[Dr Buzz0 (Unverified) Posted 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.