The Reappearance of Mobile Satellite Services...

[New Cell]

Innovation is the key to survival for mobile satellite services (MSS). Once thought to be a major player, MSS has largely been sidelined during the past decade by the growth of the Internet, cellular and wireless approaches. This story says that MSS may be on the rise again. It outlines a deal between Mobile Satellite Ventures (MSV) to pay Boeing $1 billion to build three satellites that will cover North and South America....
The story details that deal, and says that MSV is using a technique called Ancillary Terrestrial Component (ATC). ATC teams MSS with the enemy, so to speak, by incorporating either a second platform — either WiMax or cellular — to penetrate walls. Walls and other obstacles are problems that have kept MSS's prices high. Bottom line: The drive to provide triple-play bundles of voice, video and data is roiling the waters and could forge creative partnerships involving MSS…

Link: http://www.arcchart.com/blueprint/sh...87&qtabs=99999

[Adama D. Brown]

The big problem with any kind of satellite data service is that sitting that far out makes for a much longer lag time than just bouncing a signal off of a cell tower. To send a signal out to a geosynchronous satellite in the Clarke Belt, 22,500 miles up, takes about 240 milliseconds, and then 240 MS back. Total lag is almost 6x the latency of a good landline broadband connection, or 3x that of an EVDO connection.

The obvious solution is to use low-orbit satellites, only a couple hundred miles up, which would knock down latency to an acceptable range.

But since each satellite would then be moving relative to the surface of the Earth, you would need a lot more of them to maintain coverage. It's theoretically possible with as few as 20, but most of the past schemes have looked at more like 60-80. Some, such as Teledesic, talked about as many as 300--the fact that such a system would be by definition worldwide would mean a lot of demand for capacity. Unfortunately, nobody's yet been willing to make the investment and get such a network off the ground.

[New Cell]

That of coarse brings up the space debris problem. We have so much as is, only to add more and more we will soon look like Saturn. With our space debris ring...