If the person you're calling or calling you has a different network provider, you can be sure inteconnect $ are exchanged. For long distance in the U.S. for instance, say I have ATT for my LD provider. I pick up my Southwestern Bell telephone to call NYC. I pay ATT$0.15/MOU, ATT pays SBC three cents for originating the call, and NYNEX five cents for terminating the call, and probably also pays SBC to bill and collect the call. If I use Joe Blow Telco instead of ATT, he might have a POP here (point of presence) at which he interconnects with SBC, but if he doesn't have a POP in NYC, he pays someone else to deliver it.
The reason there are so many LEOs on the drawing boards is they all want to get spectrum, financed and launched first, because if you're not first with a good product, you're going to lose your shareholders and lenders a lot of money. I can't imagine their business cases, but doubt there is going to be a big enough market at the prices they'll have to charge. Know anybody that wants to pay $3.00/minute to be able to use their phone (almost) anywhere in the world? Chucking all those birds up there is going to cost a fortune. They better be real efficient in their use of spectrum, because they'll have high cost, limited capacity within a single bird's footprint, but hey, the world market will be their oyster. Problem is, there will be hotspots of demand, but their capacity will be spread out. And it's not like cellular/PCS where you add more cards to an existing base station in increase capacity if you've got available spectrum. You've got limited satellite slots, so they'll have to be fully configured at launch, and then wait for the market to develop. I truly think they must all be smoking rope! |
