Larry, Yes, as you said, handset to satellite, to gateway [earth station], to wires and cables undersea or overland, to gateway, to satellite and finally down to the handset held by somebody on a camel, in a boat, plane, or for the lucky, in a villa on a tropical island.
BUT if there is local cellular/PCS coverage, the call would go to the cellphone tower, to the land-based system and onwards to the place being called. This is to save money for the subscriber as the satellite service is more expensive. There has been concern that if cellphone service expands fast enough, there will be little demand for satellite service, but I doubt that will happen.
Regarding subscriber growth and the problem of handling the deluge, I can't see a problem. Oh for a business where the customers are clamouring at the door and we have to turn them away! Handset production lines can easily produce 4 million handsets per year [Qualcomm Personal Electronics got up to that rate less than a year after starting production]. Selling them is easy - phone or email your credit card number [using Eudora's new encryption technology] to a warehouse who post it out that day. You turn it on and register! Easy peasy! As the handsets come off the production line, the address label is stuck on and the mail truck drives away when it's full.
Then direct debit the customer's account at the end of each month.
I think Globalstar could be full within 6 months of start up. Qualcomm, who have got a handset hiatus at the moment, could divert production capacity to Globalstar handsets for six months leading up to system operation, then run for six months afterwards, then switch back to the Q-Phone terrestrial handsets. They have a seasonal downturn in summer. Summer 1998 is when the handsets will start to be wanted even though the constellation won't be complete, so it all fits nicely together.
Bugs? They better be getting rid of those NOW! The handset design should be near complete and production about to start. Of course there will be upgrades as better chips, better software, better batteries etc become available. I hope there are not many bugs!
Thanks for the "Lloyds Satellite Constellation" reference. Space switching technically superior? Okay, but exactly how? Less data loss? What? And how is space switching faster than fibre? I know the bent pipe response time is faster than the satellite response time in space switching and I know optical fibres are fast enough. I suspect the main advantage is that they don't have to pay a third party for carrying the signals around the earth! But that is fake economics and means the fibre market is cartelized! As competition mounts in the fibre world, prices will drop and will undercut any space switching costs. If it hasn't already.
While wideband is dramatic overkill for voice, it is still worth sending voice on it. The cost of the transmission involves the amount of spectrum consumed. Voice is tiny compared with video. But still worth having and is just another little data packet! Might as well have that too. Suppose somebody wants to talk into their mobile "Anita" multifunctional email/video/voice, weblink, tv, radio, alarm clock, calculator, computer, money manager, gadget thingy and send a video attached to their voice, which is what Qualcomm is planning. Are you saying these proposed new systems will be unable to provide this service and you'll have to send a voice signal via Iridium and a video image via Celestri? Seems odd.
Larry, don't respect me because I infrequently attend golf courses! Unless you are impressed by a LOT of golf each time I go near a course. My costs per hit are quite low! Yesterday I also fell over in the mud on a slippery slope. But it was a beautiful day, so that was okay.
Maurice |
