and voice communications
network.  Doesn't matter if natural disaster takes down the cell phone
towers, or if i'm on the dark side of the moon or mars.


-Jason
kg4wsv