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To: Beefeater who wrote (2382)	3/31/1998 9:06:00 AM
From: Valueman	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 10852

Here is PC Magazine piece about sat/internet. Unfortunately, no mention of Cyberstar, which is certainly much further along than Teledesic. Anyway, the important quote in here is from the CEO of Compaq: Surfing by Satellite Counting down to Internet-in-the-sky services from Celestri and Teledesic. March 20, 1998 -- Chances are you don't have a satellite dish in your yard or on your roof to connect to the Internet. But analysts say a satellite dish is in your future, whether you access the Internet at home, in the office, or on the road. In fact, Compaq chief Eckhard Pfeiffer predicts that in the future, most homes will feature two-way satellite communication--of which Internet service will be a part. Low-earth-orbit (LEO) satellites are going to make it happen. Motorola's Iridium network--a constellation of 66 satellites that will provide worldwide wireless access for voice, data, fax, and paging services by the end of the century--will be followed by another network of satellites called Celestri. This two-way satellite network will broaden Motorola's offerings to include Internet access, as well as other broadband applications and bandwidth-on-demand applications. Celestri will consist of 63 satellites in low-earth orbit--about 868 miles above the earth--and will be operational in 2003. In 2002, Teledesic--backed by Craig McCaw, Microsoft chairman Bill Gates, and Boeing--will begin offering two-way satellite Internet connections with speeds up to 64 Mbps on the downlink and up to 2 Mbps on the uplink. Billed as an "Internet in the sky," Teledesic's 288 satellites will cover nearly 100 percent of the earth's population and 95 percent of the earth's landmass. International users in isolated areas will benefit the most from the service. "The United States is well wired with Internet technologies," says Julia Pickar, an analyst at market research firm Zona Research. "Internet access via satellite is especially useful for remote but active areas, such as Australia," she says. Land, Sea, and Sky Meanwhile, telecommunications companies Teleglobe and Telstra have teamed up to develop a high-speed Internet connection between Australia and the United States, via a hybrid cable and LEO satellites. The link will use Telstra's existing transoceanic cable for the inbound link to the U.S. and a 45-Mbps satellite link for the return link to Australia. "Most connections with other countries will be asymmetrical," says Pickar--meaning throughput rates are faster as data travels to a PC than when it travels away from a PC. "But that's not necessarily a disadvantage to international users, because the U.S. has a disproportionate amount of content. Why ask users to pay for high-speed lines in both directions when you really only need one fast line to get at the content?" she adds. "There's a lot of hybrid development going on with many ISPs and traditional satellite companies to cover areas where there are no trunk lines to Internet land lines," says Pickar. Currently, Hughes Network Systems offers DirecPC, a satellite-based Internet service that downloads content from the Internet at up to 400 Kbps. That's a whole lot faster than the typical Internet connection of 33 Kbps. But with DirecPC, you have to upload data over a modem, a quirk in the service that both Teledesic and Celestri will solve.--Angela Hickman