Posted by
michael
on from the pocket-sized-they-aren't dept.
carnun writes: "Over at CommVerge there is an interesting article updating what's happening on the Satellite phone market... Is this just another blow in the Iridium cluster or are we finally going to be able to sit with our laptops and connect from the middle of the Sahara?"
You can already!
by
sourcehunter
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
"...or are we finally going to be able to sit with our laptops and connect from the middle of the Sahara?"
Iridium already has data services just about anywhere in the world... Of course, you have to be willing to pay for it and the throughput is only 10Kbps for (i'm guessing) anything that is easily compressed (ie text). According to their site, "Graphics and images will result in lower throughput."
Seriously though, the battery power required to transmit to a LEO satellite is a bit much to ask for in a portable phone that any joe can use - at least with today's technology. Just think of the EMF from that thing! And they say current cell phones will fry your brain!
As for laptop batteries, mine already only lasts 3 hours on a GOOD day...
Thanks, I'll stick to CDPD.
--
quis custodiet ipsos custodes - Juvenal
Re:You can already!
by
NMerriam
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
the battery power required to transmit to a LEO satellite is a bit much to ask for in a portable phone that any joe can use
The newest Iridium phones (from Motorola) last for a few hours transmitting on a battery (and the batteries are SMALL). I honestly don't know how they got such efficiency out of it but they do.
The Globalstar phones are a little less efficient (of course our phone is also a year older) and the Inmarsat M4 unit (64k) only runs for about 20 minutes on battery power, but its not a LEO system so it'll fry your testacles if you stand in front of the antennae. Try explaining that in Swahili...
-- Recursive: Adj. See Recursive.
Bring a car battery with you...
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
I had a Mitsubishi "laptop-style" satellite phone that I used with MSat. You could get 9600bps data out of the thing (I tried it once) but the battery life went to shit. Since the phone only transmits when sending data (i.e. voice packets) it was not well-suited for uploading anything of significant size since you'd just end up pegging the transmitter and watching your battery meter fall right before your eyes. That and the huge yellow sticker next to the antenna that warned you to stay the fuck away from the thing when it was on... Yikes.
Why we hate Iridium and Co.
by
pq
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
Radio astronomers around the world hate these satellite phone services, and we wish they would just curl up and die.
For one thing, they broadcast at 1.6 and 2.5 GHz, smack in the most interesting radio astronomy bands. 1.6 GHz in particular is the frequency at which we see hydroxyl (-OH) radicals, and if you can't see why that is interesting, you need a drink. Fine, so we have global and large scale arrays which have antennas seperated by many miles - but to an array, a satellite is a real astronomical signal, and it is very very hard to filter it out (as opposed to a motorcycle spark plug or even cellphones, which do not produce correlated interference at many antennas).
And what makes it worse is that these companies wilfully violate international treaties which protect precious scraps of the spectrum for astronomy - "We're big companies and we make real money, get out of the way" - and really can't believe that their low low sidebands are stronger than our astronomical signals by factors of 1000s.
Ah well, there's progress for you - astronomy is sacrificed so that you can download pr0n in the middle of the Sahara. And we nearly had the last laugh, too.
-- "I will take the Ring," he said, "though I do not know the way."
We do a lot of extremely remote data projects (Mt Everest, North pole, Amazon river, etc) and I can definitely say that the satellite data market is getting pretty useful for general business use in remote locations. But i don't think a consumer will ever buy one, which means it'll always be more expensive than cellular.
We have used Iridium, Globalstar, and InMarSat all in the field, and currently the Iridium is tough to beat for a truly mobile solution. The fact that the company gets to make a profit without having to pay for the satellites makes a big difference, of course -- they can afford to sell airtime at less than a dollar in the US (if you buy time in bulk -- it's $1.50 for a non-bulk rate). Globalstar is having a tough time matching that considering they don't have the convenience of going through bankruptcy to write off their infrastructure costs.
Globalstar does have a better data rate, though -- 9.6k vs Iridium's 2.4k (they do compression "up to" 10k). InMarSat has the great 64k/128k bandwidth but its hardly a handheld unit.
The biggest disadvantage of course is the line-of-sight requirement. So using a sat phone in a city can be next to impossible (unless you have a dual-mode with cellular, which require tariff agreements overseas and aren't always available), and bringing an external antenna with a long cable is necessary if you're doing data work indoors in a rural area. And of course plenty of power no matter where you are.
But if you're in the middle of nowhere, it beats the heck out of smoke signals...
-- Recursive: Adj. See Recursive.
Then build a radio telescope on the dark side....
by
DAldredge
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
of the moon. The several thousand miles of rock should block almost all the stray radiosignals from earth...
Actually, some of us do have a need for data communication in remote places. I work in Marine Search and Rescue and there are quite a few situations in which we can and do use technologies like Iridium and InMarSat. So called blanket wireless coverage doesn't extend all that far out to sea.
Helios killed the satelite phone
by
Jeppe+Salvesen
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
The solar-powered flying wing will be the new satelite. It is MUCH better suited for being a low-cost phone service provider. It is mucb better suited for just about anything, really. Rather than having tremendous costs of launching satelites, you can have cheap solar-powered wings doing the same job. You can probably even provide better coverage/throughput if you put multiple wings around metropolitan areas.
Satelite phones sound interesting. However, they're really not.
Slashdot Mirror
Iridium already has data services just about anywhere in the world... Of course, you have to be willing to pay for it and the throughput is only 10Kbps for (i'm guessing) anything that is easily compressed (ie text). According to their site, "Graphics and images will result in lower throughput."
Seriously though, the battery power required to transmit to a LEO satellite is a bit much to ask for in a portable phone that any joe can use - at least with today's technology. Just think of the EMF from that thing! And they say current cell phones will fry your brain!
As for laptop batteries, mine already only lasts 3 hours on a GOOD day...
Thanks, I'll stick to CDPD.
quis custodiet ipsos custodes - Juvenal
I had a Mitsubishi "laptop-style" satellite phone that I used with MSat. You could get 9600bps data out of the thing (I tried it once) but the battery life went to shit. Since the phone only transmits when sending data (i.e. voice packets) it was not well-suited for uploading anything of significant size since you'd just end up pegging the transmitter and watching your battery meter fall right before your eyes. That and the huge yellow sticker next to the antenna that warned you to stay the fuck away from the thing when it was on... Yikes.
For one thing, they broadcast at 1.6 and 2.5 GHz, smack in the most interesting radio astronomy bands. 1.6 GHz in particular is the frequency at which we see hydroxyl (-OH) radicals, and if you can't see why that is interesting, you need a drink. Fine, so we have global and large scale arrays which have antennas seperated by many miles - but to an array, a satellite is a real astronomical signal, and it is very very hard to filter it out (as opposed to a motorcycle spark plug or even cellphones, which do not produce correlated interference at many antennas).
And what makes it worse is that these companies wilfully violate international treaties which protect precious scraps of the spectrum for astronomy - "We're big companies and we make real money, get out of the way" - and really can't believe that their low low sidebands are stronger than our astronomical signals by factors of 1000s.
Ah well, there's progress for you - astronomy is sacrificed so that you can download pr0n in the middle of the Sahara. And we nearly had the last laugh, too.
"I will take the Ring," he said, "though I do not know the way."
We do a lot of extremely remote data projects (Mt Everest, North pole, Amazon river, etc) and I can definitely say that the satellite data market is getting pretty useful for general business use in remote locations. But i don't think a consumer will ever buy one, which means it'll always be more expensive than cellular.
We have used Iridium, Globalstar, and InMarSat all in the field, and currently the Iridium is tough to beat for a truly mobile solution. The fact that the company gets to make a profit without having to pay for the satellites makes a big difference, of course -- they can afford to sell airtime at less than a dollar in the US (if you buy time in bulk -- it's $1.50 for a non-bulk rate). Globalstar is having a tough time matching that considering they don't have the convenience of going through bankruptcy to write off their infrastructure costs.
Globalstar does have a better data rate, though -- 9.6k vs Iridium's 2.4k (they do compression "up to" 10k). InMarSat has the great 64k/128k bandwidth but its hardly a handheld unit.
The biggest disadvantage of course is the line-of-sight requirement. So using a sat phone in a city can be next to impossible (unless you have a dual-mode with cellular, which require tariff agreements overseas and aren't always available), and bringing an external antenna with a long cable is necessary if you're doing data work indoors in a rural area. And of course plenty of power no matter where you are.
But if you're in the middle of nowhere, it beats the heck out of smoke signals...
Recursive: Adj. See Recursive.
of the moon. The several thousand miles of rock should block almost all the stray radiosignals from earth...
Actually, some of us do have a need for data communication in remote places. I work in Marine Search and Rescue and there are quite a few situations in which we can and do use technologies like Iridium and InMarSat. So called blanket wireless coverage doesn't extend all that far out to sea.
The solar-powered flying wing will be the new satelite. It is MUCH better suited for being a low-cost phone service provider. It is mucb better suited for just about anything, really. Rather than having tremendous costs of launching satelites, you can have cheap solar-powered wings doing the same job. You can probably even provide better coverage/throughput if you put multiple wings around metropolitan areas.
Satelite phones sound interesting. However, they're really not.
Stop the brainwash