AT&T Introduces Satellite-Enabled Smart Phone

crimeandpunishment writes "Here's one way to deal with spotty cell phone coverage: backstop the network on a satellite. AT&T is now selling its first satellite-enabled smart phone....which could be invaluable for boaters, forest rangers, and others who regularly leave regular cellular coverage areas. But the TerreStar Genus comes with a hefty price tag: $799.....and the data costs are as sky-high as the satellite....400 times more than a standard plan. It also has to have a clear view of the southern sky, which means it can only be used outdoors."

Comments

DirecWay to the rescue!

[poptones]

Why hasn't someone created a device like this that uses the widely available direcway/blue sky technology? Given the maximum per channel bandwidth and the relatively small needs of a voice communication device it seems like a fairly low power device should be able to function with acceptable psnr.

Re:DirecWay to the rescue!

[Gazoogleheimer]

because Iridium has -- for a bit over a decade.

Re:DirecWay to the rescue!

[DarthBart]

The links just won't close. I don't have the exact numbers I'd need to do a link budget, but the Direcway links are engineered for a Ku link with a .9m dish on the ground and a 3-4m dish on the spacecraft, with the ground transmitting at 2-4 watts. The TerreStar satellite has an 18m dish on the satellite. That's a crapload more gain. TerreStar also uses a 2Ghz link which is also virtually unaffected by weather.

Also keep in mind that generating sufficient output power at Ku frequencies is extremely inefficient. A Direcway 4W BUC amplifier draws about 50 watts out of its power supply. I doubt your average cell phone's battery can tolerate that.

Re:DirecWay to the rescue!

[hpa]

Iridium was more than just a way to market the technology ... they use low-orbit satellites which can provide a stronger signal and less lag. Unfortunately they spend $7,000,000,000 developing the technology, and the market just wasn't big enough for it.

Re:DirecWay to the rescue!

[MasseKid]

The 2Ghz link is nice for being unaffected by weather, however you're going to need a very large dish or a huge SSPA/HPA to get enough output. Remembering that beam width varies linearly with frequency, a ~40Ghz Ka band is going to start at 13dB more gain from a similar dish verses a low end S band signal. One of the reasons it takes such a huge dish on the satellite. Now, my quick math is putting an 18m beamwidth at only .58 degrees at 2ghz. That's hardly enough to cover all of America, and in fact the 3dB beam would only be 220 miles across. Something with the math just doesn't add up.

Texting

[timeOday]

Voice via satellite is still too expensive; instead they should offer satellite texting at a reasonable price. At least then you're still connected.

Re:Texting

[timeOday]

PS the article says texts are "40 cents each, only four times the piece rate for cell phone." That's way too much, just as 10 cents for a regular text is a complete ripoff. 40 cents each works out to around $3000/MB, whereas (non-texting) satellite data on the same phone costs $5/MB. It really makes me wonder how they come up with these prices.

Re:Texting

[timeOday]

SMS sucks. Why not email?

I agree completely. Why somebody felt compelled to invent a bastardized version of email in the first place is beyond me.

Re:Texting

[hedwards]

It was for testing purposes, it's just that somebody later had the brilliant idea that people would pay for it.

Re:Texting

[Charliemopps]

Because people pay it.

Re:Texting

[Anonymous Coward]

For extremely brief messages, SMS is faster and the recipient doesn't need to have their chat or email client open. As long as their phone is on, they'll get the message. This is useful for messages like, "Answer your goddamn phone. We need to talk now!" or "I'm watching you sleep."

Re:Texting

[DarthBart]

In my experience with satellite phone users, there's two types:

1) The guys who are going camping way out in the middle of Nowhere. They wont use their phone unless someone is dying. At that point, I don't think they care about per-minute costs. Usually, those folks have bought $50-100 prepaid airtime cards.

2) Businessmen who need to be in contact with home base no matter what. That includes oil/gas industries, or senior-level executives. The folks in accounting get the bill and the end user just knows to dial, press send, and then carry on.

Source: Me, having to provide sales & support services to Irridium and INMARSAT users.

Re:Texting

[TooMuchToDo]

Because it was super-easy to bolt on to the status channel and it can be sold at a high margin? My god! I've invented business!

Re:Texting

[genik76]

Why should things be priced based on their actual cost to the provider? It makes much more sense to demand a price, which maximizes the profit. If you decide to use the service, it's obviously worth the price and both parties have gained something from the transaction.

Re:Texting

[shentino]

If there was actually a bit of competition in the area I'd be satisfied with that explanation.

But when a long term contract means I'm locked into whatever they see fit to hide in the fine print, I'm not exactly at liberty to take my business elsewhere, now am I?

My investment method has been vindicated!

[zymurgy_cat]

See? I was right all along. I'm gonna make millions on this, I tell you, millions! This will totally make up for my Iridium investment....I can feel it.

Windows Mobile 6.5...

[yoblin]

Doesn't matter if it's satellite enabled or not, you're probably not going to have the patience to make a call!

Anyone remember Iridium?

[Charles Dodgeson]

In the late the late 80s, Motorola had a scheme to launch 77 LEO satellites to provide global satellite coverage. I thought it was a great idea at the time, and bought a bunch of Motorola stock. It didn't work out very well. They eventually launched 66 satellites, but didn't change the name of the project to whatever has atomic number 66.

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

Re:Anyone remember Iridium?

[Sycraft-fu]

The US government loves it. They are a major customer. No surprise, they have people operating in areas that have shit cell coverage and they want to maintain communication.

Re:Anyone remember Iridium?

[Animats]

At the prices they pay for service, it might just make sense for them to buy out Iridium.

Essentially, they did. When Iridium was about to go under and the satellites were days from being de-orbited, DoD bought into the system at a bargain price. This turned out to be extremely useful once the US got entangled in Iraq and Afghanistan. Originally, DoD bought unlimited airtime for 10,000 users. Now they're past 100,000 DoD users. Iridium overall has about 360,000 users.

It's the thing to have if you need to communicate from Outer Nowhere. Works anywhere on the planet that you can see the sky. Airtime is about $1 to $2 a minute, and phones are about $1500. A roll-up solar panel is a common accessory. The typical user drives a HUMMV, a yacht, or a dogsled.

799?

[Anonymous Coward]

799 is a hefty price for a gadget?? remind me how much nexus was going for on google site? and with regards to data costing 400 time more - excuse moi, i don't know where are you from, but here in canada rogers beats any satellite plan hands down.

uh no

[poptones]

Iridium uses its own network of satellites. Iridium is expensive. A direcway subscription is like 60 bucks a month with about 600MB a day allotment. Seems they could partner with a phone provider to offer a 10MB a day channel for a pretty low fee, what's needed is a means of accessing the technology.

Re:uh no

[MoonBuggy]

I don't know about this tech specifically, but I'm thinking perhaps they need a decent sized parabolic dish rather than a phone antenna to provide an acceptable signal.

Re:uh no

[DarthBart]

Irridium has the advantage of being in low earth orbit versus Direcway's geosynchronous orbit. The path loss between a 250ish mile orbit and a 22,500 mile orbit is a hefty number of dB.

Assuming both systems At 2Ghz, it is 150dB at 250 miles and 190db at 22,500 miles. That 40db difference either has to be made up in raw transmit power at both ends or by using a 5.3m dish antenna.

Re:uh no

[iowannaski]

Good for you.

When I'm in the middle of the forest or out in a boat is it's because someone is paying me to do work out there. I often need to communicate with people back at the office in those situations, and texting is often the easiest way to do that.

Re:uh no

[TheRaven64]

The loss isn't the only problem. There's also the question of latency. A geosynchronous orbit is an altitude of 36,000km above sea level at the equator, meaning that a signal has to go at least 72,000km there and back. To put that in perspective, that's just under 0.25 light seconds. This means that if both endpoints are directly under the satellite, the minimum latency is 0.25 seconds. In practical terms, encoding, decoding, and routing at the other end will add a bit, making it absolutely horrible for bidirectional communication. When you have a minimum of half a second round trip time, you're going to be constantly interrupting each other because you both start talking when you think there is a pause in the conversation and don't find out that there wasn't until half a second later.

Re:Yawn...

[clang_jangle]

This isn't groundbreaking tech.

I never said it was, AC. Never said it was a good deal, either.

If you are going far enough out to need sat coverage either get one of these for 15 bucks a month and call it day.

Actually according to the link you provided it's $15/month access fee, plus $0.99 per minute, plus $595 for the phone itself (it's "on sale", regularly $699). I'm sure there are plenty of other charges you only find out about once you sign up too, just like every other telecommunications deal.

Way cheaper than Iridium for Boaters

[boogahboogah]

At 40 cents a minute, it is way cheaper than all other Sat phones, and would be great for marine use.

Too bad they will only target the US, that leaves any cruising boats out of the picture once they venture away from the shores of the US (_sigh_).

Re:Yay this is awsome.

[catmistake]

As long as someone else pays the bill...like the government (ie forest ranger)

I don't mean to pick, and basically agree with you... but, presumably, forest rangers work in a forest. Forget cell, it doesn't go through trees... and if you have a view of the southern sky, you're probably in a desert not a forest. Forest rangers need good RF, not cell or satellite. I speak, of course, without knowing anything about which I speak.

Re:So let me get this right...

[TheRaven64]

The point is that no one wants to use an Iridium phone as their primary phone, because it's insanely expensive. No one wants to take an Iridium phone with them in case they go out of the coverage area. On the other hand, if you find yourself in the middle of nowhere where there is no mobile phone signal, then you might decide that it's worth paying $5/minute to be able to make a call.

Re:Yay this is awsome.

[tibit]

The "clear view" of sourthern sky is not necessarily so. Maybe if you were in a tropical forest, you'd have a problem. A standard pine forest does attenuate things, but pine needles aren't leaves. I've used Iridium for a bit and I've never ever had a situation where a satphone connection wouldn't work on the ground, but would work above the tops of the pines. Terrestar uses way better space segment, with comparatively colossal beamforming, so I'd expect it to work much better than Iridium did.

In the U.S., detached residential construction is basically relatively dry plywood with a wire or a pipe here and there, and with some bitumic shingles on the roof. Unless the shingles are the dealbreaker, I'd expect GENUS to work just fine indoors in a regular home. In commercial buildings -- sure, there will be problems, perhaps a bit more like there are with cellphone reception there.

As for cellphones in forests: assuming that the forest is well within a covered area, the trees should pose no problem. You always get attenuation from something. Trees, walls, rebar -- somehow my cellphone works just fine in a building with extruded corrugated steel roof (big seamless sections), and with reinforced concrete walls, at ground level.

Forests in remote areas simply may suffer from generally poor coverage, where the trees just make a marginal situation unworkable. But the trees aren't the main problem, the coverage is. And that's where GENUS steps in: you have poor land-based coverage, so it'll switch to the space segment.

I've been tracking Terrestar's PR quite closely, and they seem to be quite good at what they do. Their space segment is unique, and so far I have no reason to distrust their engineering. They cover their asses, but from what little experience I have, I'd expect GENUS to pretty much "just work" anywhere within the northern U.S., even in the middle of nowhere, Utah.