Looking up?

So far, satellite-based mobile phone efforts have yielded little but debt. Is there cause for optimism today?

Mark Long, News Correspondent -- CommVerge, 9/1/2001

Wireless networks provide near-blanket coverage of Europe, the United States, and metro areas on the other continents. On the rest of our vast globe, however, the closest cell-phone tower is more likely to be below the horizon or on the island next door. Short of commandeering the nearest canoe and paddling back to e-civilization, there hasn’t been much that people in remote locations—whether they’re local residents or international wanderers—can do to stay connected. However, mobile-phone systems that use satellites in place of cellular towers may be set to change all that.

What’s that? You’ve heard this story before? You’re right. A few years ago, heavily hyped satellite-linked mobile phones were expected to make global connectedness a reality for consumers. Instead, most of the companies that launched the satellites crashed and burned. Luckily, the satellites themselves didn’t; they’re still up there. And today, the owners of those existing systems, as well as some new entrants in this space race, are aiming to provide not only voice coverage but also data services to a global customer base.

These ventures hold out the promise of truly global coverage. According to their vision, it won’t be long before anyone who really intends to get away from it all will have to buy a ticket good for travel to the next planet.

When the world’s first mobile satellite system (MSS) platforms hit the engineering drawing boards back in the early 1990s, the technology promised to revolutionize global communications by providing business professionals and consumers alike with telephone access from virtually any spot on the face of the Earth.

Traditional communication satellites perch in geostationary orbit, a crowded field of outer-space real estate some 37,000 kilometers above the equator. Mobile satellite systems, however, operate much closer to home, along low earth orbit (LEO) or medium earth orbit (MEO) tracks that range from just a few hundred to several thousand kilometers above the planet’s surface. At these closer distances, the satellites pass quickly overhead before disappearing beneath the horizon. For this reason, all LEO- and MEO-based satellite systems were designed to employ an entire constellation of satellites, so that at least one bird would be available at any given moment from any spot on the planet.

LEO and MEO satellites are less affected by the signal delays that typically plague their high-flying geostationary counterparts. Known as latency, a half-second delay represents the time it takes for a communications signal to transverse the 74,000 kilometers that lie between the source, the satellite, and the signal’s final destination. The latency factor can potentially cause trouble for data users engaged in interactive, real-time applications. The use of satellite orbits that are far closer to the earth’s surface effectively reduces the adverse effects of latency by 50 percent or more, depending on the distances involved.

A single geostationary-earth-orbit (GEO) satellite is limited to beaming signals to about 42 percent of the globe, which is the total amount of the Earth’s surface that the bird can effectively “see” from any single orbital location. It would take three satellites located at equally distant positions along the Earth-girdling geostationary arc to cover both hemispheres of the globe. Even then, however, their signals would not reach locations in close proximity to the Earth’s poles.

The ground terminals that interact with any geostationary satellite must also have a clear line-of-sight view of the satellite’s position in the sky in order to make a connection. This may not always be possible from high-density urban locations or other environments where the natural terrain may obstruct the terminal’s view of the sky.

The LEO and MEO platforms, however, are able to provide coverage of the Earth’s poles because their orbit tracks pass right over both polar areas. In addition, the MSS systems have been designed so that multiple satellites will be overhead at any given moment, which ensures that at least one of the available satellites will be found at an elevation angle of 40 degrees or more with respect to a subscriber handset on the ground.

In an effort to foster new technologies for alleviating spectrum crowding, the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) in the mid-1990s introduced new L-band and S-band frequency ranges (1.5 and 2.5 GHz) for mobile satellite system planners, which allowed the new owners to freely operate on a global basis. System designers also sought to further enhance the efficient use of their new frequencies by equipping each of their spacecraft with multiple spot beams that could instantaneously reuse the available spectrum dozens of times.

In the early 1990s, three major ventures set out to make satellite phone systems a reality. GlobalStar, backed by Loral and Qualcomm, launched a total of 48 satellites. The second venture, Iridium, backed by Motorola, represented the most ambitious MSS plan ever to hit the drawing boards. Modeled after the atomic structure of the element Iridium, which features 77 electrons orbiting the atom’s nucleus, the Iridium system was initially designed to integrate a total of 77 satellites in low earth orbit. The plan was subsequently modified and Iridium succeeded in launching 66 satellites (the owners elected not to alter its name to dysprosium, the 66-electron atomic equivalent).

Although the technical plans for these systems were extremely complicated and expensive to implement, their proponents were initially the darlings of Wall Street investors. But the one thing that virtually no one counted on was the sheer speed at which terrestrial cellular operators would be able to roll out competing services at prices far below what the mobile satellite operators had intended to charge.

Unable to attract enough customers to support the sky-high cost of building, launching, and maintaining their respective satellite networks, the GlobalStar and Iridium owners found themselves flying over oceans of red ink. The third aspiring MSS system operator, Ico Global Communications, landed in bankruptcy court before it could even lift a single bird off the ground.

Today however, all three operators have emerged, phoenix-like, from the ashes of their corporate meltdowns. Moreover, the new owners have taken care to reposition their platforms in light of the dramatic changes that have taken place in the global telecommunications environment during the past decade.

Comeback kids

Heading for the North Pole, the Gobi Desert, up the Amazon River, or to some other telecommunication-deprived area? The good news is that you don’t have to purchase an expensive satellite phone to access either the re-launched Iridium or GlobalStar satellite systems. Web-based companies such as Rent Express and Outfitters Satellite will rent you a satellite phone for either system at rates of just under $100 per week plus about $2.50 per minute of airtime. The phones can be ordered over the Internet and delivered to any location within the continental United States in less than 24 hours.

Iridium’s official re-launch last April came close on the heels of the purchase of the entire operation for $25 million. The new investors got quite a deal, considering that the original owners had poured more than $8 billion into the project. Earlier this Summer, Stratos Global Corporation began actively marketing and supporting a new Iridium service for Asia, where the company has slashed Iridium rates to as low as 50 cents per minute.

Iridium handset prices have also been marked down to as low as $495. Motorola’s 9500 handset weighs in at a hefty 500 grams. What about data? Iridium offers a snail’s pace rate of just 2.4 kbits/sec, but intends to introduce a 10-kbit/sec service beginning later this year.

Unlike Iridium, GlobalStar is still under the same ownership. However, that may be small solace to the company’s investors, because the venture is beset by financial problems. For example, though the system cost $3.2 billion to implement, the company reported revenues in 2000 of just $3.7 million.

Rather than focus on overseas markets, GlobalStar is sticking closer to home in its effort to win the MSS comeback-of-the year award. The company recently unveiled an SMS (short messaging service) offering for its North American and Caribbean subscribers.

Messages can be sent to any subscriber equipped with a GSP-1600 phone directly from the GlobalStar USA Web site. Senders enter the 10-digit satellite phone number of the intended recipient, followed by a message that can contain up to 19 alphanumeric characters, spaces, and symbols. Messages are delivered immediately to active GlobalStar handsets. If the handset is off, the system stores undelivered messages for up to five days and repeatedly attempts to complete their delivery.

Perhaps the most critical change the MSS operators have made is offering handsets that support not only satellite calls, but also calls through terrestrial cellular networks. Sporting an $899 retail price tag, the GlobalStar GSP-1600 cellular/satellite phone operates on analog cellular (AMPS), digital cellular (CDMA), and GlobalStar satellite networks. The device can store up to 90 19-character SMS messages, or more than 1,700 characters in total.

Earlier this year, GlobalStar and Calence jointly released technology that will allow business users to establish VPN (virtual private network) connections via the GlobalStar satellite system through the use of standard VPN products from companies such as Cisco and Microsoft. To enable the new service, corporate customers must install network server hardware and VPN software. Subscribers in the field use a cable to convert any GSP-1600 phone into a wireless modem for a notebook computer or PDA.

GlobalStar faces stiff competition from the Inmarsat satellite organization, which recently launched its global Mobile Packet Data service. The offering provides business customers with an always-on connection at data speeds of up to 64 kbits/sec. The service also features a mobile ISDN connection option, which supports videoconferencing at 128 kbits/sec and corporate LAN access at speeds nearly seven times faster than cellular GSM systems can currently deliver.

Based on standard Internet protocols, Inmarsat’s Mobile Packet Data service delivers data in packets that have been optimized for transmission via satellite. One potential benefit of the new service is that users are charged solely based on the amount of data that is actually sent or received via satellite. Comsat Mobile Communications will start offering the service to its US customers beginning this month.

An Inmarsat M4 high-speed data terminal for accessing this service is already available for rent at the Web site of Outfitters Satellite for $450 per week. In addition, the company offers a variety of potentially useful accessories for the terminal, including a collapsible satellite antenna, a 128-kbit/sec videoconferencing package and a portable solar array for charging the terminal’s internal battery pack.

3G in the sky

Established in January 1995, Ico Global Communications was listed on Nasdaq until 1999, when trading was suspended after the company filed for Chapter-11 bankruptcy protection. Telecommunication industry pioneer Craig McCaw subsequently led a successful $1.2 billion acquisition effort that was completed in May of last year.

The venture successfully launched the inaugural spacecraft for the “New Ico” constellation in June of this year. The spacecraft is presently serving as the initial test bed for the entire system, which has been designed to provide the space-based equivalent of 3G wireless. Boeing Satellite Systems is currently building the remaining 11 spacecraft. The company hasn’t announced a definite date for launching its service.

Designed around the GPRS (general packet radio service) enhancement to the GSM standard, the New Ico system will offer transmission rates of up to 144 kbits/sec. In addition, New Ico is developing service capabilities that will allow network users to roam globally across terrestrial cellular networks based on other standards.

The New Ico satellite design is based on a bent-pipe architecture that directly relays signals between an end-user terminal and a ground-based gateway station. Each satellite is equipped with more computing power than 600 Pentium III-based computers. In addition, each satellite features an active-array S-band (2.5-GHz) antenna that can form as many as 163 simultaneous coverage beams.

The satellites will communicate with terrestrial networks through a high-bandwidth global IP (Internet protocol) network that will consist of a dozen satellite access nodes (SANs) at locations around the globe. Each terrestrial gateway will integrate packet- and circuit-switched equipment for communicating with the terrestrial wireline and mobile networks in the gateway’s region.

Author information

News Correspondent Mark Long (mlong@cahners.com) is no stranger to satellite-communications technology. In addition to authoring several books on the subject, he once worked as a satellite earth station operator.