The Legacy Of The Satellite Phone

By: Nicola Kennedy
Submitted: 2007-01-17 15:40:08
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Satellite phones today are of great use if you are already getting rid of your obsolete telephones at home or your miserable cellular phones due to signal failures.

It was in the early 1960 to 1990’s that the satellite phone was introduced to the market. But before its arrival let us first trace its origin by glancing at its brief history.

The pioneering satellite phone that offer the first ever planetary coverage is known as the Iridium Satellite Phone, which until now still exists. The name Iridium was derived from the chemical element in your periodic table, Iridium with an atomic number of 77. In the beginning it consists of 72 active constellations but at present it has only 66 active satellites.

Unlike other satellite phones, Iridium is the only constellation that allows the planetary coverage. This is because of its inter-satellite links that the other satellite phones do not possess. But this is not global because there are some countries that do not have the network yet.

The original design of the Iridium came out as early as 1960’s with control and time-triggered messages over its orbit and it will be uploaded each time the satellites pass through the pole. But it was found out that this design did not offer the sufficient bandwidth so it was turn down in the market.

Since it is considered to be the pioneer of the satellite phones, it paves the way of other companies to discover new models of mobile phones. There starts the development of the Motorola.

It was on November 1, 1998 that the Iridium Communications service was launched and due to insufficient demand for the service and poor management, a tremendous bankruptcy took place on August 13, 1999. The worse thing that happened was, since there was the bankruptcy that is why whether big or small investors nobody receive a return of their investment. It was a gamble of money.

Numerous unqualified inquires came in for the purchase of Iridium until 2001 when a group of private investors founded Iridium Satellite LLC and re-established service. Due to necessary effort that was made by the Iridium companies, gradually it recovered from its collapse.

From that point, there are other several satellite telephone communications that came into market. One is the Globalstar, but it is of a lower earth orbit satellite constellation because it only consists of 48 satellites. As compared to Iridium, it has no inter-satellite that is why it has no capacity to have the entire planetary coverage.

The first satellite of the Globalstar was launched in February 1998. It repeated the same failures like of the Iridium which also cause to its bankruptcy. But in order to regain the trust of their investors they also make several moves to settle the matter. And it was in the year 2001 when they even had a meeting with their creditors.

Aside from the Iridium and the Globalstar, other satellite telephone communications companies are also starting to make a name in the market. They all have the credibility that must be presented to the investors so that they will not be repeating the failures that have committed by the pioneering constellations.

The history of the Satellite phone is boosting towards the development of the technological innovations in the world. Who knows, places that are excluded from the network will be placed in the list few years from now?

Nicola Kennedy publishes articles and reports and provides news, views and information about communications and Satellite Telephones at Satellite Telephones Information.

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