NEW YORK-When David Finkelstein looks up at the heavens and ahead to the future, he sees low-earth-orbit satellites as galactic warriors fighting to control suburban sprawl on Earth and provide the power of Internet access to the rich and poor alike.
“The big social message is that telecommunications (networks) are like the new railroads of the next millennium. They are altering the relative role of infrastructure,” said Finkelstein, senior vice president of marketing and business development for SkyBridge, a Bethesda, Md., LEO start-up.
“LEO constellations will become a very powerful agent in that change … They can slow down uncontrolled urbanization, and there are a lot of costs to society associated with this, including development and time lost in transit.”
Bankrolled by corporate heavyweights, including Alcatel, Telstra Corp., Toshiba Corp. and Loral Space & Communications Ltd., SkyBridge will focus on last-mile access instead of end-to-end connectivity.
For $4.8 billion, the equivalent “of one operator’s fiber-optic deployment in the New York City metro area,” SkyBridge plans to deploy a constellation of 80 LEO satellites covering the globe, except for the Arctic and Antarctic regions, Finkelstein said at the recent Telecom Business ’99 Conference & Expo.
“SkyBridge is a fairly unique implementation. We are taking the notion of statistical multiplexing used in network backbones, where aggregating traffic is used for efficient transmission,” he said.
“It is similar to the hand-off from base station to base station in terrestrial wireless.”
Orbiting at an altitude of 15,000 kilometers, the LEO satellites will provide two-way communications with a latency of about 30 milliseconds. This is far less than the half-second delays experienced in communications via the geostationary satellites in widespread use today. They orbit at much higher altitudes.
Sky Bridge plans to begin launching satellites in mid-2002. Meanwhile Hughes Electronics’ $1.4 billion Spaceway system expects to begin offering similar services that same year in North America. Likewise, Astrolink L.L.C., a strategic venture initiated by Lockheed Martin Corp., plans to launch its first geostationary satellite in 2002, followed by the launch of three additional satellites at six-month intervals.
Lockheed Martin also is providing launch equipment to Teledesic L.L.C., whose backers include Motorola Inc., Boeing Corp., Bill Gates and Craig McCaw. Teledesic plans a $10 billion system of 200 LEO satellites, the first of which is slated to be launched in 2003.
“Twenty-five percent of America will remain uncovered by terrestrial landline or wireless, and a larger percentage worldwide will be overlooked by Internet deployment,” SkyBridge’s Finkelstein said.
“Satellites can reduce the gap between the information haves and have-nots by providing universal service … Satellites are distance insensitive, so delivery costs are the same in Manhattan or Montana. It is the only technology about which you can say this.”
SkyBridge sees an addressable market of about 21 million people in North America and Europe. They live or work far enough away from urban areas that satellite-based Internet access may be their cheapest option.
“Remote applications are highly interactive: telecommuting, tele-medicine, distance learning,” Finkelstein said.
“New generations of applications are increasingly information-rich and interactive. Workers who need to interact are increasingly mobile, spread out and global, and they are redefining and changing work processes.”
Residential terminals will cost less than $1,000, “and we are working to get the price down,” Finkelstein said. Residential customers also will pay a $30 flat-rate monthly service fee. Business customers will pay about $2,000 for the installation and about $50 per month for service.
Sky Bridge also will offer services to companies in industrial parks that cable television and local exchange carriers are not interested in serving.
For these customers, local multipoint distribution systems and microwave multipoint distribution systems “have a wonderful future, but they have propagation characteristics that require a line-of-site and towers every several kilometers,” Finkelstein said.
“How can satellite compete against fixed wireless and [digital subscriber line]? I use the example of Direct TV. Echostar started in rural areas, and now the largest number of its new (customer) additions are in areas that already have cable TV.”
