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Teledesic Comes Down to Earth
hibachi writes "Teledesic, the ambitious plan to build a constellation of low-earth orbiting satellites for global broadband services, has died on the assembly room floor. According to this press release, "the company does not believe that it is prudent, purely on speculation, to continue the substantial capital expenditures required to construct and launch the satellites consistent with the timing required to meet FCC and ITU regulatory milestones." Brainchild of Bill Gates and Craig McCaw, Teledesic held the promise of globally ubiquitous high speed Internet. It seems Teledesic's plans grew less ambitious over the years until finally the painful lessons of Iridium, and the current telecom climate, drove the last nails in its coffin. I am sad to see this happen."
Gives a whole new meaning to "never got off the ground".
I think that a big part of their problems comes from trying to provide internet acess to 3 billion people who previously didn't have it (is it that few?). Not that this goal isn't admirable, but I think it would be better to concentrate on getting consistant electricity, clean water, and high quality food to the world poor, instead of internet access (lack of computers/electricity to run them could also be a problem).
Galium Arsenide is the material of the future, and always will be.
Unfortunatly we see this kind of thing happening everywhere. Telecom companies devaluating their recent investments for UMTS licenses, Companies like Worldcom and KPN QWEST in serieus trouble (right to the point that at least KPN QWEST goes bankrupt). It is no surprise that Teledesic does not want to venture into a territory which is hostile to say the least at this moment. To uphold their promise they must not only build, launch and exploit the satelites but they must also create the groundstations and maintain them for the governments and regional governments. Otherwise those satelites would be very expensive space junk.
So they are looking at a very substantial investment in a time where no-one would invest because of unstable markets.
Unfortunatly there is no forseeable uplift for the telecom sector. It's a wise decision to stop now and to evaluate the situation. Perhaps when the worldeconomy is seeing some uplift the company can start again with its original plans. Until then i'm afraid those 3 billion people will still not have access. Although they will never miss it by the way, nor am i afraid that they are worse off then those who do have access.
The Helios project will provide the same functionality, but with cheaper maintenance and launch costs. It is a solar-cell powered flying wing that will soar at about 60000 feet or so, with 200 pounds of payload. It may very well be the specific reason they pulled the plug on Teledisc, since they realize that most satelites will be obsoleted too soon for them to proceed with the project.
Stop the brainwash
Iridium bugs me. I've seen a lot of people claim it failed because of the technology. But this just isn't the case! It *might* have failed based on the technical [de]merits, but it never made it that far.
I know this because I tried to buy an Iridium phone. I spent months and months trying. I tell you they WOULD NOT SELL ME ONE. It was a joke! No resellers had them, and there was no plan. The best I ever did was find a fly-by-night in Taiwan who would sell me a phone, but not a service plan. Who would buy a phone with no service plan?
It was frustrating too, reading their glossy pamphlets and their web sites. They actually gave you (the customer) examples of what type of people would use an Iridium phone. Topping the list was Saudi Oil Sheiks! I'm not kidding! I tried to tell them, im not an oil sheik, but I HAVE MONEY and I want to BUY.
Iridium failed because of internal failures inside the company (and motorola). They got caught up in internal politics and self-absorbsion. Apparently they forget to do marketing and build distribution channels.
Global 'consumer' two-way satellite networks will never ever make it. It's simply an extremely bad idea.
The reason it's an extremely bad idea is that the majority of people who have an interest in highspeed two-way communications live in urban areas with a sufficient population to support ground based technology. The groundbased technology will be cheaper and easier to install and upgrade, and it will have a lower latency, and it will have a far lower initial investment cost, laying the ground for more competition.
This means that the whole cost of the global satellite network will have to be covered by the customers who cannot obtain the ground based two-way communications; the people who live out of range from a >3K people population center. Not very many people. That in turn means the prices per in-the-woods-hermit-connection are going to be so prohibitively high that very few could afford it. Probably so high that you could pay for your own fibre connection for the yearly charges if you're living in a civilized country. Which in turn leaves the people living on antarctica, the middle of the jungles in south america, in tibet or in the middle of africa being the only ones who could get access via satellite cheaper than by buying their own fibre.
I dont think that the customer base of billionaires in the middle of african nowhere is going to be sufficient.
Here in the UK it was perfectly possible to buy an Iridium phone. Almost every electronics shop on Tottenham Court Road stocked them. I even once saw someone buy one.
The problem Iridium had was deeped. When the economics were first calculated in the mid-1980s, nobody envisaged a ubiquitious cell phone service and global roaming. (Nor did they imagine that cell phone services would price their minutes at $0.20 or less.) The key demographic of Iridium users - i.e. travelling businessmen - already had cell phones, and weren't prepared to swap them for larger devices, with lower quality sound, and which cost 30x as much per minute.
--- My dad's political betting
Being a "victim" of the telecom crash myself, I feel like speaking freely about the not so positive parts here...
In the last 5-10 years, there's been a constant push to develop more and newer technology to sell to willing customers (in the highly developed parts of the planet). This was in blind disregard of then common sense that enough is enough, if you don't need more features you're not going to buy it.
Meanwhile, the amount of technology standards and "blueprints" for communication systems is advanced enough to last quite a while without new developments. Some refinement is good, but wider implementation of this technology would do much more good in the world, for peace and equality (thereby reducing risks of conflict between nations and peoples!). If every moderately developed country would have basic internet and telephony services available for 80-90% of the people for reasonable prices. The world would be much better off than with another way to get broadband for a few above average rich people.
Of course, the need for food, shelter, education and freedom rises far above the need for communication and internet facilities. Also 3 million people a year are dying of aids, and so on and so forth... Life is not about more bandwidth (really!)
Simon