An Iridium representative in the UK confirmed today that no single satellite phone has yet shipped in the United Kingdom. We don't know how many have been sold in greater Europe also. And it could be quite a while before the sales ramp up from zero to one. The representative said Iridium hoped to make an announcement next week. The satellite phones are manufactured by Iridium's partners, Motorola and Kyocera, and distributed by Brightpoint throughout the world. Questions still remain about quality, according to source close to both Iridium and Kyocera. He said: "Iridium is doing hardware and software updates at least three times a day. The problem is the equivalent of the Doppler effect." By that he meant that the number of Iridium satellites hanging over our planet could not necessarily pass on the correct messages one way without a similar message bouncing back from the next satellite on. ®