It’s a bird-it’s a plane-it’s a Stratellite high-altitude airship that enables wireless communications from the Earth’s stratosphere?
Sanswire Networks L.L.C.’s vision for a national wireless broadband network began as just that-a vision that wireless high-speed Internet access could be available from anywhere in the world.
To that end, the company formed in 1995 as an 802.11 hot-spot provider, wirelessly enabling hotels, apartments and condominiums, and making wireless Internet service available to customers in many locations, explained Michael Molen, chief executive officer.
The idea to use stratosphere-bound airships as a transmission platform for wireless connectivity sprouted in the company’s early years. Sanswire imagined “a cell tower, 13 miles in the air,” that it would call a Stratellite, said Molen.
The vision began to take real shape when GlobeTel Communications Corp. acquired Sanswire, including its Stratellite project and a portion of its assets last April.
Sanswire’s Stratellite, referred to as a high-altitude airship, is not to be mistaken for a blimp or balloon, said Molen. The airship resides at 65,000 feet, or 13 miles, above the Earth. Equipped with three computers, it is capable of flying. It can be controlled, tuned and adjusted from stations on the ground.
A Stratellite can stay in the air for about 18 months, limited by required recharges of the solar panels that power it, which can only be recharged 500 times while in flight. Sanswire’s plan is to put a second airship up before the first comes down so handoff is seamless to the consumer. The first airship will then be retrofitted and sent back up as needed.
Upon launch, a helium-nitrogen lifting gas powers a Stratellite up, and six onboard GPS units connected to its engines hold it in position. The airship can be launched from one location and then flown to its designated spot in the sky via control stations on the ground.
Each Stratellite is capable of line-of-sight service to a 300,000-square-mile area, but, at least initially, Sanswire plans for each airship to cover one major metropolitan area.
The company in July announced that a live demonstration of the communications capabilities of its Stratellites, held at its Atlanta headquarters, was a success.
The demonstration involved several wireless tests using various IP products and services over different frequencies, from different fixed positions in the sky. Demo attendees made an international phone call and accessed the Internet via the technology.
Sanswire also recently announced plans to launch its first Stratellite, a demo, in January in California. The demo airship will be one-fifth the size of the final version and will only be able to stay up in the air for a few weeks at a time.
Plans call for the final-version Stratellite to be 245-feet high, 145-feet wide and 87-feet tall-about the size of a football field or an eight-story building, said Molen, who expects the first larger-size airship to launch by end of third quarter of 2005.
That launch likely will take place in Melbourne, Australia, as per an agreement signed in May with a partner there. A simultaneous launch in the United States is also possible at that time, said Molen.
Once production of the large-size airships begins, Sanswire expects to be able to launch a new Stratellite every 90 days, Molen added. Sanswire’s plan is to provide wireless coverage across the United States with the airships and then to cover the world with them.
As a service provider, Sanswire hopes to sell services as a bundled package of voice, video and data services to Sanswire subscribers who will be able to access them via an IP connection in their house, explained Molen. Those consumers will also be able to access Sanswire services anywhere in the Stratellites’ coverage area.
Sanswire also has received interest in the technology for use in surveillance solutions, for crop management, for border control, and for use in Third World countries lacking telecom infrastructure.
Also, Sanswire plans to lease space on the platforms to other wireless providers to bolster third- and fourth-generation network buildouts.
The company plans to market the service in select metropolitan areas about four months prior to it being launched. To promote it, Sanswire likely will offer limited free trials and eventually move to the bundled package, which Molen believes will cost a faction of bundles on the market today.
“The big boys are really going to be concerned if we can pull this off,” said Molen.
A lot may be riding on whether or not Sanswire can pull this off, including the future of its parent company, GlobeTel, whose stock price is hovering around just 8 cents per share.
GlobeTel provides international telecom services via voice-over-IP technology, mainly to deregulated emerging markets. The company offers international voice and data services, international prepaid calling services, an enhanced service platform and international subscription programs for international calling.
