Iridium CEO outlines plan for expansion: Defense Department satellite voice-communications traffic skyrockets after Sept. 11.

• Author: Book, Elizabeth G.

The DEFENSE DEPARTMENT is expected to extend its contract for Iridium satellite communications services after the current two-year agreement expires in 2003, officials said. Company executives said that traffic on the Pentagon's secure satellite communications gateway has quadrupled since September 11.

"Given the success of the Iridium program to date, I would be extremely surprised if we didn't continue to provide service" after the contract expires next year, said Gino Picasso, chief executive of Iridium Satellite LLC, in Arlington, Va.

Iridium's predecessor firm collapsed in 1999. The Defense Department stepped in with a $72 million contract to save the constellation of 66 low-earth orbiting (LEO) satellites from being destroyed and the company survived, under new ownership. The Pentagon's contract provides unlimited remote communication access for 20,000 U.S. government users around the world. Iridium also built a secure gateway in Hawii, separate from its commercial gateway in Tempe, Ariz.

Betsy Flood, a spokeswoman at the Defense Information Systems Agency, said that the Defense Department gateway has logged 348,724 calls between September 2001 and March 2002. That amounts to about 1.1 million minutes. The average telephone call is about three minutes long. There are approximately 8,100 users of the Iridium phones, 8,100 users of the pagers, and 7,100 who transmit both voice and data, said Flood.

Picasso, who worked in the international satellite networking and

telecommunications sector for 20 years, joined Iridium Satellite LLC soon after the Defense Department contract was signed in 2001. A Wharton School of Business graduate who grew up in Lima, Peru, Picasso is responsible for Iridium's short and long-term business strategies.

He said satellite phones and pagers are valued by the military services, because "the first thing that goes in a disaster is communications infrastructure.

During overseas deployments, he added, it often is unrealistic to be dependent on the communication infrastructure of a host country. "When you're doing military operations, you must have independence of terrestrial infrastructure," Picasso said. Iridium communications require line-of-sight to the satellite.

A study by the Aerospace Corporation concluded that the constellation's expected life will extend through mid-2012, when initially it was thought to extend only through 2007.

The satellite traffic increase after September 11, "accelerated all of the...