Iridium Communications Inc. (IRDM) Business

Item 1. Business

Business Overview

Iridium Communications Inc. (“we,” “us,” or “Iridium”) is a leading provider of global voice, data, and positioning, navigation and timing (PNT) satellite services. We are the only commercial provider of communications services offering true global coverage, connecting people, organizations and assets to and from anywhere, in real time. Our low-Earth orbit (LEO), L-band network provides specialized, reliable, weather-resilient communications services to regions of the world where terrestrial wireless or wireline networks do not exist or are limited, including remote land areas, open ocean, airways, the polar regions, and regions where the telecommunications infrastructure has been affected by political conflicts or natural disasters. In addition, our satellites have additional payloads to host specific additional services for other customers like Aireon LLC. We also utilize our long history operating a commercial LEO satellite system to provide a growing array of engineering and operational services to government customers and government network operators such as the U.S. Space Force.

Our primary business is to provide voice and data communications services to businesses, U.S. and foreign governments, non-governmental organizations, and consumers via our satellite network, which has an architecture of 66 operational satellites with in-orbit spares and related ground infrastructure. We utilize an interlinked mesh architecture in space to route traffic across our satellite constellation using radio frequency crosslinks between satellites. This architecture minimizes the need for local ground facilities to support the constellation, which facilitates the global reach of our services and allows us to offer services in countries and regions where we have no physical presence.

We primarily sell our products and services to commercial end users by recruiting and expanding a global wholesale distribution network, currently encompassing approximately 120 service providers, approximately 310 value-added resellers (VARs), and approximately 90 value-added manufacturers (VAMs), which create and sell technology that uses the Iridium network either directly to the end user or indirectly through other service providers, VARs or dealers. These distributors often integrate our products and services with other complementary hardware and software and have developed a broad suite of applications using our products and services to target specific industries or business areas. We expect that demand for our services will increase as more applications are developed and deployed that utilize our technology.

Our commercial business, which we view as our primary source of long-term growth, is diverse and serves markets such as emergency services, maritime, aviation, government, utilities, oil and gas, mining, recreation, forestry, heavy equipment, construction, railways and other transportation. Many of our end users view our products and services as critical to their daily operations and integral to their communications and business infrastructure. For example, multinational corporations in various sectors use our services for business telephony, email and data transfer, including telematics and personal location tracking, and to provide mobile communications services for employees in areas inadequately served by other telecommunications networks. Commercial enterprises use our services to track and control assets in remote areas and provide telematics information such as location and engine diagnostics. IoT (Internet of Things) VARs integrate our products and services into diverse solutions including asset tracking, environmental monitoring, condition-based monitoring and security and alerting solutions, which are used across industries. Ship crews and passengers use our services for ship-to-shore calling, as well as to send and receive email and data files, and to receive electronic media, weather reports, emergency bulletins, and electronic charts. Shipping operators use our services to manage operations on board ships and to transmit data, such as course, speed, fuel, weather, and other navigation service data, as well as for emergency services, as one of only two networks currently approved to provide Global Maritime Distress and Safety System (GMDSS) services. Increasingly, ships utilize Iridium terminals with integrated data and safety capabilities to complement and backup higher speed broadband services from other satellite operators that are subject to service outages, interference during rain, and geographic regulatory restrictions. Aviation end users use our services for air-to-ground telephony and data communications for position reporting, flight following, emergency tracking, weather information, electronic flight bag updates, and airline operational communications. Recreational users rely on our services as a safety and critical personal communications lifeline to remain in contact with friends and family, as well as for emergency distress signals.

We have also seen growing adoption of our services to support autonomous systems, for which Iridium is used for command and control, image transmission and environmental data gathering via unmanned aerial, underwater and surface vehicles. Iridium Certus® provides a platform for our partners to develop specialized broadband and midband (a term we use to describe services between our legacy 2.4 Kbps narrowband and our 128 Kbps and higher speed broadband offerings) applications on our network. In 2024, we introduced additional Iridium Certus offerings featuring Iridium Messaging Transport® (IMT®) that enable IoT applications to send more data, with greater security and natively delivered via cloud infrastructure. Throughout 2025, our VAM and VAR partners continued to innovate around our Certus IoT technology platform, developing and certifying new products and applications across industrial IoT, machine-to-machine and remote personnel use cases. With broadband

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services provided for the maritime, land-mobile and aviation industries and a midband service designed for maximum mobility, Iridium Certus offers flexibility to scale device speeds, sizes, and power requirements both up and down based on the needs of the end-user. We expect that these and future Iridium Certus service offerings will continue to drive growth opportunities in our commercial business.

We are developing a new service called Iridium NTN DirectSM, which we expect to commercially launch from our existing satellite constellation in 2026. Iridium NTN Direct is a 3GPP (3rd Generation Partnership Project) standards-based service that will provide Narrowband Internet of Things (NB-IoT) and direct-to-device (D2D) connectivity across the globe when fully deployed. 3GPP is an international collaboration that develops and maintains technical specifications for mobile communications technologies, enabling global interoperability of mobile networks and devices. Iridium frequencies and technology were accepted as part of 3GPP Release 19, which allows Iridium NTN Direct to be accessible via cellular chipsets designed to 3GPP standards.

In 2024, we acquired Satelles, Inc. (Satelles), a provider of highly secure, satellite-based PNT services that complement and protect Global Positioning System (GPS) and other Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) reliant systems. Time synchronization and location data play an important role in the global economy, particularly for major industries supported by critical infrastructure, such as financial services, telecommunications, cybersecurity, shipping, and transportation. In 2026, we are introducing an Application Specific Integrated Chip (ASIC) to allow partners to more cost effectively integrate our PNT services into their diverse applications using less power and space. We believe the acquisition of Satelles and our growing portfolio of PNT applications and distribution partnerships could generate substantial growth in our service revenue, as well as incremental growth in our equipment and engineering services revenue over the coming years, from both government and commercial customers. We also believe that Iridium PNT technology and services have application and business potential in other industries, like cybersecurity identity management by providing a trusted, authenticated location for data and financial transactions.

The U.S. government, directly and indirectly, has been and continues to be our largest single customer, generating $257.0 million in revenue, representing 29% of our total revenue, for the year ended December 31, 2025. This does not include revenue from the sale of equipment that may ultimately be purchased by U.S. or non-U.S. government agencies through third-party distributors, or airtime services purchased by U.S. or non-U.S. government agencies that are provided through our commercial gateway, as we lack specific visibility into these activities and the related revenue. We operate primarily under a multi-year, fixed-price contract with the U.S. government, which we refer to as our Enhanced Mobile Satellite Services (EMSS) contract to provide specified satellite airtime services for an unlimited number of U.S. Department of War (DoW) (previously referred to as the Department of Defense) and other federal government subscribers. At signing in September 2019, the EMSS contract had a total value of $738.5 million over its seven-year term ending in September 2026. The current fixed-price annual rate of the EMSS contract is $110.5 million through September 2026, with one six-month extension option, exercisable at the election of the U.S. government, at the end of that period. We provide other services, such as Iridium Certus and Iridium PNT, to the U.S. government under separate arrangements for an additional fee.

The U.S. government owns and operates a dedicated gateway that is only compatible with our satellite network, and for which we provide certain maintenance services, and technology development engineering and support services, under contracts managed by the U.S. Space Force. The U.S. armed services, State Department, Department of Homeland Security, Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), Customs and Border Protection, and other U.S. government agencies, as well as other nations’ governmental agencies, use our voice and data services for a wide variety of applications. Our voice and data products are used for numerous primary and backup communications solutions, including logistical, administrative, morale and welfare, tactical, and emergency communications. In addition, our products are installed in ground vehicles, ships, and rotary- and fixed-wing aircraft and are used for command-and-control and situational awareness purposes. Our satellite network provides increased network security to the U.S. government because traffic is routed across our satellite constellation before being brought down to earth through the dedicated, secure U.S. government gateway. The U.S. government has made, and continues to make, significant investments to maintain and upgrade its dedicated gateway, to purchase our voice and data devices, and to invest directly and indirectly in research and development and implementation support for additional services on our network, such as Distributed Tactical Communications Services (DTCS), Iridium Managed Access-Distributed Tactical Communication System NEXT (MA-DNX) and Iridium Certus.

We also provide engineering and support services to the U.S. government under a contract awarded by the Space Development Agency (SDA) in May 2022 to General Dynamics Mission Systems, with Iridium as a subcontractor, which we refer to as the SDA contract. Under this contract, General Dynamics Mission Systems and Iridium are building ground entry points and operations centers for the DoW’s Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture (PWSA) and will provide network operations and systems integration services for the SDA’s next tranche of proliferated low-Earth orbit satellites.

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At December 31, 2025, we had approximately 2,537,000 billable subscribers worldwide, representing a 3% increase compared to December 31, 2024. Total revenue increased from $830.7 million in 2024 to $871.7 million in 2025, representing a 5% increase.

Industry

We compete primarily in the mobile satellite services sector of the global communications industry. Mobile satellite services operators provide voice and data services to people and machines using a network of satellites and ground facilities, and utilize licensed radio frequency spectrum in what is called the L- or S-bands that are ideal for (among other things) consumer devices, small antennas, and battery powered devices. Satellite based L- and S-band frequencies were fully allocated by the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) in the early 1990s and are utilized by a limited number of mobile satellite operators like Iridium. Mobile satellite services are intended to meet users’ needs for connectivity in all locations where terrestrial wireless and wireline communications networks do not exist, do not provide sufficient coverage, or are impaired, including rural and developing areas that lack adequate wireless or wireline networks, airways, ocean and polar regions where few alternatives exist, and regions where the telecommunications infrastructure has been affected by political conflicts or natural disasters.

Government organizations, including military and disaster response agencies, non-governmental organizations, and industrial operations and support teams depend on mobile and fixed voice and data satellite communications services on a regular basis. Businesses with global operations require reliable communications services when operating in remote locations around the world. Mobile satellite services users span many sectors, including emergency services, maritime, aviation, government, utilities, oil and gas, mining, recreation, forestry, heavy equipment, construction, railways and other transportation, among others. Many of our customers view satellite communications services as critical to their daily operations.

While traditionally requiring purpose built, proprietary devices and terminals to connect satellites to end users, increasingly, mobile satellite spectrum is being utilized for providing voice and data services from satellites directly to standards-based consumer devices like smartphones and watches. L- and S-band spectrum like Iridium’s is ideal for this application compared to other satellite frequencies due to propagation characteristics, the proximity to GPS and cellular frequencies for common antennas and other Radio frequency components, and growing cellular standardization activities through 3GPP that include these frequencies in the latest 5G standards (often referred to as Non-Terrestrial Networks or NTN). Initial applications include emergency and text messaging, but expectations are that additional data and voice services will be available over time on a regional or more global basis. Iridium’s NTN Direct service is an example of a standards-based service for messaging, emergency access, and IoT transmissions.

We believe growth in the terrestrial wireless industry has increased awareness of the need and higher expectations for reliable mobile voice and data communications services. In addition, despite significant penetration and competition, terrestrial wireless systems do not cover a large majority of the earth’s surface and are focused mainly in those areas where people live, excluding oceans and other remote regions where ships, airplanes and other remote assets may be. By offering proprietary or standards-based mobile communications services with global voice and data coverage, mobile satellite service providers address the demand from businesses, governments and individuals for connectivity and reliability in locations not consistently served by wireline and wireless terrestrial networks.

The mobile satellite services sector of the global telecommunications industry also benefits from the continued development of innovative, lower-cost technology and applications integrating mobile satellite products and services, including the continued advancement of IoT. We believe that growth in demand for mobile satellite services is driven in large part by the declining cost of these services, the diminishing size and lower costs of voice, data and IoT devices, the rollout of new applications tailored to the specific needs of customers across a variety of markets, the convergence of standards between satellite and cellular industries and the increasing availability of dual mode cellular and terrestrial technology, and expansion into new international markets.

Communications industry sectors include:

•mobile satellite services, which provide customers with voice and data connectivity to mobile and fixed devices using ground facilities and networks of geostationary Earth orbit (GEO) satellites operating in licensed L-band or S-band frequencies, which are located approximately 22,300 miles above the equator, medium Earth orbit satellites, which orbit between approximately 6,400 and 10,000 miles above the earth’s surface, or low Earth orbit (LEO) satellites, such as those in our constellation, which orbit between approximately 300 and 1,000 miles above the earth’s surface;

•very small aperture terminal (VSAT) satellite services (previously referred to as fixed satellite services), which typically use GEO or LEO satellites operating in licensed Ka-band or Ku-band frequencies to provide customers with broadband communications links between fixed or moving points on or above the earth’s surface; and

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•terrestrial services, which use a network of land-based equipment, including switching centers and radio base stations, to provide wireless or wireline connectivity and are complementary to satellite services.

Within the two major satellite sectors, VSAT services and mobile satellite services, the products that operators offer differ from each other with respect to size of antenna and types of services that the products can offer.

•VSAT services providers, such as Eutelsat Communications S.A. (Eutelsat) and SES S.A., are characterized by large, often stationary ground terminals that send and receive high-bandwidth signals to and from the satellite network for video and high-speed data customers and international telephone markets. Newer entrants’ primary offerings, such as Starlink broadband from Space Exploration Technology Corp. (SpaceX) and Eutelsat’s OneWeb Holdings Limited, are based on a LEO network, but due to their K-band higher-broadband offerings, they are more similar to VSAT services requiring larger-antennas and power.

•By contrast, mobile satellite services providers, such as us, focus more on voice and data services, where mobility and small-sized terminals are essential. Other mobile satellite service providers include Globalstar, Inc., ORBCOMM Inc., portions of Viasat Inc.’s businesses (following its acquisition of Inmarsat Global Limited). New entrants are emerging as well such as Starlink’s D2D offerings, which currently utilizes terrestrial cellular frequencies that extend cellular coverage within defined, limited markets, but has plans for a global service in the future utilizing spectrum purchased from EchoStar in 2025.

LEO systems, such as the one we operate, generally have lower transmission delays, or latency, than GEO systems, due to the shorter distance signals have to travel. Additionally, our L-band solutions enable the use of smaller antennas on mobile devices. Our L-band spectrum is also more resistant to weather interference than K-band spectrum. We believe the unique interlinked mesh architecture of our constellation, combined with the global footprint of our satellites, distinguishes us from regional LEO mobile satellite services (MSS) operators such as Globalstar and ORBCOMM by allowing us to route voice and data transmissions to and from anywhere on the earth’s surface without the need for local ground infrastructure. As a result, we are the only mobile satellite services operator offering real-time, weather-resilient, low-latency services with true global coverage, including full coverage of the polar regions.

Our Competitive Strengths

•Our Constellation. Our unique satellite constellation provides true global and weather-resilient coverage, which enables our wide range of service offerings and empowers the development of new global products and services, as well as supports Aireon® aircraft tracking services and other hosted payload missions. Our network design of 66 operational satellites uses an interlinked mesh architecture to transmit signals from satellite to satellite, which reduces the need for multiple local ground stations around the world, facilitates the global reach of our services, and increases network redundancy. Some of our competitors use GEO satellites, which orbit above the earth’s equator, limiting their visibility in far northern or southern latitudes and polar regions. LEO satellites without a crosslink architecture from operators like Globalstar and ORBCOMM use an architecture commonly referred to as “bent pipe,” which requires voice and data transmissions to be immediately routed to ground stations in the same region as the satellite and can only provide real-time service when they are within view of a ground station, limiting coverage to areas near where they have been able to license and locate ground infrastructure. The LEO design of our satellite constellation produces minimal voice and data transmission delays compared to GEO systems due to the shorter distance our signals have to travel, and LEO systems typically have smaller antenna and power requirements.

•Our Spectrum. We hold licenses to use up to 8.725 MHz of contiguous spectrum in the L-band (1617.775-1626.0 GHz), which allow for two-way communication between our devices and our satellites. Our use of spectrum is globally coordinated and recorded by, and subject to the frequency rules and regulations of, the International Telecommunication Union (ITU). L-band spectrum is desirable because it can support lower size, weight and power user equipment and is more resistant to weather interference, like rain attenuation, and suffers less path loss than Ka- and Ku- spectrum, which is used by many broadband satellite operators. This makes L-band spectrum well suited for our existing services, including safety services, as well as emerging D2D services, which has become an increasing business opportunity due to technological development and a movement toward standards-based terrestrial wireless solutions that incorporate or interwork with non-terrestrial networks.

•Attractive and growing markets. We believe that mobile satellite services will continue to experience growth driven by the increasing public expectations for reliable mobile voice and data communications services, the lack of coverage of most of the earth’s surface by terrestrial wireless systems, the continued development of IoT, and the continued development of other innovative, lower-cost technology, such as applications integrating mobile satellite products and services into other devices, including embedding standards-based satellite technology in smartphones and IoT devices.

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Only satellite providers can offer global coverage, and developing a satellite network requires significant financial investment, as well as navigation of technological and regulatory challenges. With our established global satellite network, we believe that we are well-positioned to capitalize on growth in this industry from end users who require reliable, easy-to-use mobile communications services in all locations.

•Strategic relationship with the U.S. government. The U.S. government is our largest single customer, and we have provided airtime services to the U.S. government (particularly the DoW) since our inception. We believe the U.S. government views our encrypted handset, IoT devices, tactical radio services and other products as mission-critical services and equipment. The U.S. government continues to make significant investments in a dedicated gateway on a U.S. government site to provide operational security and allow U.S. government handset and IoT users to communicate securely with other U.S. government communications equipment. This gateway is only compatible with our satellite network. We continue to see usage of our network under the latest iteration of our long-standing EMSS contract and expect to negotiate a follow-on contract prior to the end of its seven-year term in September or six-month extension in early 2027. With ongoing investments by the DoW, we expect to see growth in adoption as enhancements are implemented and new services are launched. We also view the SDA contract as a confirmation and expansion of our strategic relationship with the U.S. government.

•Wholesale distribution network. The specialized needs of our global end users span many markets, including emergency services, maritime, aviation, government, utilities, oil and gas, mining, recreation, forestry, heavy equipment, construction, railways and other transportation. We sell our products and services to commercial end users through a wholesale distribution network of service providers, VARs and VAMs, which often specialize in a particular line of business. Our distributors use our products and services to develop innovative and integrated communications solutions for their target markets, embedding our technology in their products or combining our products with other technologies, such as GPS and terrestrial wireless technology. In addition to promoting innovation, our wholesale distribution model allows us to capitalize on the research and development expenditures of our distribution partners, while lowering overall customer acquisition costs and mitigating some risks, such as consumer relationship risks. By supporting these distributors as they develop new products, services and applications, we believe we create additional demand for our products and services and expand our target markets at a lower cost than would a more direct marketing model. We believe our distribution network can continue to grow with us and increase our market penetration. For example, our network, spectrum and architecture are ideally suited to small, handheld devices used for personal communications, and we have leveraged our wholesale distribution approach to provide a wide array of such personal communications services using both Iridium and partner devices.

Our Business and Growth Strategies

•Leverage our largely fixed-cost infrastructure to grow our service revenue. Our business model is characterized by periodic higher capital costs in connection with designing, building and launching new generations of our satellites to support our 15-to-20-year constellation operational cycles, and a low incremental cost of providing service to additional end users. We are currently in a period of lower capital expense, which we expect to continue until at least 2031. We believe that service revenue will be our largest source of future growth and profits, and we intend to focus on growing both our commercial and government service revenue in order to leverage our largely fixed-cost infrastructure. In particular, we believe that data services through Iridium Certus, resilient PNT services, and satellite IoT services, where we are engaging large, global enterprises as long-term customers for data and telematics solutions, represent our greatest opportunities for service revenue growth.

•Expand our target markets through the development of new products and services and evaluating complementary acquisitions. We believe that we can expand our target markets by developing and offering a broader range of products and services, including a wider array of cost-effective and competitive midband, safety services, and IoT data services using our proprietary Iridium Certus technology to complement and expand on our legacy narrowband services. Iridium Certus is a multi-service technology platform that can deliver a range of services, from voice to a high-throughput L-band data connection, at a range of competitive price points, data speeds, and terminal dimensions to meet an expanding set of customer requirements. Beyond Iridium Certus technology, we also plan to expand our target markets by adding a standards-based IoT solution. We are developing a new service called Iridium NTN DirectSM, which we expect to launch in 2026. Iridium NTN Direct is a 3GPP standards-based service that will provide NB-IoT and D2D connectivity across the globe when fully developed. Inclusion in the 3GPP standards will allow Iridium NTN Direct to be accessible via chipsets designed to the latest 3GPP standards. We also began offering in 2024, with the acquisition of Satelles, highly secure satellite-based time and location services that complement and protect GPS and other GNSS-reliant systems, which we expect to be a source of significant revenue growth in the future. We also plan to explore potential transactions that we believe could serve as complementary to our existing products and services or open opportunities in adjacent areas.

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•Accelerate the development of personal communications and PNT capabilities. Part of our strategy for the development of personal mobile satellite communications is to allow individuals to connect to our network in more ways. Our standards-based Iridium NTN Direct service will expand the potential market of devices that can connect to our network. In addition, we continue to support our VAMs and VARs, such as Garmin, in developing personal communication devices. We are also making our technology more accessible and cost-effective for our distribution partners to integrate by licensing our core technologies; by adding functionality, such as push-to-talk (PTT) capability, which allows multiple users to participate in talk groups worldwide; by providing rugged, dependable devices and services; and by developing new services that take advantage of the capabilities of our global constellation. To expand the addressable use cases for our Iridium PNT services, we are developing a dedicated, miniature application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) called the Iridium PNT ASIC, which we expect to be available in 2026.

•Continued growth in business with the U.S. government. We are seeking to expand our work on U.S. national security missions, building on our strong existing relationship with the U.S. government. Under our EMSS contract, we provide Iridium airtime services, including unlimited global standard and secure voice, paging, fax, Short Burst Data® (SBD®), Iridium Burst®, Router-Based Unrestricted Digital Interworking Connectivity Solutions (RUDICs) and DTCS services for an unlimited number of DoW and other federal government subscribers. The fixed-price annual rate of the EMSS contract through September 2026 is $110.5 million, with one six-month extension option, exercisable at the election of the U.S. government, at the end of that period. We expect to negotiate a follow-on contract with the U.S. government before expiration of the current EMSS contract. Other services such as Iridium Certus and Iridium PNT provide us with opportunities to offer new products and services to the U.S. government for an additional fee. Our work for the SDA has been a source of revenue growth in the past couple of years and we believe it positions us well for future opportunities, including as the U.S. government invests heavily in space-based capabilities and missile defense, including as part of its Golden Dome for America initiative.

•Continue to expand our distribution network. We believe our wholesale distribution network lowers our costs and risks, and we plan to continue to selectively expand our network of service providers, VAMs and VARs, to expand our sales and distribution efforts geographically, and to add additional industries or lines of business. We expect that our current and future value-added partners will continue to develop customized products, services and applications targeted to the land mobile, IoT, maritime, aviation and government markets. We believe these markets and the new service providers, VAMs and VARs who join our network as a result of new product offerings represent an attractive opportunity for continued subscriber and revenue growth. With the development of Iridium NTN Direct, we also are partnering with mobile network operators (MNOs) and expect these MNOs will offer the service to their broad customer bases.

•Continue to support Aireon in the execution of its business plan. Aireon, which was formed in 2011, with subsequent investments from five air navigation service providers (ANSPs), is our primary hosted payload customer. Aireon developed an automatic dependent surveillance-broadcast (ADS-B) receiver payload that is hosted on our satellites and gathers ADS-B position information from aircraft to provide a global air traffic surveillance service. Aireon has contracted to offer its service to ANSPs and other commercial customers worldwide. Aireon has also contracted to pay us a fee to host their payloads on our satellites and pays us data service fees for the delivery of the air traffic surveillance data from those payloads over the Iridium system. We also continue to hold a meaningful equity stake in Aireon.

Distribution Channels

We sell our products and services to customers through a wholesale distribution network of approximately 120 service providers, approximately 310 VARs and approximately 90 VAMs. These distributors sell our products and services to end users, either directly or indirectly through service providers, VARs or dealers. Of these distributors, approximately 57 sell primarily to U.S. and international government customers. Our distributors often integrate our products and services with other complementary hardware and software and have developed individual solutions targeting specific lines of business. We also sell airtime services directly to the U.S. government, including the DoW, for resale to other government agencies. The U.S. government and international government agencies may purchase additional services as well as our products and related applications through our network of distributors. Our partner ecosystem continues to grow worldwide, including IoT platform providers, chipset manufacturers and application developers. These distributors often integrate our products and services with other complementary hardware and software and have developed a broad suite of applications using our products and services to target niche markets. During 2025, our partners certified 57 new Iridium products across IoT, maritime, and land mobile applications, demonstrating continued innovation around our technology platform.

We provide our distributors with support services, including assistance with coordinating end user sales and marketing, strategic planning and training, and second-tier customer support, as well as helping them market our products and services and respond to new business opportunities. We have representatives covering three regions around the world to better manage our

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distributor relationships: the Americas, which includes North, South and Central America; Asia Pacific, which includes Australia and Asia; and Europe, which includes the Middle East, Africa and Russia. We have also established a global service program to provide portside service for our maritime customers at major ports worldwide. In addition, we maintain various online management tools that allow us to communicate efficiently with our distributors and allow them to manage their customers’ Iridium devices from anywhere in the world. By relying on our distributors to manage end user sales, we believe that we reduce some of the risks and costs related to our business, such as consumer relationship risks and sales and marketing costs, while providing a broad and expanding distribution network for our products and services with access to diverse and geographically dispersed niche markets. We are also able to benefit from the specialized expertise of our distributors, who continue to develop innovative and improved solutions and applications integrating our product and service offerings, providing us with an attractive platform to support our growth.

Commercial

We view our commercial business as our primary source of long-term growth. Service providers and VARs serve as our main distribution channel by purchasing our products and services and marketing them directly to their customers, or indirectly through independent dealers. They are each responsible for customer billing, end user customer care, managing credit risk and maintaining all customer account information. If our service providers or VARs provide our services through dealers, these dealers will often provide such services directly to the end user. Service providers typically purchase our most basic products and services, such as mobile voice services and related satellite handsets, and offer additional services such as voicemail. Unlike service providers, our VARs typically focus more on data applications and provide a broader array of value-added services specifically targeted to the niche markets they serve, such as IoT, maritime, aviation and government markets, where high-use customers with specialized needs are concentrated. These VARs integrate our handsets, transceivers, data services devices and SBD modems with other hardware and software to create packaged solutions for end users. Examples of these applications include cockpit voice and data solutions for use by the aviation sector and voice, data and tracking applications for industrial customers, such as Caterpillar Inc., the DoW, and other U.S. and foreign government agencies. Our service providers include satellite service providers such as Marlink AS, Applied Satellite Technology Limited and Network Innovations Inc., as well as some of the largest telecommunications companies in the world, including Telstra Limited and KDDI Corporation. Our VARs include ARINC Incorporated, Beam Communications Pty Ltd., Garmin Services Inc., Garmin International Inc., Gogo Business Aviation LLC, Komatsu Ltd, Kore Wireless Inc., MetOcean Telematics Limited, NAL Research Corp., Rockwell Collins Inc., and Zunibal S.L.

We also sell our products to VAMs, who integrate our transceivers or chipsets into their proprietary hardware. These VAMs produce specialized end-user equipment, including integrated ship, vehicular and aviation communications systems, and global asset tracking devices, which they offer to end users in IoT, maritime, aviation and government markets. As with our service providers and VARs, VAMs sell their products either directly or through other distributors, including some of our service providers and VARs. Our VAMs include Intellian Technologies, Inc., Thales Avionics, Inc., Calamp Wireless Networks Corporation, Amentum Technology, Inc., Nova Systems Pty Ltd, and Lars Thrane A/S.

In addition to VARs and VAMs, we maintain relationships with approximately 110 value-added developers (VADs). We typically provide technical information to these companies on our products and services, which they then use to develop software and hardware that complements our products and services in line with the specifications of our VARs and VAMs. These products include handset docking stations, airline tracking and flight management applications and crew e-mail applications for the maritime industry. We believe that working with VADs allows us to create new platforms for our products and services and increases our market opportunity while reducing our overall research and development, marketing, and support expenses. Our VADs include AnsuR Technologies AS, ASIQ Pty Ltd, Crib Gogh Ltd, and Ocean and Coastal Environment Sensing Inc.

We use a wholesale rate structure for our commercial products and services. Under our distribution agreements, we charge our distributors wholesale rates for commercial products and services, subject to discount and promotional arrangements and geographic pricing. We also charge fixed monthly access fees per subscriber for some of our services. Our distributors are in turn responsible for setting their own pricing to end users. Our agreements with distributors typically have terms of one year and are automatically renewable for additional one-year terms, subject to termination rights. We believe this business model reduces back-office complexities and costs and allows distributors to remain focused on revenue generation, while also providing incentives for distributors to focus on selling our commercial product and service portfolio and developing additional applications.

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Government

We provide mission-critical mobile satellite products and services to all military branches of the DoW as well as to other U.S. government departments and agencies. These users require voice and two-way data capability with global coverage, low latency, mobility and security and often operate in areas where no other terrestrial or wireless means of communications are available. We believe we are well positioned to satisfy demand from these users. Our 9575A handset is the only commercial, mobile handheld satellite phone capable of Type I encryption accredited by the U.S. National Security Agency for Top Secret voice communications. In addition, the U.S. government continues to make significant investments in a dedicated gateway that provides operational security and allows users of encrypted Iridium handsets to communicate securely with other U.S. government communications equipment. These investments include upgrading the gateway to take advantage of the enhanced capabilities of our network, including Iridium Certus and other enhanced services. This U.S. government gateway is only compatible with our satellite network.

We provide airtime and airtime support to U.S. government and other authorized customers pursuant to our seven-year EMSS contract managed by the U.S. Space Force, which we entered into in September 2019. Under the terms of this agreement, authorized customers utilize our airtime services through the U.S. government’s dedicated gateway. These services include unlimited global standard and secure voice, broadcast, netted, or DTCS, and select other services for an unlimited number of U.S. government subscribers. Other services may be purchased at an additional cost. The total contract value of EMSS is $738.5 million over the seven-year term. The fixed-price annual rate of the EMSS contract through September 2026 is $110.5 million, with one six-month extension option exercisable at the election of the U.S. government, at the end of that period. We expect to seek to negotiate a follow-on contract with the U.S. government upon expiration of the current EMSS contract. While we sell airtime directly to the U.S. government for resale to end users, our hardware products are sold to U.S. government customers through our network of distributors, who typically integrate them with other products and technologies. We may provide other services, such as Iridium Certus or Iridium PNT, to the U.S. government under separate arrangements for an additional fee.

We also provide maintenance services for the U.S. government gateway pursuant to our EMSS capabilities and security sustainment services (ECS3) contract managed by the U.S. Space Force, which replaced our previous Gateway Maintenance and Support Services (GMSS) contract. The ECS3 agreement, which we entered into in March 2024, has a total contract value to us of approximately $94 million, with a potential total value of $103 million, based on future surge requirements. The ECS3 contract had a base term running through March 2025, and we are currently in the first of up to four one-year extension options exercisable at the election of the U.S. government.

In August 2025, we were also awarded a five-year indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity system infrastructure transformation and hybridization (SITH) contract managed by the U.S. Space Force, which was a follow-on contract to our previous gateway evolution contract signed in 2019, to enable ongoing innovation and enhancements for the U.S. government gateway. This contract has a total contract value to us of up to $85.8 million.

In May 2022, the SDA awarded General Dynamics Mission Systems, with Iridium as a subcontractor, the SDA contract, to establish the ground Operations and Integration (O&I) segment for Tranche 1 of the PWSA. In July 2024, the General Dynamics/Iridium team received a contract modification of $491.6 million for the Ground Management and Integration (GMI) program. Of this amount, Iridium’s share has a value of $240 million over five years. Revenues from the SDA contract contributed to our increasing engineering and support service revenue from 2023 to 2025, as well as associated expenses, compared to the prior years, and we expect that higher level of revenues and expenses to continue throughout the life of the SDA contract.

U.S. government revenue accounted for approximately 29% of our total revenue for the year ended December 31, 2025. Our reported U.S. government revenue primarily includes revenue from the EMSS, ECS3, SITH (and its predecessor gateway evolution contract) and SDA contracts. Pursuant to federal acquisition regulations, the U.S. government may terminate these contracts, in whole or in part, at any time.

Our government revenue does not include airtime services purchased by U.S. or non-U.S. government agencies that are provided through our commercial gateway, which we report as commercial service revenue, or equipment purchased by government customers from third-party distributors. We are unable to determine the specific amount of U.S. government revenue derived from these commercial sources.

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Lines of Business

The specialized needs of our global customers span many markets. Our system is able to offer our customers cost-effective communications solutions with true global coverage in areas unserved or underserved by existing telecommunications infrastructure. Our mission-critical communications solutions have become an integral part of the communications and business infrastructure of many of our end users. In many cases, our service is the only connectivity for these critical applications or is used to complement terrestrial communications solutions.

Our current principal vertical lines of business include land mobile, maritime, aviation, IoT, hosted payloads and other data service, which includes PNT, and U.S. government. We report commercial voice and data service, IoT data service, commercial broadband, hosted payload and other data service, and government service revenue separately. Land mobile and aviation are the principal contributors to the revenue we report as commercial voice and data, while maritime is primarily reported in commercial broadband revenue.

Commercial Voice and Data and Commercial Broadband

We offer commercial voice and data and commercial broadband services primarily in the land mobile, maritime, and aviation sectors. We separately report commercial Iridium Certus broadband revenue with Iridium OpenPort® service revenue as commercial broadband revenue. Because there is considerable overlap in these services, we have combined our discussion of these revenue lines in this report, noting within the discussion where our broadband services contribute, particularly in maritime.

Land Mobile

We are a leading provider of mobile satellite communications services to the land mobile sector, providing handset services to areas not served or inconsistently served by existing terrestrial communications networks. Companies in the mining, forestry, construction, oil and gas, and utility sectors, as well as the military, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and public safety and disaster relief agencies, are significant users of our land mobile services. Sales of Iridium PTT services also contribute to the land mobile sector. We believe that demand for mobile communications devices operating outside the coverage of terrestrial networks, combined with our small, lightweight, durable handsets with truly global coverage, will allow us to capitalize on growth opportunities among these users.

Our land mobile end users utilize our satellite communications services for:

•Voice and data: Multinational corporations in various sectors use our services for business telephony, messaging services, location-based services, and SOS safety response coordination for employees in areas inadequately served by terrestrial networks. Oil and gas and mining companies, for example, provide their personnel with our equipment solutions while surveying new drilling and mining opportunities and while conducting routine operations in remote areas that are not served by terrestrial wireless communications networks. In addition, a number of recreational, scientific and other outdoor users rely on our mobile handheld satellite phones and services for use when beyond terrestrial wireless coverage. Iridium PTT offers NGOs, defense and military organizations, first responders, oil and gas companies, civil governments and other users the ability to conduct conference calls using the Iridium Extreme® PTT handset and other devices developed by our VAMs and VARs using the Iridium 9523 PTT core transceiver. The Thales MissionLINK terminal is an Iridium Certus broadband offering for the land mobile sector that allows rapid deployment and on-the-move communications, location tracking, and automatic WAN (wide area network) failover for added reliability.

•Mobile and remote office connectivity: A variety of enterprises use our services to make and receive voice calls and to establish data, email, internet and corporate network connections.

•Public safety and disaster relief: Relief agencies, such as FEMA, and other agencies, such as the Department of Homeland Security, use our products and services in their emergency response plans, particularly in the aftermath of natural disasters. These agencies generate significant demand for both our voice and data products, especially in advance of the hurricane season in North America. Further, many enterprises and governments include mobile satellite services such as ours as part of their PACE (Primary/Alternate/Contingency/Emergency) plan, to maintain communications continuity in case of terrestrial communication network outages.

•Public telephone infrastructure: Telecommunications service providers use our services to satisfy regulatory mandates and government expectations regarding the availability of communications services for rural populations currently not

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served by terrestrial infrastructure. Telstra Corporation, for example, uses our services to provide communications services in some of Australia’s most remote locations.

Maritime

We serve the commercial maritime market with a variety of products, including broadband terminals, embedded devices and handsets. This market includes merchant shipping, fishing, leisure and research vessels, and specialized watercraft. Since we introduced Iridium Certus broadband in January 2019, Iridium Certus services have accounted for an increasing portion of our revenue from this market, and we expect that trend to continue, although we still support our legacy broadband offering, Iridium OpenPort service. Our products and services targeting the maritime market typically have higher average revenue per subscriber than our other markets. Once one of our maritime systems is installed on a vessel, it often generates a multi-year recurring revenue stream from the customer, particularly in the context of mandatory safety systems, such as Iridium Certus GMDSS. To take advantage of this revenue potential, from time to time, we may offer promotions or rebates to accelerate new customer acquisitions and solidify this expected long-term revenue stream.

We believe Iridium Certus, which offers data speeds of up to 704 Kbps, presents a compelling communication solution for L-band users in the maritime market. Iridium Certus has been increasingly installed on oceangoing vessels as a companion to broadband services offered by geostationary (GEO) providers (such as VSAT services) and non-geostationary orbit (NGSO) providers. We expect additional offerings, such as Iridium Certus GMDSS services, to continue to increase the addressable market for our maritime services.

Maritime end users utilize our satellite communications services for the following:

•Business critical data applications: Ship operators use our services for business-critical data communications, including email and file transfer, meteorological and navigational information, emergency and safety bulletins, cargo and voyage data and electronic chart updates. Iridium Certus is well suited for these applications due to the characteristics of our global L-band network, which provides highly reliable, low-latency connectivity with true global coverage and resilience to atmospheric and geographic limitations. We believe the breadth of our Iridium Certus offerings provides cost-effective and flexible connectivity options for commercial shipping, as well as yachts, work boats and other vessels for which traditional marine satellite systems have often been costly or operationally constrained. Certus is increasingly deployed as a companion service to high-bandwidth VSAT and NGSO satellite systems, which may experience service degradation or outages due to weather, coverage gaps, congestion or terminal availability. In collaboration with our distributors, we enable service providers and VARs to deliver integrated solutions supporting voice messaging and IP-based data services. For example, Marlink Inc. has integrated Iridium Certus within its hybrid connectivity solutions, combining LEO and GEO satellite and terrestrial technologies, using Certus to provide resilient companion connectivity when higher-bandwidth services are unavailable or outside their coverage footprint.

•Voice services: Maritime global voice services are used for both vessel operations and communications for crew welfare.

•Vessel management and asset tracking: Shipping operators use our services to manage operations on ships and to transmit data, such as course, speed and fuel stock. Our services are commonly integrated with GPS to provide a real-time position reporting capability. Many fishing vessels are required by law to carry terminals using approved mobile satellite services for tracking purposes as well as to monitor catches and to ensure compliance with geographic fishing restrictions. European Union (EU) regulations, for example, require EU-registered fishing vessels of over 15 meters to carry terminals for the purpose of positional reporting of those vessels. Furthermore, new environmental regulations in some jurisdictions are expected to require monitoring of merchant vessels in territorial waters, which would provide an additional growth opportunity for us.

•Safety and Security applications: Ships in distress, including as a result of potential piracy, hijack or terrorist activity, rely on mobile satellite voice and data services. The Ship Security and Alert Systems (SSAS) and Long Range Identification Tracking (LRIT) regulations were adopted by the International Maritime Organization (IMO) to enhance maritime security in response to the threat from terrorism and piracy. Most deep-sea passenger and cargo ships must be fitted with a device that can send an alert message containing the ship’s ID and position whenever the ship is under threat or has been compromised. In addition, the IMO and a NATO advisory group have recommended the installation of a safe room or citadel equipped with a standalone secure communication link the crew can use from inside the room to communicate with rescuing forces. Our distribution partners have developed several product solutions using our network to meet these requirements for merchant and fishing vessels.

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In addition, we have been recognized by the IMO as one of only two providers for the GMDSS. The GMDSS is a maritime service built to alert a maritime rescue coordination center of each vessel’s situation and position, information that can then be used to coordinate search and rescue efforts among ships in the area. As part of the GMDSS service, navigational and meteorological information is distributed to vessels. The IMO requires all vessels flagged by signatories to the International Convention for the Safety of Life at Sea (SOLAS) over 300 gross tons and certain passenger vessels, irrespective of size, that travel in international waters to carry distress and safety terminals that provide GMDSS services. GMDSS service using our network became available in 2020, and our partners offer maritime terminals that include GMDSS service capabilities to vessel operators. In 2024, we announced the extension of GMDSS using Iridium’s Certus platform, adding Iridium GMDSS, as well as LRIT and SSAS, to the robust communication and safety capabilities of Iridium Certus.

Aviation

We are one of the leading providers of mobile satellite communications services to the aviation sector, and we continue to see aviation delivering year-over-year revenue growth. Our services are used in commercial and government aviation applications, principally by business jets, corporate and government helicopter fleets, specialized general aviation fleets, such as medevac companies and fire suppression fleets, and high-end personal aircraft. Our services are also employed by commercial airline operators for flight deck voice and data link services for aircraft operational and safety communications. As a result of authorizations by the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) for us to provide air traffic datalink communications, commercial operators are installing avionics that use the Iridium network on the flight deck to comply with international air navigation communications requirements to operate in oceanic and remote airspace, including polar regions. Voice and data avionics platforms from our VAMs have been adopted as standard equipment and as factory options for a range of airframes in business aviation and air transport, such as Gulfstream Aerospace Corporation, Bombardier Inc., Cessna Aircraft Company, Boeing and Airbus. Avionics platforms that utilize our network are also retrofitted on thousands of corporate and commercial aircraft already in operation.

Aviation end users utilize our satellite communications services for:

•Air traffic control communications and safety applications: The International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) has approved standards and recommended practices allowing us to provide Aeronautical Mobile Satellite (Route) Service (AMS(R)S) to commercial aircraft on long-haul routes. This allows member states to evaluate and approve our services for safety communications on flights in oceanic and remote airspace. The FAA has approved Iridium for use in the Future Air Navigation System (FANS), including Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Contract (ADS-C) datalink communications and Controller-Pilot Data Link Communications (CPDLC) with air traffic control. Aircraft crew and air traffic controllers use our services for data and voice communications between the aircraft flight deck and ground-based air traffic control facilities. We are the only satellite provider capable of offering these critical flight safety applications around the entire globe, including the polar regions. We believe this particular sector of the market provides us with significant growth opportunities, as our services and applications can serve as a cost-effective alternative to systems currently in operation.

•Aviation operational communications: Aircraft crew and ground operations use our services for air-to-ground telephony and data communications. This includes the ADS-C automatic reporting of an aircraft’s position and mission-critical condition data to the ground and CPDLC for clearance and information services. We provide critical communications applications for numerous airlines and air transport customers, including Hawaiian Airlines, United Airlines, UPS, FedEx, Cathay Pacific Airways, Delta Airlines, Southwest Airlines, American Airlines, Iceland Airlines, and El Al Airlines. These operators rely on our services because other forms of communication may be unaffordable or unreliable in areas such as oceanic, remote and polar regions. Collins Aerospace (ARINC) and SITA, the two leading providers of voice and data link communications services and applications to the commercial airline industry, rely on our products and services to deliver safe, reliable services to global operators.

•Aviation passenger communications: Corporate and private fleet aircraft passengers use our services for air-to-ground telephony and data communications. We believe our distributors’ small, lightweight, cost-effective solutions offer an attractive option for aircraft operators, particularly small fleet operators; for example, some operators use our services to enable small-cabin passengers to email using their own Wi-Fi-enabled mobile devices, including smartphones, without causing interference with aircraft operation. We expect that users in the corporate aviation market, and original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) for business jets, will increase adoption of our services for in-flight passenger data communications using our network.

•Rotary and general aviation applications: The Iridium network is uniquely suited to these sectors, as we have small antenna designs that work under rotor blades and enable installation on smaller general aviation platforms. We are also a major supplier for rotary aviation applications to end users in a number of markets, including medevac, law enforcement, oil and gas, and corporate work fleets. Companies such as Air Logistics, EagleMed and Air Evac

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Lifeteam rely on applications from our distributors for traditional voice communications, fleet tracking and management, and real-time flight diagnostics. VARs and VAMs such as Flightcell International Limited, Garmin Services Inc., Honeywell International Inc., SkyTrac Systems Limited, and Spider Tracks Limited incorporate Iridium products and services into their applications for these markets.

•Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs): Our small antennas, low power and system architecture support a wide range of UAV platforms. Iridium’s truly global coverage enables reliable, beyond-visual-line-of-sight (BVLOS) communications for UAV platforms. Because of these attributes, we expect UAV operators to continue to seek Iridium connectivity for their UAV platforms and to play a role in proposed BVLOS UAV regulations, such as proposed FAA regulations Part 108 and Part 146. We operate as the communication link for remote-piloted and autonomous aircraft for uses including package delivery, medical supply, power-line inspection, first responders, surveillance and defense applications.

We believe the benefits of Iridium Certus enhance our ability to address aviation market needs across these sectors. Our aviation safety services offering is ISO 27001:2022 certified, an internationally recognized standard for information security management systems, enhancing our commitment to aviation safety.

Commercial IoT Data

We are one of the leading providers of satellite-based IoT services. As with land mobile, our largest IoT users include mining, construction, recreation, oil and gas, utility, heavy industry, maritime, forestry and transport companies, as well as the military, and public safety and disaster relief agencies. Our IoT business benefits from strategic relationships with large global enterprises across multiple sectors. We have multi-year agreements with leading OEMs in heavy equipment, fleet management, and asset tracking. Our wholesale distribution model allows us to benefit from our partners’ research and development investments as they innovate around our core technology platform, creating new products and applications that expand our addressable market while reducing our direct development costs.

Our IoT services are used for:

•Personal tracking devices and location-based services: Several of our VARs, such as Garmin Services Inc., ACR Electronics, and Zoleo, Inc., market small, portable devices that provide personal tracking and data communications services to consumers and commercial end users. In addition, Iridium GO!® and the Iridium Extreme handsets offer personal tracking and location-based services. These devices use IoT data services to send location information and other data to web-based portals for tracking.

•Heavy equipment telematics: Large, global heavy equipment original equipment manufacturers, such as Caterpillar Inc., Komatsu Ltd, Hitachi Construction Machinery Co. Ltd., HD Hyundai Infracore Co., Ltd. and Appareo Systems LLC, use our global IoT services to monitor their off-road heavy equipment in markets such as construction, mining, agriculture and forestry.

•Fleet management: Our global coverage permits our products and services to be used to monitor the location of vehicle fleets, hours of service and engine telemetry data, as well as to conduct two-way communications with drivers around the world. Fleet management companies, such as I.D. Systems, Inc., MiX Telematics International (Pty) Ltd, and Omnilink Tecnologia S.A., use our service to provide distance drivers with reliable communications to their dispatchers and their destinations to coordinate changing business needs, and our satellite network provides continuous communications coverage while they are in transit. We expect that the need for more efficient, cost-effective and safer fleet operations, as well as the imposition of regulatory mandates related to driver safety, such as drive-time monitoring, will increase demand for our services in this area.

•Fixed-asset monitoring: Multinational corporations, such as oil-field service companies like Schlumberger Limited and ConocoPhillips Company, use our services through one of our service providers to run applications that allow remote monitoring and operation of equipment and facilities around the globe, such as oil pipelines and offshore drilling platforms.

•Asset tracking: Leveraging IoT applications developed by several of our distributors, companies use our services and related devices to track assets, including personnel, for logistics, theft-prevention and safety purposes. Companies and organizations that have fleets of vehicles use IoT solutions from Iridium distributors to improve the efficiency of their operations. For example, customers use Trimble Transportation’s solution to provide global communication to transportation assets, and the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Enforcement and Removal uses Fleet Management Solutions’ IoT solution to transmit position, direction, speed and other data for management of its vehicle fleet.

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•Resource management: Our global coverage and data throughput capabilities support natural resource management applications, such as fisheries management systems. Three of our VARs—Collecte Localisation Satellites (CLS), MetOcean Telematics Limited and Ground Control Technologies UK Ltd —have developed applications for the fishing industry that enable regulatory compliance of fishing practices in a number of countries around the world.

•Scientific data monitoring: The global coverage of our network supports many scientific data collection applications, including the Argo float program of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the Global Ocean Observation project Challenger, operated by Rutgers University, and anti-poaching programs run by the Smithsonian National Zoo & Conservation Institute, the Zoological Society of London, and Veterans Empowered to Protect African Wildlife (VETPAW). These programs rely on our IoT services to collect scientific data from buoys and ocean gliders located throughout the world’s oceans and from wildlife habitats for monitoring and analysis. We believe the increased need for monitoring climate and environmental data associated with global climate change and human impact on the planet will increase demand for these services.

In the future, we expect our value-added partners to develop new IoT solutions with increased capabilities based on our Iridium Certus 9770 and Iridium Certus 9704 transceivers and other IoT services we plan to provide in the future.

Hosted Payload and Other Data Service

Our Iridium satellites host customer payloads. We generate revenue from these customers both from the hosted payload capacity and from data service fees. Because the hosted payload revenues are based on a contractual commitment for the life of the Iridium constellation, we recognize revenue from these customers over the expected life of the system. Our constellation hosts the Aireon system, which provides a global air traffic surveillance service through a series of ADS-B receivers on our satellites. We formed Aireon LLC in 2011, with subsequent investments from several ANSPs, to develop and market this service. Aireon has contracted to provide surveillance and other services to ANSPs and other customers around the world. Aireon has also contracted to pay us a fee to host the ADS-B receivers on our satellites, as well as data service fees for the delivery of the air traffic surveillance data over the Iridium system. See “Aireon LLC and Aireon Holdings LLC Agreement” below for additional information. We also have an agreement with L3Harris Technologies, Inc. (L3Harris), the manufacturer of the Aireon hosted payload, pursuant to which L3Harris pays us fees to allocate the remaining hosted payload capacity to its customers and data service fees on behalf of these customers.

Our Iridium PNT services provide a reliable complement or alternative to GPS in the event of disruptions such as interference, jamming, or spoofing. We offer Iridium PNT to commercial and government customers, including the finance, telecommunications, maritime, transportation and energy and utility industries. Beginning in mid-2026, we expect to offer the Iridium PNT ASIC, which will enable resilient, secure primary or backup PNT capabilities in an ultra-compact chip.

In addition to access and usage fees in the vertical lines of business described above, we generate revenue from several ancillary services related to our core service offerings. We provide inbound connections from the public switched telephone network (PSTN), short message services (SMS), subscriber identity module (SIM), activation, customer reactivation, and other peripheral services. We also provide research and development services to assist customers in developing new technologies compatible with our system, which we may leverage for use in service and product offerings in the future. We charge our distributors fees for these services.

U.S. Government

We are one of the leading providers of mobile satellite communications services to the U.S. government, principally the DoW. We provide mobile satellite products and services to all branches of the U.S. armed forces. Our voice products are used for a variety of primary and backup communications solutions, including tactical operations, logistical, administrative, morale and welfare, and emergency communications. In addition, our products and related applications are installed on ground vehicles, ships, rotary- and fixed-wing aircraft, embedded in unattended sensors and used for command and control and situational awareness purposes. Global security concerns are among the factors driving demand for our products and services in this sector. See “U.S. Government Services” below for more information.

Seasonality

Our business is subject to seasonal usage changes for commercial customers, and we expect it to be affected by similar seasonality going forward. March through October are typically the peak months for commercial voice traffic and related

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subscriber equipment sales, given the predominance of population and outdoor activity in the northern hemisphere. U.S. government usage and commercial IoT usage have been less subject to seasonal changes.

Services and Products

At December 31, 2025, we had approximately 2,537,000 billable subscribers worldwide. Our principal services are mobile satellite services, including mobile voice and data services, IoT services, hosted payload and other data services, and engineering services. Sales of our commercial services collectively accounted for approximately 61% of our total revenue for the year ended December 31, 2025. We also sell related voice and data equipment to our customers, which accounted for approximately 9% of our total revenue for the year ended December 31, 2025. In addition, we offer services to U.S. government customers, accounted for approximately 29% of our total revenue for the year ended December 31, 2025.

Commercial Services

Postpaid Mobile Voice and Data Satellite Communications Services

We sell our mobile voice and data services to service providers and VARs who in turn offer such services to end users, either directly or indirectly through dealers, using various packaged solutions such as seasonal or annual plans with differing price levels that vary depending upon expected usage. In exchange for these services, we typically charge service providers and VARs a monthly access fee per subscriber, as well as usage fees for airtime resources consumed by their respective subscribers.

Prepaid Mobile Voice Satellite Communications Services

We also offer mobile voice services to service providers and VARs through prepaid plans. Service providers and VARs pay us in advance for defined blocks of airtime minutes with expiration periods in various configurations, generally ranging from 30 days to two years. These services are then generally sold to subscribers in the form of prepaid e-vouchers that enable subscribers to use our services on a per-minute basis. We believe service providers and VARs are drawn to these services because they enable greater cost control by eliminating the need for monthly billings and reducing collection costs, and can be sold in countries where credit may not be readily available for end users. Our distributors often offer our prepaid voice services through mobile devices to subscribers in rural villages, at remote industrial sites, and on recreational boats at sea, among other places.

Iridium PTT Service

Our Iridium PTT service enables regional or global PTT calls among users on the same talkgroup in up to 10 customer-defined, geographically disparate locations around the world, providing a fast and robust communication experience. Iridium PTT can be used via the Iridium Extreme PTT satellite phone or the Iridium 9523 PTT core transceiver, which gives our VAMs the ability to build Iridium PTT into existing land mobile and aviation communications platforms. For example, Icom Inc. of Japan offers a purpose-built satellite PTT radio handheld unit and fixed installation PTT radio for use on the Iridium network. We and our partners are also developing interoperability solutions for existing terrestrial land mobile radio systems, which will further extend the utility of the service.

Internet of Things (IoT) Services

Our IoT services are designed to address the market need for a small and cost-effective solution for sending and receiving data, such as location, from fixed and mobile assets in remote locations to a central monitoring station. Most of our IoT services operate through a two-way SBD transmission or circuit-switched data, between our network and a transceiver, which may be located, for example, on a container in transit or a buoy monitoring oceanographic conditions. The small size of our devices and their low-cost, omnidirectional antennas make them attractive for use in applications such as tracking asset shipments and monitoring unattended remote assets, including oil and gas assets, as well as vehicle tracking and mobile security. We sell our IoT services to our distributors, who incorporate them and in turn provide a solution package to commercial and government customers. Increasingly, our IoT transceivers are being built into products for consumer markets, such as personal location devices that provide two-way messaging. In the future, we expect our IoT partners to develop new offerings with increased capabilities for various applications based on our Iridium Certus 9770 transceiver and the newer Iridium Certus 9704 transceiver, with improved size, speed, power, and antenna characteristics. As with our mobile voice and data offerings, we

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typically charge service providers and VARs a monthly access fee per subscriber as well as usage fees for data used by their respective subscribers.

Broadband Data Services

Our broadband data offering, Iridium Certus, was launched in January 2019. Iridium Certus is a suite of products and services enabled by our upgraded satellite constellation. Iridium Certus is a multi-service platform capable of offering higher quality voice, enterprise-grade broadband functionality, and safety and security services on a global basis. Iridium Certus is designed to support a variety of cost points, antenna types and data speeds ranging from midband to broadband speeds, currently available up to 704 Kbps. We have licensed the Iridium Certus technology to VAMs who have introduced products for the maritime and land mobile markets and are developing additional products for those markets and the aviation and government markets, as well as distribution partners for the Iridium Certus service in each of these vertical markets. We believe Iridium Certus provides a competitive, cost-effective and reliable range of services to the market, in standalone applications or as a complement to other wireless technologies for critical applications and safety services.

We also continue to offer our legacy Iridium OpenPort service, which provides maritime, aviation and terrestrial users speeds of up to 134 Kbps and three independent voice lines. For this service, we typically charge service providers monthly access fees and usage fees for airtime consumed by the respective subscribers for voice and data communications. We have discontinued the manufacture of the Iridium Pilot platform that supports Iridium OpenPort services, with those customers often upgrading to Iridium Certus technology.

Iridium PNT Services

Following our acquisition of Satelles in April 2024, we began offering Iridium PNT services. Iridium PNT offers a highly secure, reliable, satellite-based complement or alternative to GPS and other GNSS-reliant systems, helping protect applications from vulnerabilities like spoofing and jamming, with small, low-cost hardware that does not require outdoor antennas. Like other Iridium services, Iridium PNT is capable of service everywhere on the planet, helping secure critical infrastructure, data centers, 5G base stations and applications across the aviation, maritime, land mobile and IoT sectors.

U.S. Government Services

We provide U.S. government customers bulk access to our services, including voice, netted voice, data, messaging and paging services, as well as maintenance services for the U.S. government’s dedicated gateway. We provide airtime to U.S. government subscribers through the U.S. government’s gateway under the EMSS contract, which is a fixed-price contract covering voice, low-speed data, paging, broadcast and DTCS services. Additional services, such as broadband capabilities utilizing Iridium Certus technology, may be provided at an additional fee. To comply with U.S. government requirements, we ensure handsets sold for use by the U.S. government are manufactured in the United States. U.S. government customers procure our voice and data devices through specific, approved distributors from our network of service providers and VARs. Our VARs and VAMs typically integrate our products with other products, which they then offer to U.S. government customers as customized products, typically provisioned by the U.S. Space Force. Our voice and data solutions for the U.S. government include:

•personnel tracking devices;

•asset tracking devices for equipment, vehicles and aircraft;

•beyond-line-of-sight aircraft communications applications;

•maritime communications applications;

•specialized communications solutions for high-value individuals; and

•specialized, secure, mobile communications and data devices for the military and other government agencies, such as secure satellite handsets with U.S. National Security Agency Type I encryption capability.

With funding support from the U.S. government, we continue to invest in research and development to develop new products and applications for use by all branches of the U.S. armed forces. For example, in conjunction with the U.S. Space Force, we and select distribution partners offer DTCS, which provides critical, secure, PTT, netted communications using lightweight, handheld tactical radios, or add-ons to existing government tactical radios. In addition, we offer a secure satellite phone based on the Iridium Extreme, which we also developed with funding support from the U.S. government and which has been accredited by the National Security Agency (NSA), to provide Type-1 encryption, enabling communications up to Top Secret from anywhere in the world. We also provide PNT services to the U.S. government, delivering a resilient and diverse PNT signal over the Iridium constellation, to provide an alternative position, navigation and timing (APNT) capability.

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Our Products

We offer a broad array of voice and data products that work worldwide. In most cases, our devices or an antenna must be located outside and within view of a satellite to be able to access our network.

Satellite Handsets and Iridium GO!

Our principal handset offerings are the Iridium 9555 and Iridium Extreme satellite phones. We believe the industrial-strength design of these products is critical for customers, many of whom are located in the most inhospitable spots on the planet and require rugged and reliable communications equipment.

•Iridium 9555. The Iridium 9555 provides voice, SMS and narrowband data connectivity. This model features a grayscale screen, SMS capability, an integrated antenna and a speakerphone. The Iridium 9555 weighs 9.4 ounces and offers up to 3.1 hours of talk time. The Iridium 9555 has an industrial feel with a rugged housing to protect its sophisticated satellite transceiver.

•Iridium Extreme. The Iridium Extreme adds to the Iridium 9555’s capabilities by providing a rugged exterior that meets Military Standard 810F for durability, a dedicated, two-way emergency SOS button, and fully integrated GPS and location-based services. These extra features are provided in a handset that is even smaller than the Iridium 9555, weighing 8.7 ounces and offering up to four hours of talk time. An emergency response service provided by GEOS Travel Safety Group (GEOS) is included with the purchase of the phone and airtime usage. The two-way emergency SOS button initiates a voice call and an emergency text message via SMS to GEOS, which then coordinates with local emergency responders.

•Iridium Extreme PTT. The Iridium Extreme PTT enhances the Iridium Extreme with an intelligently designed push-to-talk mode, expanded speakerphone, reinforced PTT button, and extended capacity battery. The user interface provides access to multiple communication services, including voice calling, SMS and SOS, allowing users to connect to a talkgroup located in up to 10 customer-defined geographic regions worldwide. The Iridium Extreme PTT weighs 9.5 ounces and offers up to 6.5 hours of talk time for voice calls and five hours of talk time while using PTT.

•Iridium GO! Iridium GO! is a small, rugged, personal connectivity device that connects to the Iridium network to create a Wi-Fi hotspot, enabling the use of smartphones and tablets for voice calls, text messages and emails, posts to social networking sites, and limited use of optimized mobile websites. Iridium GO! also has an emergency SOS button and GPS and location-based services. Smartphone or tablet access is enabled through applications available for free for Apple and Android devices, and a software development kit is available to create additional applications or integrate Iridium GO! connectivity into existing applications.

•Iridium GO! exec®. Iridium GO! exec, a premium version of the Iridium GO!, is powered by our Iridium Certus 100 service and provides IP connectivity to the Internet and up to two high-quality voice lines. Data speeds are up to 40 times faster for downloads and 10 times faster for uploads compared to the Iridium GO!. The Iridium GO! exec has a sleek design with built-in color touch screen and speakerphone for mobile office connectivity and Wi-Fi for access from smartphones or laptops within a range of up to 100 feet. The built-in battery provides up to 24 hours of standby and up to 6 hours of use.

We expect these devices to help us maintain our competitive position as premium offerings in the market due to their capabilities, mobility, reliability and global coverage. In addition to these devices, we offer variants of the Iridium 9555 satellite phone and the Iridium Extreme satellite phone that are qualified for sale to U.S. government customers.

Broadband Data Devices

Iridium Certus terminals are specifically designed for the maritime, aviation, land mobile or government markets and offer a variety of enhanced data speeds and antenna types. Iridium Certus terminals provide enterprise-grade broadband data and high-quality voice capabilities that can be used on a global basis. Iridium Certus is designed to support a variety of cost points, antenna types and data speeds ranging from midband to broadband up to 704 Kbps. We have licensed the Iridium Certus technology to a group of VAMs who have introduced products for the maritime and land mobile markets and are developing additional products for those markets as well as the aviation and government markets.

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Iridium Certus is designed for maritime operational and safety services, combining the benefits of L-band with broadband and truly global coverage. Iridium Certus terminals offer reliable connectivity for maritime customers whether used as a standalone service or as a companion to broadband services using the Ka, Ku or C bands. Our principal end users for Iridium Certus in the maritime market are merchant shipping, commercial fishing, large leisure vessels, and work boats. Terminals in this market include Cobham Sailor 4300, Thales VesseLINK, Intellian Iridium Certus terminals such as Intellian c200, and Lars Thrane LT-4200, and our partners continue to develop additional products.

In aviation, Iridium Certus delivers critical safety services and in-flight communications. Our principal targeted end users for Iridium Certus in the aviation market include commercial, corporate and government users, general aviation, rotorcraft and unmanned aircraft. Terminals certified in this sector include the Blue Sky Networks SkyLink 7100, Guardian Mobility G6, Atmosphere Planet 9770, Honeywell Aspire 350, Collins IRT NX, and Skytrac SDL-350. A number of other VAMs have been licensed to create aviation terminals using Iridium Certus services, and we expect that additional Iridium Certus aviation products will become commercially available in the future.

In the land mobile market, enterprises, governments, and individuals that want to maintain mobile IP and telephony connectivity utilize Iridium Certus for their operations while in remote areas without having to deploy ground-based infrastructure or expensive terminals. Iridium Certus devices may be integrated with internet, cellular, land mobile radio, and location-based applications to keep users connected, offering global push-to-talk, situational awareness, email, messaging and voice-over-IP. Our principal end users for Iridium Certus in the land mobile market include defense and military organizations, rail operators, first responders, NGOs, energy sector companies, and remote fleet operators. Iridium offers Iridium Certus 100, Iridium Certus 200 and Iridium Certus 700 services, supporting a portfolio of broadband and midband terminals through our partners to provide a range of capabilities at various price points. Terminals that are approved for the land mobile market include the Thales MissionLINK 700 and 200, BSN SkyLink 5100, NAL Research Quicksilver, and McQ CONNECT.

In the government market, Iridium Certus terminals provide beyond-line-of-sight communications critical to mission

success. The initial terminal in this market is the Thales MissionLINK, followed by the Thales VesseLINK, NAL Quicksilver and McQ CONNECT, and others, with additional terminals expected in the future.

Our legacy broadband terminal, the Iridium Pilot, provides up to three independent voice lines and an internet connection for data communications of up to 134 Kbps, using our Iridium OpenPort service. We have discontinued the manufacture of the Iridium Pilot terminal but still provide the Iridium OpenPort service. With the introduction of the more powerful Iridium Certus terminals, we expect our distributors to focus on selling Iridium Certus and to eventually upgrade ships with Iridium Pilot to Iridium Certus technology.

Voice and Data Modems

We also offer a combined voice transceiver and data modem, which our VAMs integrate into a variety of communications solutions that are deployed in different applications around the world. Our offering in this category is the Iridium Core 9523 L-band transceiver, which utilizes the transceiver core of our Iridium Extreme satellite handset. The Iridium Core 9523 is a small voice and data module that can be integrated with other components and allows our VAMs to design and build products, such as a dual-mode terrestrial radio and satellite phone or IoT applications that require more efficient data throughput via circuit-switched data transmission. The Iridium 9523 PTT adds PTT capability, allowing development partners to design and build land mobile, fixed, aviation and maritime devices with Iridium PTT service. We also offer the Iridium Certus 9770 transceiver, which provides Iridium Certus 100 service to our Iridium GO! exec device and several devices offered by our value-added partners. We expect our partners to continue to develop new products based on our Iridium Certus 9770 transceiver and other optimized midband devices. Our principal customers for our L-band transceivers are VAMs and VARs, who integrate them into specialized devices that access our network.

Internet of Things (IoT) Data Devices

Our principal IoT transceivers include the Iridium 9602 and 9603 full-duplex SBD transceivers, the Iridium Certus 9770 transceiver, and the Iridium 9704 transceiver. The Iridium 9602 and 9603 are small, lower-power data transceivers with two-way transmission capability, enabling packet data transmission to and from any point in the world with low latency. The Iridium 9603 is a smaller form-factor version that is functionally identical to the Iridium 9602. The principal customers for these transceivers are VARs and VAMs, who embed them into tracking, sensor, and data applications and systems for markets such as asset tracking, fleet management, remote monitoring and industrial telematics. Our partners often combine our transceivers with GPS receivers to provide location information to customer applications.

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A number of VARs and VAMs include cellular modems as part of their Iridium-based applications to provide lower-cost cellular data transmission when available, with automatic failover to satellite connectivity when cellular coverage is unavailable. These hybrid applications are adopted by end users who require the ability to regularly transfer data but operate in areas with inconsistent cellular coverage. We provide gap-filler coverage for these applications, allowing users to operate anywhere on the globe.

Several partners offer products incorporating Iridium Certus 9770 transceivers supporting Iridium Certus 100 service for IoT applications, including the SkyLink product from Blue Sky Networks, the RockREMOTE from Ground Control, Blues Wireless’s Starnote cellular-satellite solution, and Heimdall Connect’s power line monitoring platforms. These products provide enhanced data speeds and capabilities compared to our legacy SBD transceivers.

In late 2024, we introduced the Iridium Certus 9704 transceiver, featuring IMT technology. The Iridium Certus 9704 provides larger file transfer sizes and faster message speeds than previous Iridium IoT transceivers, is significantly smaller and features substantially reduced power consumption, making it ideal for battery-powered applications. The Iridium Certus 9704 delivers data, picture, and audio messages for industrial IoT, machine-to-machine (M2M), and remote personnel use cases. Throughout 2025, our VAM and VAR partners developed and certified new products incorporating the Iridium Certus 9704 for applications including predictive maintenance, enhanced diagnostics, remote sensing, and asset tracking.

Iridium also offers Iridium Edge® finished IoT products designed to lower the barrier to adoption and speed time to market for customer applications. The Iridium Edge device is an off-the-shelf, environmentally sealed, rugged device that complements existing cellular solutions to create dual-mode connectivity for the most remote and inaccessible areas of the world, reducing the cost and complications associated with hardware development, manufacture and certification of satellite-specific terminals.

We also offer Iridium Burst, our one-to-many global data broadcast service, which enables enterprises to send data to an unlimited number of devices anywhere in the world, even inside buildings, vehicles or aircraft.

Iridium PNT ASIC

We are developing a dedicated, miniature ASIC called the Iridium PNT ASIC that will deliver authenticated, pole-to-pole PNT capability. The Iridium PNT ASIC measures 8mm by 8mm and is engineered for integration into a wide range of electronic devices. Expected to be available in 2026, we believe that Iridium PNT ASIC will expand the addressable use cases for Iridium PNT.

Device Development and Manufacturing

We contract with several strategic technical suppliers to develop our new products and services, such as Cambridge Consulting Ltd. (now part of Capgemini SE) and Benchmark Electronics Inc. We also utilize other suppliers, some of which are the sole source, to manufacture some of the component parts of our devices. Pursuant to these supplier contracts, we may be required to purchase excess materials at cost plus a contractual markup if the materials are not used in production within the periods specified in the respective agreements. In addition, our supplier contracts generally provide that the supplier repurchase the materials from us at the price we paid, as required for the production of the devices. The contracts are typically automatically renewable for additional one-year terms unless terminated by either party.

The majority of our products have a one-year warranty period from shipment.

In addition to our principal products, we also offer a selection of accessories for our devices, including extended-life batteries, holsters, earbud headphones, portable auxiliary antennas, antenna adaptors, USB data cables and charging units. We purchase these products from several third-party suppliers either pursuant to contractual agreements or off the shelf at market prices.

Domestic and Foreign Revenue

We supply services and products to customers in a number of foreign countries. We allocate revenue geographically based on where we invoice our distributors, whom we bill for mobile satellite services and related equipment sales, and not according to the location of the end user. These distributors sell services directly or indirectly to end users, who may be located elsewhere. It is not feasible for us to determine the geographical distribution of revenue from each end user, as we do not contract directly with them. Substantially all of our revenue is invoiced in U.S. dollars. The table below sets forth the percentage of our revenue

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from the United States, Canada and all other countries for the last three years. No single country outside the United States and Canada represented more than 10% of our revenue for any of the periods indicated.

For more information about our revenue from sales to foreign and domestic customers, see Note 15 to our consolidated financial statements included in this annual report.

Traffic Originating Outside the United States

Most of our voice and data traffic originates outside the United States. The table below sets forth the percentage of our commercial voice and data traffic originating outside the United States for the last three years.

Our Network

Our satellite network has an architecture of 66 operational LEO satellites in six orbital planes of eleven vehicles, each in nearly circular polar orbits, in addition to in-orbit spares and related ground infrastructure. Our operational satellites orbit at an altitude of approximately 483 miles (778 kilometers) above the Earth and travel at approximately 16,689 miles per hour, resulting in a complete orbit of the Earth approximately every 100 minutes. The design of our constellation ensures that generally at least one satellite is visible to subscribers from any point on the earth’s surface at any given time. While our constellation offers true global coverage, most of our devices and antennas must have a direct line of sight to a satellite to transmit or receive a signal, and services on those devices are not available in locations where a satellite signal cannot be transmitted or received, which for some devices includes inside a building.

Our constellation uses radio frequency crosslinks between our satellites, which eliminates the need for local ground infrastructure. These crosslinks enable each satellite to communicate with up to four other satellites in space, two in the same orbital plane and two in adjacent planes. Our traffic is routed on a preplanned route between satellites to a predetermined satellite that is in contact with one of the Iridium teleport network (TPN) locations. The TPN sites then transmit and receive the traffic to and from the gateways, which in turn provide the interface to terrestrial-based networks such as the PSTN, a public land mobile network (PLMN) and the internet. The use of a TPN allows grounding traffic at multiple locations within our ground network infrastructure. This and other design elements provide flexibility that allows for rapid reconfiguration of grounding traffic from the satellites in the event of a space, antenna or ground routing anomaly and results in greater reliability of our network. The design of our space and ground control system also facilitates the real-time monitoring and management of the satellite constellation and facilitates service upgrades via software enhancements.

We believe our interlinked satellite infrastructure provides several advantages over low-Earth-orbiting “bent-pipe” satellite networks that rely on multiple terrestrial gateways, such as Globalstar’s, ORBCOMM’s and OneWeb’s networks. We have the only satellite network with true global coverage using weather-resilient L-band spectrum, and our constellation is less vulnerable to single points of failure, as traffic can be routed around any one satellite problem to complete the communications path to the ground. In addition, the small number of ground stations increases the security of our constellation, a factor that makes our network particularly attractive to government institutions and large enterprises. The low orbit of our constellation and L-band frequencies also allows our network to operate with low latency and with smaller antennas due to the proximity of our satellites to the earth.

Our constellation is designed to provide significant coverage overlap for mitigation of service gaps from individual satellite outages, particularly at higher northern and southern latitudes. Each satellite in our constellation was designed with a high degree of on-board subsystem robustness, an on-board fault detection and routing system, and isolation and recovery capabilities for safe and quick risk mitigation. Our ability to reposition our satellites provides us with operating flexibility and

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enhances our ability to maintain a commercially acceptable level of service. If a satellite should fail or become unusable, in most cases we will be able to reposition one of our in-orbit spare satellites to take over its functions within days, with minimal impact on our services.

We do not currently hold any active in-orbit insurance policies covering losses from satellite failures, and we do not expect to obtain in-orbit insurance covering losses from satellite failures or other operational problems affecting our constellation.

Our primary commercial gateway is located in Tempe, Arizona, with a second commercial gateway located in Russia for traffic within Russian boundaries only. A gateway processes and terminates calls and data and generates and controls user information pertaining to registered users, such as geo-location and call detail records. The U.S. government owns and operates a dedicated gateway for U.S. government users, which provides an interface between voice and data devices and the Defense Information Systems Network and other terrestrial infrastructure, providing U.S. government users with secure communications capabilities. Our network has multiple antennas located at the TPN facilities, including the Tempe gateway, that communicate with our satellites and pass calls and data between the gateway and the satellites as the satellites pass above our antennas, thereby connecting signals from the terminals of end users to our gateways. This system, together with our satellite crosslinks, enables communications that are not dependent on a ground station in the region where the end user is using our services.

We operate our satellite constellation from our satellite network operations center ( SNOC) in Leesburg, Virginia. This facility manages the performance and status of each of our satellites, directing traffic routing through the network and controlling the formation of coverage areas by the satellites’ main mission antennas. We also operate TPN facilities in Fairbanks, Alaska and Tempe, Arizona in the United States, in Svalbard, Norway, and in Punta Arenas, Chile that perform telemetry, tracking and control functions and route commercial services.

From time to time, individual satellites in our constellation experience operating problems that may result in a satellite outage, but due to the overlapping coverage within our constellation and the dynamic nature of our LEO system, the individual satellite outages typically do not negatively affect our customers’ use of our system for a prolonged period. In addition, most system processing related to our service is performed using software on board each satellite instead of on the ground. We believe this provides us with significant flexibility and contributes to the longevity of the constellation by enabling engineers to develop additional functionality and software-based solutions to occasional faults and anomalies in the system.

We continually monitor and upgrade our gateway and TPN facilities as necessary and also maintain an inventory of spare parts. When we do not have necessary spares in inventory or our spares become obsolete, we may rely on third parties to develop necessary parts.

We hold a renewable space station license, which expires February 23, 2032, for the launch and operation of our constellation. Our U.S. gateway earth station licenses and the blanket earth station licenses for serving the U.S. government customers and commercial subscribers expire between February 2036 and March 2037.

The Iridium constellation also hosts the Aireon system. The Aireon system was developed by Aireon LLC, which we formed in 2011 and which received subsequent investments from several ANSPs, to provide a global air traffic surveillance service through a series of ADS-B receivers on our satellites. Aireon has contracted to offer this service to ANSPs, which use the service to provide improved air traffic control services over the oceans, as well as polar and remote regions. Aireon also markets its data and services to airlines and other commercial users.

Under our agreements with Aireon, Aireon agreed to pay us fees of $200.0 million to host the ADS-B receivers on our satellites, of which they have paid us $126.5 million as of December 31, 2025. These fees are recognized over the estimated useful life of the satellites. Additionally, Aireon pays power and data services fees of approximately $23.5 million per year in the aggregate for the delivery of the air traffic surveillance data over the Iridium system.

While the Aireon ADS-B receivers are the primary hosted payload on our satellites, L3Harris utilizes a portion of the remaining space for its customers’ payloads. This agreement resulted in an additional $66.6 million in hosting fees to us, all of which has been paid.

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Regulatory Matters

Our Spectrum

We hold licenses to use up to 8.725 MHz of contiguous spectrum in the L-band (1617.775-1626.0 GHz), which allows for two-way communication between our devices and our satellites. In addition, we are authorized to use 200 MHz of K-Band (23 GHz) spectrum for satellite-to-satellite communications, known as inter-satellite links, and 400 MHz of Ka-Band spectrum (19.4 GHz to 19.6 GHz and 29.1 GHz to 29.3 GHz) for two-way communication between our satellites and our ground stations, known as feeder links. We are also authorized to use the 156.0125-162.0375 MHz spectrum for reception of Automatic Identification System transmissions from maritime vessels and the 1087.7-1092.3 MHz spectrum for reception of Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast transmissions from aircraft. Access to this spectrum enables us to design satellites, network and terrestrial infrastructure enhancements cost effectively because each product and service can be deployed and sold globally. Our products and services are offered in over 100 countries, and we and our distributors continue to seek authorizations in additional countries.

Our use of spectrum is globally coordinated and recorded by, and subject to the frequency rules and regulations of, the International Telecommunication Union (ITU). The ITU is the United Nations organization responsible for worldwide co-operation in the telecommunications sector. In order to protect satellite systems from harmful radio frequency interference from other satellite systems, the ITU maintains a Master International Frequency Register of radio frequency assignments. Each ITU administration is required to give notice of, coordinate and record its proposed use of radio frequency assignments with the ITU’s Radiocommunication Bureau. The coordination negotiations are conducted by the national administrations with the assistance of satellite operators. When the coordination process is completed, the ITU formally notifies all proposed users of frequencies and orbital locations in order to protect the recorded assignments from subsequent nonconforming or interfering uses by member states of the ITU. Only member states have full standing within this inter-governmental organization. Filings to the ITU are made on our behalf by the United States.

The ITU also controls the assignment of country codes used for placing telephone calls between different countries. Our network has been assigned the 8816 and 8817 country codes and uses these numbers for calling and communications between terminals.

Constellation Orbital Debris Obligations

We have certain orbital debris mitigation obligations under our FCC licenses. All of our second-generation satellites are subject to a 25-year de-orbit standard under the FCC authorization of our current constellation.

Aireon LLC and Aireon Holdings LLC Agreement

We hold our ownership in Aireon LLC through the Amended and Restated Aireon Holdings LLC Agreement, along with subsidiaries of our ANSP co-investors. Aireon Holdings holds 100% of the membership interests in Aireon LLC, which is the operating entity for the Aireon system.

In June 2022, we entered into a subscription agreement with Aireon Holdings and invested $50 million in exchange for an approximately 6% preferred membership interest. We also hold a common membership interest. The other investors hold the remaining preferred membership interests resulting from their investments in Aireon for an aggregate purchase price of approximately $339 million. At each of December 31, 2025, and 2024, our fully diluted ownership stake in Aireon Holdings was approximately 39.5%. If and when funds are available, Aireon Holdings is required to redeem a portion of our common ownership interest for a payment to us of $120 million, following which we would retain a 27% interest. Based on Aireon’s business plan and restrictions under Aireon’s debt facility, we do not expect this redemption of our ownership interest would occur for several years.

The Aireon Holdings LLC Agreement provides for Aireon Holdings to be managed by a board of directors consisting of 11 members, of which we have the right to nominate two directors. The Aireon Holdings LLC Agreement also provides the minority holders, including us, with several protective provisions. We account for our investment in Aireon Holdings in our consolidated financial statements as an equity method investment.

We and the other Aireon investors have agreed to participate pro rata, based on our respective fully diluted current ownership stakes, in funding an investor bridge loan to Aireon as needed. Our maximum commitment under the investor bridge loan is $11.9 million, although no amount was outstanding at December 31, 2025.

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Competition

The mobile satellite services industry is highly competitive, and we currently face substantial competition from other service providers that offer a range of mobile and fixed communications options. Currently, our principal mobile satellite services competitors are Viasat, Globalstar, ORBCOMM, and Thuraya Telecommunications Co. (Thuraya). We compete primarily on the basis of coverage, quality, mobility, and pricing of services and products.

Viasat, following its acquisition of Inmarsat, owns and operates a fleet of GEO satellites. Unlike LEO satellites, GEO satellites orbit the earth at approximately 22,300 miles above the equator. GEO systems require substantially larger and more expensive antennas and typically have higher transmission delays than LEO systems. Due to its GEO system, Viasat’s coverage area covers most bodies of water except for a majority of the polar regions. Viasat is a significant provider of satellite communications services to the maritime sector. Viasat also offers land-based and aviation communications services.

Globalstar owns and operates a fleet of LEO satellites. Globalstar’s service is available only on a multi-regional basis as a result of its “bent pipe” architecture, which requires that voice and data transmissions be routed from satellites immediately to nearby ground stations. This design requires the use of multiple ground stations, which are impractical in some extreme latitudes or over portions of the oceans. In 2022, Globalstar announced a partnership with Apple, where Apple iPhones and other devices could make D2D emergency notifications and texting through the Globalstar network.

ORBCOMM also provides commercial services using VHF spectrum from a fleet of LEO satellites and also sells its customers some L-band IoT services from Viasat. Like Globalstar, ORBCOMM’s network utilizes a “bent pipe” architecture, which constrains its real-time coverage area. ORBCOMM’s principal focus is low-cost data and IoT services. ORBCOMM does not offer voice service or data services.

We also compete with regional mobile satellite communications services in several geographic markets. In these cases, the majority of our competitors’ customers only require regional, not global, mobile voice and data services, so our competitors may present a viable alternative to our services. All of these regional competitors operate or plan to operate GEO satellites. Our regional mobile satellite services competitors currently include Thuraya, a division of UAE-based Space42 PLC, principally in Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Australia and several countries in Asia.

In addition, there are several companies investing in D2D services with varying stages of deployment, reusing terrestrial spectrum in partnership with selected MNOs, leased spectrum from GEO MSS operators, or in the future, dedicated L-band or S-band MSS spectrum. In September 2025, SpaceX signed an agreement to acquire certain rights and licenses to an aggregate of 50MHz of S-band spectrum, and announced plans to develop a global satellite D2D service using the acquired spectrum. Although development of such a D2D service using the acquired spectrum faces regulatory, technical and business hurdles, if successfully deployed, it could significantly increase competition to portions of our business.

Within our maritime broadband business, we position ourselves as a complementary and companion service to commodity broadband services; however, we have experienced increased competition and pricing pressure from the impact of newer entrants, particularly as our business shifted from providing higher value primary connections to mariners, to lower value backup and safety connections on large vessels.

While we view our services as largely complementary to terrestrial wireline and wireless communications networks, we also compete with them indirectly. We provide service in areas that are inadequately covered by these ground systems. To the extent that terrestrial communications companies invest in underdeveloped areas, we will face increased competition in those areas. We believe that local telephone companies currently are reluctant to invest in new switches, landlines and cellular towers to expand their networks in rural and remote areas due to high costs and limited usage. Many of the underdeveloped areas are sparsely populated, making it difficult to generate the necessary returns on the capital expenditures required to build terrestrial wireless networks in those areas. We believe that our solutions offer a cost-effective and reliable alternative to terrestrial-based wireline and wireless systems in these remote regions.

Research and Development

Our research and development efforts have focused on the development, design and testing of our constellation and new products, such as Iridium NTN Direct, Iridium Certus, Iridium Messaging Transport, Iridium Edge, Iridium PTT, Iridium Burst, Iridium GO!, Iridium GO! exec, transceiver modules and chipsets. We also develop network and product enhancements and new applications for our existing products. Our research and development expenses were $19.8 million, $28.4 million and $20.3 million for the years ended December 31, 2025, 2024, and 2023, respectively.

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Employees and Human Capital Resources

Employees

As of December 31, 2025, we had approximately 975 full-time employees, none of whom are subject to any collective bargaining agreement. We consider our employee relations to be good.

Human Capital Resources

Our employees are integral to our success. We must continue to identify, attract, develop, motivate, and retain highly skilled employees across many fields, and we use a variety of human capital measures in managing our business, including measures related to hiring, performance evaluations, retention and workforce demographics.

We strive to create an innovative and welcoming culture where our employees are proud to work. We foster this goal by focusing on employee development, engagement, and wellness. This starts with an onboarding process that introduces our core mission and values, policies and procedures, performance review process and background about our company. We support our employees in their career development by providing on-the-job training and education reimbursement to help employees maintain or enhance skills in their current position or help with acquiring new skills to prepare for future opportunities. To measure employee engagement, we conduct an annual survey to assess and track retention and satisfaction. We take responses from our employees seriously and use them to inform specific strategies tailored to both the entire company as well as specific teams. In addition to performing benchmarking for employee benefits, we conduct an annual survey to understand what benefits are important to our employees and ensure that we are offering a competitive total rewards package.

We also seek to attract and retain a skilled workforce, including through programs such as our internship program, our Iridium Orbit Program (an 18-month rotational program in operations, engineering and customer care), or Uplinks program (a program pairing employees from different generations to promote collaboration and diversity of thinking), our Employee Resource Groups and other outreach efforts that cover a range of topics and interests. We structure our human capital management to comply with the laws and regulations to which we are subject as a federal government contractor.

Intellectual Property

At December 31, 2025, we held 49 U.S. patents and one foreign patent. These patents relate to several aspects of satellite systems, global networks, communications services, communications devices, and positioning, navigation and timing technologies.

In addition to our owned intellectual property, we also license certain legacy intellectual property from Motorola Solutions that we use to operate and maintain aspects of our network and related ground infrastructure and services as well as to design and manufacture certain of our devices. This licensed intellectual property plays an important role in the operation of certain aspects of our constellation and some of the services and devices we sell. We maintain our licenses with Motorola Solutions pursuant to several agreements, any of which can be terminated by Motorola Solutions upon the commencement by or against us of any bankruptcy proceeding or other specified liquidation proceedings or upon our material failure to perform or comply with any provision of the agreements that remains uncured for a specified period of time following written notice from Motorola Solutions. If Motorola Solutions were to terminate any such agreement, it may be difficult or, under certain circumstances, impossible to obtain the technology from alternative vendors.

We license additional intellectual property and technology from other third parties and expect to do so in the future in connection with our network and related ground infrastructure and services as well as our devices. If any such third party were to terminate its agreement with us or cease to support and service such intellectual property or technology, or if we are unable to renew such licenses on commercially reasonable terms or at all, it may be difficult, more expensive or impossible to obtain substitute intellectual property or technology from alternative licensors or suppliers. Any substitute intellectual property or technology may also have lower quality or performance standards, which would adversely affect the quality of our devices and services. For more information, see “Risk Factors—We depend on intellectual property licensed from third parties to operate our constellation and sell our devices and for the enhancement of our existing devices and services.”

Corporate Background

We were incorporated as GHL Acquisition Corp., a special purpose acquisition company, in November 2007 and became a publicly held company in February 2008. In September 2009, we acquired the outstanding equity of Iridium Holdings LLC (Iridium Holdings), a privately held company, and changed our name to Iridium Communications Inc. In December 2000,

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Iridium Holdings, through its wholly owned subsidiary Iridium Satellite LLC had acquired certain satellite assets from Iridium LLC, a non-affiliated debtor in possession, pursuant to an asset purchase agreement.

Available Information

We file annual, quarterly, and current reports, proxy statements, and other information with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Copies of our annual reports on Form 10-K, quarterly reports on Form 10-Q, current reports on Form 8-K, and amendments, if any, to those reports filed pursuant to Section 13(a) or 15(d) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended, are available free of charge through our website at www.iridium.com as soon as reasonably practicable after we electronically file or furnish the materials with the SEC. The SEC maintains an internet site that contains reports, proxy and information statements, and other information regarding issuers that file with the SEC at www.sec.gov.