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Technology Stocks : IRID - Iridium World Communications IPO Announced! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Moominoid who wrote (1604)	4/22/1999 1:32:00 AM
From: Dragonfly	Respond to of 2693

From what I had understood Globalstar would cover ocean areas. Is this wrong? Partially. Globalstar will cover ocean areas near land. But the "bluewater" areas-- trade routes, cruising sailer routes, and the areas not within about a thousand miles of land are not going to be covered. This makes it impractical for anyone who is crossing an ocean on a boat. People who hang out on boats near land, however, will have coverage. It all depends on where the ground stations are placed. Since there won't be ground stations out in the middle of the ocean (and its not practical to put them there) Globalstar won't be truely global. The satellites will cover 70N thru 70S, but the SERVICE will not cover that whole area. Since globalstar uses the "bent pipe" approach, the sat has to be in view of a groundstation and you at the same time to complete the call. Whoever told you that everywhere from 70N to 70S would be covered and iridiums advantage was only north or south of 70 degrees was telling a flat out lie. This is not controversial- all the respectable globalstar fans agree with me. How much of the oceans will be covered depends on final ground station placement... but look at it this way: Groundstations will be designed to cover land efficiently, so they will be in the centers of land masses, not near the coasts. Since the coverage area of a ground station, is 3,000 miles in either direction (haven't checked that value but it is commonly used by G* fans) you will likely have 1500 or less miles of coverage offshore. The earth is about 24,000 miles around the equator, and the surface area is %75 ocean. Just from those facts you can tell that a lot of the seas will not be covered.... These and some other coverage limitations make a clear distinction in the services. Globalstar's system is cheaper, and makes some sacrifices because of it, but covers most of the population. Iridiums is more expensive and covers the entirety of the planet- in therms of surface area, probably 10 times the coverage of globalstar- but it costs more because of it. Dragonfly