# Iridium satellite service

12 Hacker News commenters recommended Iridium satellite service and 10 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 6 of 13 months.

**Verdict:** People recommend Iridium for working far offshore, on ships and aircraft, and for emergency messaging. The most common caveat is low bandwidth and high price per kilobyte.

## Why people recommend it

- Works far offshore, on ships (3 comments): "If you are stuck on a ship in a typhoon, iridium is precisely the system you want to be using." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49829850)) "wildly successful with maritime, aviation and DoD customers" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50284562)) "100+ nautical miles offshore and it just works." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48721155))
- Emergency communication backup (2 comments): "If you are stuck on a ship in a typhoon, iridium is precisely the system you want to be using." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49829850)) "For emergency communication? Iridium, zoleo, JS8Call, packet radio." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48011342))
- Improved over older technology (2 comments): "which is actually quite impressive given that it doesn't seem easy to retrofit that onto an in-space switched network" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48732690)) "It works much better than the old version with the 90s tech." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48721223))

## What people warn about

- Much lower bandwidth than Starlink (2 comments): "with MUCH lower available bandwidth and correspondingly lower pricing, Iridium." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48926151)) "simply do not have the throughput or total bandwidth that Starlink does" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48904142))
- Expensive per kilobyte data (4 comments): "I paid 1 usd per KB, PER KILOBYTE (!!!), to track some stratospheric globes we launched in like 2014" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48728325)) "like 100x slower at 5x monthly price for 1000x less data" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49829588)) "Iridium cost $3/minute for voice or 2400bps data." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48414090))
- Dated, slow technology (2 comments): "at its core it is an antiquated technology requiring large popcan sized circularly polarized antenna modules" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48733810)) "Iridium was basically space dialup, and extremely expensive space dialup at that." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46167268))
- Company went under, poor returns (3 comments): "it seems like Iridium is a bad investment because it's a company that has spent 21+ years to turn $8 billion into $400 million" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48725599)) "Iridium already did it and they went under." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48410843)) "the most spectacular crash being Iridium" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46166430))

## Where to get it

- [Visit the official site](https://www.iridium.com/)

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "Iridium satellite service", https://hackerapproved.com/p/iridium/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).