In the latest move of the chess game of low-Earth orbit satellite services, SkyBridge Limited Partnership has increased its constellation from 64 to 80 satellites.
Project officials said the increase adds roughly 50 percent more capacity to the global telecommunications system. The change comes in response to results from a series of proprietary market studies commissioned by SkyBridge. The survey estimates that the market for services SkyBridge plans to offer �- high-speed transmission of video, data, and voice to the homes of consumers �- will be about 400 million by 2005. A commanding portion of this audience will use satellites to receive their information.
"What these surveys mean is that companies such as Alcatel [a major partner in SkyBridge] and Motorola can attract a serious segment of this market," said Mark MacGann, vice president of strategic affairs for SkyBridge.
The SkyBridge announcement comes nearly two weeks after the field of competitors in the arena of LEO satellite-based services shrunk from three to two players. On 21 May, Motorola decided to fold its Celestri network into Teledesic and become the primary contractor in the project which, like SkyBridge, will bring high-speed video, data, and voice services to the doorsteps of consumers. By combining forces, the new Teledesic provides formidable competition, a point not lost on MacGann.
"The addition of Motorola puts a lot of industrial weight behind Teledesic and makes it a very solid, tough competitor," MacGann said. "But in another sense, it means there is less competition now."
Both Teledesic and SkyBridge hope to take the high-speed network concept into space to offer services around the globe. Their visions are tied to the use of LEO satellites. Already, satellites sitting at geostationary orbit (GEO), 22,366 miles above the Earth, beam direct broadcast television and other such signals to Earth. But for services such as Internet access and high-speed video transmission, a GEO satellite�s distance is too far. This is where LEO technology comes into the picture. These satellites reside in several polar orbits, between 434 and 441 miles high.
Aside from a basic menu of services, the two projects differ greatly. Teledesic intends to launch 288 satellites, plus spares, to build what it calls the Internet-in-the-Sky, a whole new network from which Internet service providers and other access providers can purchase bandwidth. This capacity will provide transmission at speeds of 64 Mbps on the downlink, up to 2 Mbps on the uplinks, and the ability to support more than 2 million simultaneous 16 Kbps connections.
Teledesic will also use a new portion of the radio spectrum for its communications, the Ka-band, and therefore must develop new technologies to operate in the band. Although Teledesic officials are tight-lipped about how the presence of Motorola may change the network configuration, they maintain the cost of building the project will remain at $9 billion.
SkyBridge appears modest by comparison. Even with the bigger constellation, SkyBridge will not go beyond $4.2 billion to build its network. Part of the reason for the lower cost is the fact that the project is designed to solve a specific problem: It wants to fill in the gap between the consumer and the local telephone network. The capacity it intends to offer is downlink speeds of up to 20 Mbps and up to 2 Mbps on the uplinks to support business and residential users.
Another factor in the lower cost is the fact that SkyBridge plans to use a much-traveled part of the spectrum, the Ku-band. This band of spectrum is widely used by GEO satellites that broadcast television and radio signals, including the now-infamous Galaxy IV satellite. By using a part of the spectrum that is widely populated by satellites, SkyBridge is hoping to use existing technologies, and this will keep system costs down.
Through all of this, MacGann believes SkyBridge will be able to compete, against Teledesic and against rival technologies such as ADSL and fiberoptic that will be available before the project�s expected service launch date of 2001. MacGann noted that Alcatel invests in projects with these other technologies.
"One thing we�re all sure of [is that] no matter how much capacity we can provide, it won�t be enough," MacGann said.
