Networker: To ashes

Networker: To ashes

To ashes

A network of satellites circling near the earth could deliver every imaginable
communication service: television, videos, telephone, fax, internet, computer
connections, and lots more.

Such a network, if national governments allow it, could grab business
from television broadcasters, telephone operators and many others. The
amount of money involved in such services in just a single country is huge.
The total value worldwide is astronomical.

It is this vision that is driving the development of satellite communications
today.

There are different types of satellite. The “traditional” model orbits
at almost 40,000 kilometres above the earth, point at which it can stay
in one spot (geostationary orbit) without falling back into the atmosphere.
The problem with these satellites is that they are a long way away. Signals
sent to them and bounced back are delayed by around half a second.

This is alright for television broadcasts because a delay of even several
seconds is invisible. However, during telephone conversations such a delay
is disconcerting. For this reason, most long-distance telephone calls still
travel along ground links and under-sea cables.

Another type of satellite is the low earth orbit (LEO) satellite. This
sort orbits in the vicinity of 1000 kilometres from the ground, so the
delays are much shorter. But LEO orbits are not stable. The satellite is
constantly falling, and has to carry fuel to keep pushing itself back into
orbit. The life of the first generation LEO satellites was just a few years.

Another disadvantage is that you need many satellites to reach all parts
of the world. So on the one hand an investor in a LEO satellite network
has the potential to take over the multi-trillion dollar television and
phone services of the whole world. On the other hand, to do this requires
enormous investment in launching a large number of satellites.

This is the problem facing Iridium, a network of LEO satellites meant
to provide mobile telephone services (as a first step). Launched in mid-1997,
this company promised phone services to any corner of the world.

In mid-March, the US bankruptcy court for the southern district of New
York gave Iridium the go-ahead to crash its 66 satellites. They will literally
be plunged into the Earth's atmosphere and (hopefully) burn up.

The problem: no profitable way to use them. The cost: $US5 billion.
The moral for Iridium: the market was not ready for satellite phones. The
moral for the rest of us: technology and the market equals enormous waste.

By Greg Harris