[WSJ and satellite]
John --
I'll check the Calgary stats in a second. In the meantime, here's today's WSJ.
Hmmmm. . . can you blame them for not including ADSL? Looks as though equity investors are hard to find, too.
Pat
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The Wall Street Journal Interactive Edition -- March 18, 1997
New Satellite Era Looms Just Over the Horizon
By JEFF COLE
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
Executives at top U.S. communications and aerospace companies have dreamed for years about the promise of a new generation of satellites. The systems, they said, would let consumers zip around the Internet without any of today's delays and make videoconferences as commonplace as phone calls.
Now, the dream is closer to reality, and each player must decide whether it really wants to invest between $200 million and $10 billion to make it happen.
How long would it take to transmit an entire 64-page edition of The Wall Street Journal -- advertising, stock quotes and all -- using a new Ka-Band satellite system, compared with other means?
SYSTEM DATA RATE TIME
Existing Analog phone 9.6 kbps 26.6 hours
Consumer modem 14.4 to 28.8 kbps 8.7 to 17.8 hours
ISDN 56 kbps 4.6 hours
T-1 phone line 1.5 mbps 10.2 minutes
Ka-Band Sm satellite terminal 384 kbps 39.9 minutes
Large satellite terminal 2.3 to 9.2 mbps 1.7 to 6.7 minutes
. . . .
Somewhere down the road, many of the entrants want to get public funds through debt and equity markets. "It's going to be a narrow group of investors," warns one manager of a major Wall Street investment fund that has an interest in satellite systems. After all, satellite projects that are attempting simpler challenges much sooner are having trouble holding the interest of average investors. Even their returns are considered to be too far away.
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