Mooney_Driver wrote:
I suspect that there is a lot more applications for sat phones than most of us here can see from an aviation point of view.
Shipping is probably the largest user, and the market is maybe 1 bill times larger than GA 
Airlines are coming along, maybe. But when laptops are not allowed on board, that will stop further demand. How much are you willing to pay to send one snap chat? In general there are lots of places without coverage, but most people travelling there would like it to stay like that. There are lots of research facilities at remote places, they would probably welcome better communications.
For GA, unless you are flying intercontinental flights, why would you use a sat phone?
Don’t ships (including “gin palace” yachts) and airliners use mainly Inmarsat, which needs a steerable antenna which is impractical for both most GA and for any handheld phone type of device?
For GA usage, AFAIK, there is still only Iridium, Thuraya, Globalstar. The last one nearly collapsed but they are still running and are doing quite fast data – a related thread is here.
I have no idea exactly what the use. I have only used a sat phone once, when I was in the middle of nowhere in Mozambique. It was just a “slightly largish mobile phone”, no directional antenna for sure.
Peter wrote:
Indeed, although the NSA can monitor any mobile phone call from space without any problems – even when the phone has reduced its power to a few mW because it is close to a tower
I suspect Messrs. Shannon and Hartley would disagree. Even with an infinite budget, you cannae break the laws of physics. Phone call over LTE and the SNR would be such that even with an infinite budget, you aren’t going to be able to copy from space.
In any case why would the NSA bother when they can just tap the cell tower directly.
You can improve the S/N by having a bigger antenna. That however in turn implies “zooming in” on a particular point (of interest) on the earth’s surface, which is incompatible with the “satellite replacement of cellular” which was my original Q. I am sure lots of people have been around this block, which is why even current satphones are bulky.
With Thuraya one might understand it because the satellite is so far away. OTOH they have spot beams so they make up (try to?) for the worse S/N that way. Iridium are LEO (low earth orbit) but they don’t have spot beams, hence the similarly massive Iridium phones.
Peter wrote:
Don’t ships (including “gin palace” yachts) and airliners use mainly Inmarsat
Yes, and they’ve been around forever. Seem to be doing OK, although their share price isn’t all that great either: http://investors.inmarsat.com/share-price-information/
I think the main reason is that a small, finite market is largely saturated. There are only so many ships, exploration teams and other remote area users with the money to need and use satellite comms.
achimha wrote:
So equations like % of landmass don’t really count as it’s only about money.
Satellite technology is about places where GSM isn’t.
172driver wrote:
I think the main reason is that a small, finite market is largely saturated.
It’s just that it is lagging behind as the time to market for a satellite is so long.
Archie wrote:
Satellite technology is about places where GSM isn’t.
Yeah, too bad there are no people there either and those that are, don’t have money… And if there are enough people with enough money (with that factor becoming lower every year), somebody is going to put a cell tower there. Look at thriving multi billion companies like Orascom that make enormous amounts of money by putting cell towers in areas where you wouldn’t think there are any. It is a very small market and satellites are expensive to build, launch and operate.
Archie wrote:
It’s just that it is lagging behind as the time to market for a satellite is so long.
Actually there is very little activity. The satellite frenzy was in the late 90s and resulted in the bankruptcy of Iridium. Iridium NEXT is not a bold move by a strong and bullish company, it is just a very late replacement of satellites that are end of life.
I thought the Thuraya business model was mostly about giving phone access to millions of “tribal/travelling people” (“Bedouin tribes with Toyota Land Cruisers” was the expression often used at the time, and they featured in the Thuraya adverts) in the 3rd World, starting with the huge and sparsely populated portions of the Middle East.
Accordingly, the Thuraya-Thuraya call rates were very cheap; IIRC c. $0.25 per minute.
The backers must have done their figures for that market – even if to us (using the system mostly for mobile internet) they appear incompetent.
They might have done their figures many years ago when they collected the money for the company. The world keeps changing. Clearly Thuraya is not a thriving business. Whether this is more due to lack of demand or utter incompetence by the company — I think they both go in line.
