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December 16, 2004
Lower-Orbit Satellite or Hot Air?
Posted by John Yunker
According to The Economist a company out of Atlanta, Georgia plans to launch an "airship satellite" stationed 13 miles off the ground to function as a cost-effective low-orbit satellite.
This "stratellite" certainly appears to be less expensive than the real low-orbit satellite WildBlue which is coming on line in 2005.
The airship could be used to light up cities with DSL-like bandwidth. At 13 miles, I suspect latency will be an issue. But it certainly is a convenient way of manufacturing the tallest tower in town and would make a nice platform for fixed wireless base stations. Perhaps TowerStream would be interested in such a service.
Thanks Chris for the heads up.
Comments (2)
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Russell Shaw is a specialist in mobile computing, telephony, networking and covers these fields regularly for numerous print and online publications. Russ writes the popular IP Telephony blog on ZDNet and contributes regularly to The Industry Standard blog as well. Author of seven books, Russ' latest book is Wireless Networking Made Easy.
John Yunker is president of 
1. Jesse Kopelman on December 17, 2004 6:11 PM writes...
WildBlue is geosynchronous, not LEO. The difference being 200ms latency vs. 10ms. Iridium was a LEO constellation.
Permalink to Comment2. Jesse Kopelman on December 17, 2004 6:17 PM writes...
BTW, 13 miles high will hardly cause a latency issue. Even if the cell had a radius of 100 miles, you are talking 1ms latency due to propagation.
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