Iridium Next has a lot more revenue potential for them as well, with all sorts of new products that can be developed with embedded Iridium modems (same general way they sell the 9602 transceiver to manufacturing partners now).

The fact that you can do TCP/IP data over the first generation Iridium network is actually kind of a minor miracle, the data rates are so low. Voice calls have to fit in 2400 bps with a special codec. Data sessions used a lossless compression system not very dissimilar from v42bis to squeeze up to 9600 baud out of a 2400 bps connection... Well, at least if all you're transferring is a plain text file, if it's content that's already compressed you literally see 0.2KB/second.

They're going after the revenue that Inmarsat enjoys from BGAN services, Thuraya's revenue stream from BGAN-like L/S-band services, etc. Maritime and aircraft of course. And military... and military and civilian UAVs... all sorts of stuff. M2M stuff that has to work literally anywhere.