Japanese mobiles could make satellite calls to massive dish

When you're already tracking every kid out there to make sure no one gets into too much mischief, you definitely need a way to make a call whilst in "mountainous areas or at sea," right? Apparently the Japanese government thinks so, as it's planning on bringing satellite calling to the masses by launching a bird that's 50-meters in diameter in order to enable "ordinary handsets" (you know, the ones without the mile-long antennas) to make satellite calls in times of emergency with just slight modifications. The aforementioned sat would be over twice the size of the 19-meter Kiku No. 8, which currently holds the crown for the largest launched by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, meaning that the newfangled equipment would fit nicely within the confines of today's increasingly shrinking cellphone and still find signal. Interestingly, the ministry isn't looking to get the service going before 2015, so we just might be looking at mainstream antenna-less iterations by that time anyway.

[Via DigitalWorldTokyo, photo courtesy of SatellitePhones]

[pbase @ May 5th 2007 4:51AM]

Don't know much about satellite phones, but is it possible to make direct handset-to-handset calls, evenutally eliminating the itermediary cell phone companies?
$69.99 and another $20 in taxes my ass.

[Gil @ May 5th 2007 5:26AM]

Dude that's daylight robbery. In the EU a basic subcription is 4€


About the satellite: the size of that antena would make it easily visible from the ground.

[Sasha S. @ May 5th 2007 6:41AM]

pbase, as currently constructed mobile phones can not communicate with one another, they are made to be peripheral devices connected to one centralised network.

This is a VERY GOOD idea. In the case of an emergency (Japan = earthquakes) mobile infrastructure is often overloaded and can be easily damaged (unless special (read: expensive) provisions are made. In such case proposed satellite could be used to not only communicate - but also locate people accurately, send text messages with instructions etc.

I think that European Union should look into making such a system, because it can easily serve a whole continent, and then cost can be spread over many countries.

[StreetStealth @ May 5th 2007 4:18PM]

"You have entered a Satellite Roaming area. Your calls are now 9000 yen per minute. Gomen nasai!"

[Dr Buzz0 @ May 5th 2007 9:42PM]

Wow. You don't know much about sat phones. Basically what they are trying to do, from what it sounds like, is create a geostationary satellite which is capable of receiving calls from handheld phones. Right now, most satellite phones fall into categories: 1. They use a big geostationary satellite, but it's altitude is so high that the phones need to be the size of laptop computers and have a directional antenna. 2. handheld phones (but big ones... brick size) which use a network of low earth orbit satellites. This is how the Iridium and Globalstar networks work. Their satellites are at low altitudes of only a couple hundred miles, but as they are constantly coming in and out of range and only cover small areas, you need a lot of them to provide a mesh network, where at least one is always avaliable.

Both systems have their advantages and disadvantages. However the one operational system that allows for a single satellite AND relatively small terminal size is called Thuraya and covers most of the middle east and Europe. It does so by using a massive array antenna deployed from the satellite. It has enough gain to pick up the weak signals of a cell phone, even from the Clark Belt.

It sounds to me like that is what they are trying to emulate. It's really a solution for filling in the gaps in remote areas where cell phone coverage is not avaliable or to provide a backup if the terrestrial network fails.

Satellite phones are great if you're really out in the boondocks, but they will not replace cell phones for populated areas. The technology is inherently much much more expensive and it has some big limitations in the bandwidth and number of calls the system can handle, since such a large geographic area is covered by a single frequency range.