In article ,
"J. Clarke" wrote:

Smitty Two wrote:
In article ,
"J. Clarke" wrote:

Smitty Two wrote:
In article ,
"J. Clarke" wrote:

Smitty Two wrote:
In article ,
"J. Clarke" wrote:

Reed wrote:
snip

BTW, a few years ago I heard of plans for a network of
Low-Earth
Orbit satellites, that would avoid this problem. I wonder
what
happened to that?

snip

check here

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teledesic

I suspect the project died because it still had excessive
latency,
especially since they had to add an "internal" protocol to the
network because the LEOs are not stationary in the sky. (never
mind the *astronomical* cost(pun intended))

Iridium and Globalstar, both much less ambitious projects,
failed
to
even come close to recovering the startup costs. That being
the
case, Teledisc was clearly a non-starter. People who need that
kind
of service will pay quite a lot for it, but not enough to pay
for
800
satellites.

--

Iridium was launched when cell phones were a rarity. If it had
been
launched today, it might have succeeded.

Cell phones are what _killed_ it. Nobody's going to pay a
buck-thirty a minute for satphone airtime when for a hundred
bucks
a
month they can get unlimited cell phone airtime. The only people
willing to do that are those who have to communicate from
somewhere
where there is no cell service.

It's a niche product and the niche isn't big enough to pay for
the
launch costs.

--

I see your point, but still I disagree. The whole concept of
talking
on a phone while wandering around (by foot, car, or mule) was new,
novel, and somewhat gimmicky. Wireless communication wasn't seen
as
a
necessity at all back then, the way it is now.

Iridium missed the paradigm shift. Millions of executives now
would
happily pay that price to avoid dead zones and dropped calls. And
the
price would decline as the subscriber based went up.

If "millions of executives" would do this then why does Iridium
only
have about 250,000 subscribers?

-

Because Iridium today isn't what Iridium was when it was launched.

It isn't? What has changed about it? Hint--the one that has a bunch
of dead satellites is Globalstar--all of Iridium's are still working
fine--the service itself is _exactly_ as it was when launched except
that since the investors were made to eat the startup costs in
bankruptcy court the price per minute of airtime is less than it was
then.

When I say it isn't the same, I'm talking about intangibles. A feeling,
an image, a moment of glory and prestige. Now it's a rusty has-been.


It
was launched too soon. Now it's too late to repair the bad timing,
and
the bad image.

What's "bad" about the "image"?

And besides, there's no marketing going on. AISI, of
course.

And yet I've heard of it and you've heard of it.

Not lately.

I have a memory of it, and not just because my sister and her husband
both worked at Motorola and had stock in it, but because of the
grandiosity of the thing in the early days.

Haven't heard a peep out of them for a number of years, although I
confess I don't spend much time with radio, TV, magazines, or
newspapers, so if they're still running ads then I'm misinformed.



--