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?"
Laptop in Sahara
by
bonzoesc
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
If you're in the middle of the Sahara and all you have to get help is your laptop, you're pretty screwed whether you have satellite modem access or not. Now, on the beach in a resort in some dirty third-world country, that's another story.
Re:Laptop in Sahara
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 2, Informative
I was recently in the middle of the sahara (Timbuktu, Mali). I joined part of a caravan going from Zagora in Morocco to Timbuktu. I had no problems connecting to the internet from my tri-band Motorola TimePort phone. All you need is a Gemplus smartcard from Mali Telecom. Of course I had to switch to OS 9 on my Titanium PowerBook G4 (which performed marvellously in the 110-115 degree heat -- except for softened rubber pads) since OS X still does not have support for the built in infrared ports....
Now Timbuktu and Mali is really as remote as it can get. And you can still transmit electrons from there.
Now, on the beach in a resort in some dirty third-world country, that's another story.
Pffft. Try the USA. Say, 30 miles east of Reno, NV (or most of the interstate through to Sacramento, IIRC). US cellular sucks ass for those of us used to 99% national coverage.
-- "don't fall into the fallacy of believing that Perl can solve social problems. Maybe Perl 6 can, but that's a ways off"
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
Niksie3
·
· Score: 3, Funny
how about solar power??? I think there is enought of that in the sahara!!!
-- Sig you!
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.
Just looking at the cost of the infrastructure for a typical wireless setup, vs an overhead bird, plus the power of the xmitters, I would say that the low end wireless setups are always going to be less expensive, and that birds in the sky are always going to be relatively pricey. Which will be fine for corporate perks, etc, Bill Gates on Vacation, etc., but not for you average joe.
but the idea of Bill Gates on vacation in the Sahara is amusing.
- - - Radio Free Nation is a news site based on Slash Code "If You have a Story, We have a Soap Box" - - -
-- "It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
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
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· Score: 2, Interesting
of the moon. The several thousand miles of rock should block almost all the stray radiosignals from earth...
GlobalStar's Data Service
by
CJB2
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· Score: 2, Informative
I have the GlobalStar service. I purchased it primarily for data service in areas where wireless PCS data service is not available. Though it connects at 9600 bps, the latency is about half that of connecting through my Sprint PCS phone at 14.4 -- about 350ms versus Sprint's 700ms. Since most of my work is done through SSH, the lower latency at 9600 works better for me anyway. It also requires line-of-sight, so unless you're outside, it likely won't be able to reach the satellite. Overall, though it's expensive to use in comparison with normal cell phones, it serves its purpose. If the prices continue to drop to a level where the average consumer can use them, and they include backward-compatibility for the traditional cellular networks, I think these phones could easily become more widespread in the future.
If you can't get yourself to conjure up a good mirage, you can always download one from the net! You could also spend your last few moments of (in)sanity rewriting your will, naming whoever ran off with your girlfriend and left you in the middle of the Sahara.
Re:Closer to Trek
by
richie2000
·
· Score: 2, Funny
What I want is TNG comm badges. And when Ericsson (the three sausages brand) announced Bluetooth, I thought I'd have it.
Picture this: A regular cellphone, just like today's, in my pocket, briefcase, backpack - whereever. Like I care, as long as it's in BT range from my comm badge and earpiece. The comm badges could be styled - different colours, shapes and so on to look like anything from Star Trek comm badges to women's jewelry. If you touch the badge, the voicedial activates and you can go "Computer! Locate Cmdr Taco!" and have the phone dial his cell phone number. (Or just say "Home!" like I do with my Philips SparK (which had working voicedial like five years ago) and it calls home.) The comm badge also activates answering the phone when it rings (when the user wears the earpiece, the phone just whispers "answer it, you bozo" softly in your ear instead of ringing out loud).
The earpiece uses skull resonance for the speech so you won't need the mike boom. This would also make this system perfect for when I'm on my bike.
Add Bluetooth in the laptop and/or PDA to access your address book/LDAP server to find people and you're good to go. If anyone makes this system now, I want a set as royalty for the idea.;-)
Actually, if you have a GPS receiver you could contact your home government and give them your coordinates to within a meter. That's more information than most 911 operators have to go on. But would you stay alive long enough for help to arrive?
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.
Those bands definitely are used for other services, and have been for a long time. See this page for listings of US and International frequency allocations.
-- Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
What happens when the satellites die?
by
Detritus
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· Score: 2
Satellites don't last forever. Solar panels and batteries degrade over time. Station-keeping propellant is consumed. Transponders burn out.
How are these companies going to pay for replacement satellites and their associated launch services? The price paid for the Iridium system ($25 million) would not cover the cost of a single Delta or Ariane launch, not to mention the cost of the replacement satellites.
-- Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
Solar power is not solar power
by
Doom+Ihl'+Varia
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· Score: 2, Informative
Not quite true. Solar panels don't gather true solar power. They exploit the reaction between light and a compound. That's why those little solar panels in electronic kits will work with a flash light. Thus "solar power" wouldn't be much more abundant in the Sahara then anywhere else.
Re:Solar power is not solar power
by
jandrese
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· Score: 2
Er, I think there's more "solar power" available in the desert where you don't have trees, buildings, or _clouds_ blocking the sun. Also, many of these deserts are closer to the equator and tend to get a bit more direct sunlight than most of the US or Europe for example.
Also, Iridium phones do drain more power than your average cell phone, but it's not enough to be unmanageable with a small solar cell out in the desert.
--
I read the internet for the articles.
Re:Vacation time
by
IronChef
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· Score: 4, Insightful
Can't we spend 2 weeks a year without electricity?
You first.
Helios killed the satelite phone
by
Jeppe+Salvesen
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· 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.
--
Stop the brainwash
Re:Helios killed the satelite phone
by
KarmaBlackballed
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· Score: 2
Solar wing alternatives are great, but don't expect them to cover all of the planet. No Sahara computing for you unless you fly your own wing and take it with you. (Now there is an interesting possibility!)
--
--- -- - -
Give me LIBERTY, or give me a check.
Sat phone will ALWAYS be expensive....
by
wowbagger
·
· Score: 2
Sat phone airtime will always be expensive. Let me compare sat phones with regular cellphones to show why. First, cell phones. I'll use AMPS (the standard used for cellular service in the US, but GSM isn't that much different for the purposes of this discussion).
A cell base station costs about US$1M. That's the controller, the amplifiers, the tower, the site, and setup.
A base station has up to 1024 channels, at least one of which must be a control channel. Also, no base station uses all the channels: neighboring sites use different channels to prevent interference at the borders. So a site can support roughly 300 simultanious calls (GSM can support about 600 since it uses compression on the voice channel to allow 1 channel to handle 3 to 6 conversations.)
The coverage area for a site is roughly a circle of 1 to 10 miles radius from the site (ignoring geographic features), and can be adjusted by how tall the tower is, how much power the site puts out, etc.
The burden rate (number of user/number of users actually talking) is between 10 to 100 to one. Run too high a burden rate, and customers get "no channel available" when they try to dial. Then they get a new service provider.
So, you need to make a site service about 3000 people, for an initial outlay of US$1M, for a roughly US$300/person outlay. That's not hard to recover
Now, let's look at sat phones:
The cost of a "site" is about US$300M or more. This includes the cost of the bird, the cost of launch, and the cost of failures to launch. You usually don't have the truck delivering the base station to a terrestrial site explode as it leaves the factory.
The number of channels isn't that much different - it's a factor of how complex the receiver and transmitter on the bird is, and the simple physics of radio waves: there are just so many hertz of bandwidth that are suitable for use. So about 300 users at one time per bird.
The coverage radius for a bird is many hundreds of miles in radius. This is a factor of the orbital altitude and the antenna design of the bird.
As for cellular, you want to keep the burden rate down. As a result, you can only have about 3000 subscribers per 100 mile radius, as opposed to the 300 subscribers per 1 mile radius of cellular. You can support a population density of less than one ten-thousandth that of cellular.
Therefor, you now have a cost of US$300M/3000 users, or US$300k per user, a thousand times more costly.
And remember, any advances in vocoder technology, modulation technology, or transmitter technology will benefit both terrestrial cellular and sat phones equally. Except that it is a lot easier to upgrade a terrestrial site than a bird in LEO.
As a result, there will always be far fewer sat phone users than cell phone users. All the non-recurring engineering costs, all the fixed costs of manufacture, all the fixed costs of service will have to borne by fewer users.
If they'd had satellite phone service they could have called for help immediately.
You don't have to have satellite "service" to call for help. Any cellular phone, including Iridium sat phones, can dial 911, assuming you're in the US. My buddy has 3 surplus Iridium phones that were given to him when Iridium declared bankruptcy. Now that they're back in operations, the phones work, but without a service contract they'll only dial 911. Which is just fine for him, as that's the only reason he would ever need to use one.
As for normal consumers ever carrying these things around - they'd better get a hell of a lot smaller. The antenna is the size and thickness of a large hot dog. The phone itself is about the size of a brick. It reminds me of early handheld cellular phones... works, but you'd look like an idiot with something that big hanging off your belt. Assuming your pants would even stay up.
Slashdot Mirror
If you're in the middle of the Sahara and all you have to get help is your laptop, you're pretty screwed whether you have satellite modem access or not. Now, on the beach in a resort in some dirty third-world country, that's another story.
..For what it would cost you for the service, you might as well just run cat5 cable out there..
air and light and time and space
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.
but the idea of Bill Gates on vacation in the Sahara is amusing.
- - -
Radio Free Nation
is a news site based on Slash Code
"If You have a Story, We have a Soap Box"
- - -
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
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...
I have the GlobalStar service. I purchased it primarily for data service in areas where wireless PCS data service is not available. Though it connects at 9600 bps, the latency is about half that of connecting through my Sprint PCS phone at 14.4 -- about 350ms versus Sprint's 700ms. Since most of my work is done through SSH, the lower latency at 9600 works better for me anyway. It also requires line-of-sight, so unless you're outside, it likely won't be able to reach the satellite. Overall, though it's expensive to use in comparison with normal cell phones, it serves its purpose. If the prices continue to drop to a level where the average consumer can use them, and they include backward-compatibility for the traditional cellular networks, I think these phones could easily become more widespread in the future.
If you can't get yourself to conjure up a good mirage, you can always download one from the net! You could also spend your last few moments of (in)sanity rewriting your will, naming whoever ran off with your girlfriend and left you in the middle of the Sahara.
Picture this: A regular cellphone, just like today's, in my pocket, briefcase, backpack - whereever. Like I care, as long as it's in BT range from my comm badge and earpiece. The comm badges could be styled - different colours, shapes and so on to look like anything from Star Trek comm badges to women's jewelry. If you touch the badge, the voicedial activates and you can go "Computer! Locate Cmdr Taco!" and have the phone dial his cell phone number. (Or just say "Home!" like I do with my Philips SparK (which had working voicedial like five years ago) and it calls home.) The comm badge also activates answering the phone when it rings (when the user wears the earpiece, the phone just whispers "answer it, you bozo" softly in your ear instead of ringing out loud).
The earpiece uses skull resonance for the speech so you won't need the mike boom. This would also make this system perfect for when I'm on my bike.
Add Bluetooth in the laptop and/or PDA to access your address book/LDAP server to find people and you're good to go. If anyone makes this system now, I want a set as royalty for the idea. ;-)
Money for nothing, pix for free
Actually, if you have a GPS receiver you could contact your home government and give them your coordinates to within a meter. That's more information than most 911 operators have to go on. But would you stay alive long enough for help to arrive?
The scary thing is that VA is getting most of its revenue from Slashdot and Freshmeat.
the good ground has been paved over by suicidal maniacs
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.
Those bands definitely are used for other services, and have been for a long time. See this page for listings of US and International frequency allocations.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
How are these companies going to pay for replacement satellites and their associated launch services? The price paid for the Iridium system ($25 million) would not cover the cost of a single Delta or Ariane launch, not to mention the cost of the replacement satellites.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
Not quite true. Solar panels don't gather true solar power. They exploit the reaction between light and a compound. That's why those little solar panels in electronic kits will work with a flash light. Thus "solar power" wouldn't be much more abundant in the Sahara then anywhere else.
Can't we spend 2 weeks a year without electricity?
You first.
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
Now, let's look at sat phones:
And remember, any advances in vocoder technology, modulation technology, or transmitter technology will benefit both terrestrial cellular and sat phones equally. Except that it is a lot easier to upgrade a terrestrial site than a bird in LEO.
As a result, there will always be far fewer sat phone users than cell phone users. All the non-recurring engineering costs, all the fixed costs of manufacture, all the fixed costs of service will have to borne by fewer users.
www.eFax.com are spammers
If they'd had satellite phone service they could have called for help immediately.
You don't have to have satellite "service" to call for help. Any cellular phone, including Iridium sat phones, can dial 911, assuming you're in the US. My buddy has 3 surplus Iridium phones that were given to him when Iridium declared bankruptcy. Now that they're back in operations, the phones work, but without a service contract they'll only dial 911. Which is just fine for him, as that's the only reason he would ever need to use one.
As for normal consumers ever carrying these things around - they'd better get a hell of a lot smaller. The antenna is the size and thickness of a large hot dog. The phone itself is about the size of a brick. It reminds me of early handheld cellular phones... works, but you'd look like an idiot with something that big hanging off your belt. Assuming your pants would even stay up.
-Ryan, with the unoriginal sig