Sat Com, Sat Go

Several years ago a friend and I stood in the midst of a soccer field, preparing to test a new fangled portable phone by Motorola. The thing was about the size of a walkie-talkie and definitely not something you’d whip out at a cocktail party, but it claimed to have the power to beam a phone call up to a satellite and then down to a landline anywhere on earth. I dialed the satphone and my buddy received the call on his cellphone. Incredibly, it worked! Today, however, that marvel of technology is now a $3,000 paperweight because the satellite service provider –Iridium--just went belly up. So what does this mean for boaters who were hoping to bring satellite communications aboard? Not much.True, Iridium washed up on the shore, but fast on its heels are three other new satcom services—Globalstar, ICO, and Teledesic—as well as the good ‘ol bellwether provider Inmarsat (a.k.a. COMSAT here in the U.S.). Given those choices, boaters should be able to find a satcom solution to meet their needs, so here’s a detailed look at what’s available now, and what’s just around the corner in satellite communications.

Globalstar: Globalstar is billing itself as a provider of “simple, dependable, and affordable global satellite-based personal telecommunications,” and after conducting a test on its portable phone (see sidebar) I can confirm most of that statement from first-hand experience. The Globalstar system is up and running now, and consists of a network of 48 satellites in a low-earth orbit (LEO) at an elevation of approximately 700 miles. Currently, this satellite service is available from both fixed terminals and tri-mode portable phones. “Tri-mode” means the phone will operate first as a landline or cellphone, but if neither of those services are available it will kick the call up to the satellite network and then back down to earth. While the good news is the voice quality is comparable to cellular, the bad news is the coverage is regional. According to company spokesperson Tom Geller, Globalstar will only work to about 200 miles off the U.S. coast, and on land throughout North America and parts of Central and South America, Europe, South Africa, and Asia. While that’s somewhat limited, it’s plenty of coverage for most U.S.-based boaters.

In addition to voice communications, Globalstar can provide voice mail and short text-messaging services at this time, soon to be followed by fax and data transfers at a slow rate of 9.6Kbps. So what’s the cost? The handset is $1,500 (steep, but half the cost of an Iridium Motorola phone), while airtime is about $2 to $2.50 per minute depending on the plan you choose. All in all, Globalstar seems to be a viable solution for near-coastal yachts, but check with the company to be sure the satellite network covers your areas of operation.

ICO. Things haven’t been going too well for ICO lately. The company is in the process of emerging from Chapter 11 bankruptcy proceedings, and to make matters worse, its first satellite crashed into the Pacific Ocean shortly after launch on March 12. Still, Michael Johnson, ICO’s director of corporate communications, says the company is in the satcom business for the long haul. “ICO is definitely a player,” he said, “we’re just getting in a little later than we thought.” ICO’s plans call for a network of 10 Medium Earth-Orbiting (MEO) satellites with two spares located approximately 6,500 miles up (about half as high as the GPS constellation), and the good news here is that if ICO is successful, its constellation will cover the globe, making it appropriate for megayachts with truly global cruising capabilities. Even better is the news that the system can provide high-speed data access at a rate of 144Kbps, which is almost three times faster than the common 56K dial-up modems connected to most personal computers today.

For fixed phone terminals aboard yachts, the company plans to use a unique omnidirectional antenna which does not need to be stabilized. And while Johnson says it’s still “way too early to speculate” on what the cost of the fixed- or portable phones might be, he is estimating a usage charge of between $0.50 and $1.50 per minute of airtime.

Johnson says the company hopes to begin offering service by the first quarter of 2002, but that’s an aggressive schedule subject to ongoing discussions between ICO and Craig McCaw’s Teledesic as to what the future of ICO may actually be. So for now, the company will work its business plan and hope for much better luck on the next satellite launch.

Inmarsat. With 13 years of satcom service under its belt, Inmarsat—and its U.S. signatory COMSAT—are at once the pioneers and the leaders in maritime satellite communications.

While we’ve covered COMSAT’s various services many times in past issues of PMY, the most popular is the relatively inexpensive mini-M service. KVH Industries makes two versions of a stabilized mini-M antenna for vessels 40 feet and up called the TracPhone, and according to the company’s marketing director Jim Dodez, things have never been better.

“Our satellite business is up 74 percent, and mini-M is the most widely used marine service for voice, data and fax today,” says Dodez. “There are currently 65,000 subscribers, and the list is growing daily.” While mini-M provides a good voice solution with nearly global coverage, its data transfer speed is very slow at just 2.4Kbps. But Dodez is enthusiastic about the future, since KVH also makes a stabilized TV receiver called TracVision that can transfer data at lightning-fast broadband speeds of 24Mbps, fully 1,000 times faster than TracPhone.

“We see an opportunity to combine our TracPhone and TracVision products under a single dome that can be used to transfer both voice- and high-speed data,” says Dodez. “To use the Internet, a computer user would make a request for a webpage via a telephone connection which would be beamed to the satellite and then down to earth. The request would be processed through the internet, and then uploaded to the TV satellite and beamed down to the vessel at very high speeds,” thereby solving problem of slow data transfer. But how about cost? Currently, a TracPhone 50 lists for $6,995 and airtime is about $3.00 per minute, but Dodez says COMSAT is currently running a promotion of $2.25 per minute to call anywhere in North America with no monthly fees, subscriptions, or commitments. And as far as that $3,000 Iridium paperweight is concerned, it’s not worthless. If you have an old Iridium phone, Dodez says KVH will give you a $500 credit toward the purchase of new TracPhone hardware, so all is not lost.

Teledesic: This company’s been making headlines in USA TODAY thanks to its troubles, and Teledesic’s future appears to be--literally and figuratively--very much up in the air at the time of this writing. Teledesic is billing itself as a global, broadband “Internet-in-the-Sky,” designed to provide “affordable, worldwide fiber-like access” for telecommunications services like high-speed voice and data. But as Iridium and ICO found out, Teledesic faces an uphill battle to make its proposed service-rollout deadline of 2004. And truth be told, it’s even more risky than worrying about a few million dollars-worth of satellites crashing back to earth.

Tim O’Neil is a wireless communications analyst for Soundview Financial in Stamford, Connecticut, and he sees tough sledding ahead for all of the newcomers. “The problem,” says O’Neil, “is that satellite plans are conceived years before they’re operational. There are regulatory issues, licensing requirements in each country, and by the time they roll out their products, they may have underestimated the buildout of [much cheaper] cellular services.” Clearly, these satellite service providers have millions of customers in mind when they launch their plans—not just a few hundred thousand yacht and ship owners—so the offshore service may be limited. So wh