Apparently Bin Laden used to use an Iridium phone for his communication needs. And then a British army guy (I forget who) blabbed to the press that he had one and "we know where he is" and he didn't any more....

Interestingly, the old Iridium company was part owned by Saudi Binladen group and one of Osama's brothers was a director!

Although the US gov't had 20,000 Iridium phones in use, it was also probably one of the reasons why they wanted the network still active.

Gareth