Iridium (News - Alert) Communications Inc., which claims to be the only mobile voice and data satellite communications network that spans the entire globe, reached a milestone when its total billable subscriber base for its services worldwide exceeded 500,000.

Approximately 90 percent commercial customers and 10 percent U.S. Government customers constitute the subscriber base.

Matt Desch (News - Alert), CEO, Iridium, said in a press release, "This milestone demonstrates how far we've evolved over the last 10 years from a supplier of mobile satellite phones for niche markets into a global communications company connecting anyone and anything, all over the world, in ways and places in which they expect to be connected."

Desch stated that Iridium's consistent double digit growth over the last five years was testament to its global reach and its expanding partner system.

He attributed Iridium's dramatic rate of subscriber growth primarily to the emerging M2M data market. This was borne out by the company's 2Q earnings that indicated that M2M data subscribers represented 32 percent of billable commercial subscribers while 21 percent were government billable subscribers.

Tim Farrar, president of TMF Associates added yet another dimension to Iridium's growth by stating that Iridium's low-cost short-burst data transceiver and partnerships with established world-class players in the mobile data industry accelerated the growth process in the M2M segment.

Desch also noted that while data products and services represented the biggest source of growth, it was important not to lose track of the fact that voice products and services that Iridium specialized in were also continuing to grow.

"There is a tremendous potential for continued growth in mobile satellite connections around the world as terrestrial wireless networks cover less than 10 percent of the Earth's surface," concluded Desch. "We do a great job connecting the remaining 90 percent."

Iridium NEXT, the company's next-generation network, is expected to bring even more capabilities and capacity for the company's growing customer base.

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