Avionics
Iridium CEO wants measured growth for service
Iridium’s new chief executive comes to the job following seven consecutive quarters of profitability and with plans in place to replace the communication n

Iridium’s new chief executive comes to the job following seven consecutive quarters of profitability and with plans in place to replace the communication network’s constellation of 66 satellites starting in 2013. But unlike the Motorola executives who launched the original Iridium service for more than $5 billion in the late 1990s and quickly went bankrupt, CEO Matt Desch doesn’t dream about tens of millions of subscribers hauling around portable satphones wherever they go.

“I’m content with much slower growth,” Desch said during a time-out at a recent satellite industry conference in New York. “The goal is for one-and-a-half to two million subscribers by 2015, not 20 million. If we have two million subscribers 10 years from now, we will have been very successful.”