*Coverage* DF, if you find Dubbo, Australia, and draw a circle around it on a globe, a 10degree angle coverage will give coverage to around the east coast of New Zealand and way out to western Australia.
10 degrees is about the minimum at which a handset will be able to 'see' a satellite. Use that as a standard circle, put it over Korea, China, USA, France and you'll get the coverage from each of those gateways. There will be 7 gateways at start of service and quite a few more by year end, so we'll have pretty reasonable regional coverage at an early stage. But keep in mind that Dubbo will not be a gateway for a while - it is just a tracking station at present.
I thought because of ICO's high altitude, they'd give total coverage. 10,000 km gives a very high vantage point and with 10 satellites, they'll see a lot of ocean. Their problem will be poor quality minutes compared with Globalstar.
I'm still hopeful ICO will cancel their system, but am not expecting that they will, so there will be so many minutes in space that the 'what the market will bear' price to clear them all will be about terrestrial cellular prices or maybe cheaper.
The resignation of the CEO and Vice Chairman of Iridium, following the Chief Financial Officer can't be lending much confidence to the ICO investors.
Maybe ICO should at least delay their service and further spending until they can get a better idea of how little return on investment they are going to get. They'll be able to watch Globalstar and see how that goes at much cheaper prices than Iridium. It won't cost them much to slow everything down and aim for a one or two year delay in service launch. Maybe the providers of new capital will take the decision out of management hands by withholding funds!
I haven't really studied ICO, so don't have a url for their coverage. I just see another $5bn in a crowded market, competing with Globalstar which has high quality low voice delay minutes and figure they won't like the lack of return on investment any more than Iridium shareholders are going to like theirs.
Maurice
PS: Sorry you find me annoying, but glad you enjoy at least some of what I write. |
