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To: Frank A. Coluccio who wrote (4321)	1/15/1999 11:55:00 PM
From: Mkilloran	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 29970

Frank...where does Teledesic "INTERNET IN THE SKY" come into play in a few years.. as a SkyCache distributor, as a mobil broadband service provider. As an international /worldwide ISP for corporate and/or individual use??? Are they a competitor to ATHM and TWX, AOL or a much larger expansion of the internet services?? What role do you see for Teledesis?? What does this mean to ATHM, TWX AOL shareholders in a few years??? Looking to see what peoples thoughts are on where Teledesic fits in the big picture in the future.. teledesic.com

To: Frank A. Coluccio who wrote (4321)	1/16/1999 7:28:00 PM
From: RocketMan	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 29970

<OT> Frank, this is a bit dated, but if you have not seen it, here is a layman's, but interesting, conceptual discussion about Doug Humphrey's SkyCache concept. As you say, though, it is hard to evaluate the economic tradeoff unless someone calculates the pricing dynamics of terrestrial high-speed networks. search.internet.com On a slightly different topic, I agree with your comments on the Teledesic concept, but every time I look at it I cringe with worry about the subtleties involved in operating a low-earth constellation that has to be so tighly synchronized. There are a lot of unknowns, among which are problems inherent in linking information across orbital planes. Unlike a terrestrial network, or even a constellation of satellites in the same plane (or geosynchronous satellites), the problem with a Teledesic concept is that you may have to pass information to a moving target (a different satellite), whose position is constantly changing at high rates, both in orientation and range. I am familiar with some of the ways they are attempting to minimize the technical challenge, but it is still formidable, and could result in large packet losses. I am reminded, though, of a talk I heard by J. Licklider, father of the ARPANET, who was describing the lack of standards in the internet as both its weakness and its strength. As he described it, the internet only has one standard: you push a bunch of packets in one end, and some packets come out the other end. Teledesic should be able to comply with this standard.