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Technology Stocks : America On-Line (AOL) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: RocketMan who wrote (8229)	3/28/1999 6:20:00 PM
From: RMiethe	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 41369

Rocketman: Yes, I am talking of a hybrid system. For example, Skybridge will have 200 gateways and 80 LEOs (8 sats in 10 planes). Their LEOs will be a "bent pipe" design with no on board processing. (Teledesic will be an ISL design, far more complicated and dicey). I believe the Skybridge LEO will have 14 transponders per LEO, and will be well designed to operate on a co-primary basis with GEOs in the Ku-band. They are promising 20Mbps download capacity for the home user, and from what I have seen that looks quite doable. As you probably know, in theory LEO transmissions are faster than the "speed of light" [on paper anyway]. So latency is a non-issue, which is good for a company like AOL. Skybridge will definitely want to provide capacity for AOL content wherever it is economically feasible for Skybridge. Skybridge will wholesale the capacity for transmission at $.03 per megabyte with a BIT ERROR RATE 99% of fiber transmission. Actually, AOL would pay a lower cost to the satellite provider than it pays the domestic telcos, and would become available off a Skybridge system to those not able to get it now. More importantly is the Netscape portion for the "sophistacted" browser user, who will have ability to access in some 10 languages Netscape data capacity. So, I think the LEOs are a new conduit for AOL once the Skybidge system is effective. For the record, Skybridge sees an internet user market of 400 million by 2004. I have no comment on that number. I just thought I would tell you what they are thinking. So far as I know other LEO systems are on the drawing board outside Teledesic (which is a Microsoft venture) and Skybridge. However, I don't think they will have the muscle that Skybridge and Teledesic have behind them