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To: Kurt_Ruckus who wrote (6979)	5/18/1998 9:41:00 PM
From: RocketMan	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 50264

Kurt, there is nothing to correct in what you said. I agree, especially with your further explanation. The use of aircraft, or balloons, to provide communications in remote areas is interesting, and is only new to commercial practices. It's been used by the military for a very long time. However, it is not as simple as it might appear, in spite of its apparent simplicity. Part of the problem, with aircraft, is the number of aircraft it takes to maintain one on station continuosly. I don't remember the exact figures, but depending on the maintenance needs of the aircraft, you might need 3 or 5 aircraft in a fleet to maintain one on station. Maybe they can do better today I don't know. I think balloons might be cheaper to maintain, but then you have to worry about weather and remote control operations. There's no free lunch in any of these things, but they do offer an attractive alternative to satellites for certain niche makets. What makes satellite traffic cost-effective is the large bandwidth, realtively routine maintenance (tracking, telemetry and control) operations for five to eight years, and cost sharing between lots of customers. You pay a lot up front to get the satellite up, but over time it can become a cash cow. Smaller countries have a hard time with the up front cost, but they can enter into consortia with other countries to cost-share, as is done by intelsat and a number of other consortia.