The following is excerpted from the question-and-answer section of the transcript.
(Questions from industry analysts are provided in full, but answers are omitted - download the transcript to see the full question-and-answer session)
Question: Michael Louie D DiPalma - William Blair & Company L.L.C., Research Division - Analyst
: Matt, Tom and Ken. First on Aireon. International airline traffic is rebounding in a big way. What needs to happen for Aireon to pay the remaining
money that it owes Iridium?
Thomas Fitzpatrick
That's caught up in a refinancing, Louie, that they intend to do, but that's in our estimation a couple of years out.
Question: Michael Louie D DiPalma - William Blair & Company L.L.C., Research Division - Analyst
: Great. And there's been a lot of discussion about providing Iridium connectivity for drones. Is there also applicability to provide Iridium connectivity
for the eVTOL market as that emerges in the United States?
Matthew Desch
Yes. We're already doing work with, I know 1 partner. I won't mention who they are, but they're actually doing quite what I would call, large
autonomous aircraft today and have expectations for moving to the eVTOL space.
That whole new uncrewed air mobility market, eVTOL is exciting. I think it's taking a long time to kind of develop for lots of different reasons, both
the technology and the standards and the regulatory bit, I think, it's going to have the same expectations, particularly as it moves to autonomous
sort of capabilities. I think the early ones are going to be all probably crude. But eventually, the desire in that industry is to move to autonomy.
And you need connectivity to those aircraft, and they're not real big and they have rotors on them. So again, a perfect fit for someone like Iridium's
network given our size, weight and power type of our transceivers. So it's still early days for those. I've had some discussions with them. They all
express interest, but they seem to be more focused on certification of their platforms today than connectivity of them because that's more of an
implementation into the user, into the national airspace.
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JULY 25, 2023 / 12:30PM, IRDM.OQ - Q2 2023 Iridium Communications Inc Earnings Call
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