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About this video
In 1998, Motorola launched Iridium, a $5 billion satellite network built to let you make a phone call from anywhere on Earth. Nine months later, the company filed for bankruptcy. The engineering worked perfectly. The problem was a business plan written in 1991 that assumed international roaming would stay expensive forever. By the time the satellites were in orbit, GSM had spread across most of the world and roaming costs had collapsed. This is the story of how one outdated assumption brought down one of the most ambitious engineering projects in telecommunications history.
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