HobbySpace - Space Shopping

Shopping Space
Part 2: Consumer Space

This section looks at particular services that come directly form space to consumers.

Digital Satellite Radio

This new space communication business will provide CD quality digital radio to subscribers beginning in autumn of 2001. In summer of 2008 XM and Sirius got approval to merge. Eventually, there will be products taking advantage of this such as radios that can receive signals from both satellite systems.

In the US the service is aimed primarily for mobile applications, especially drivers on long commutes and truck drivers going cross-country.

Worldspace aims at the developing world with digital radio. It relies on public radio and advertising based services rather than subscription.

See the Satellite Radio entry in the Investing section for recent news articles.

DTH TV is the biggest success for any satellite service directly sold to the consumer (as opposed, for example, to the distribution of TV programming by satellites to cable TV companies). In the US the number of subscribers now exceeds 17 million. There are tens of millions more in around the world.

Initally consumers used large C-band dishes to pick off analog transmissions intended for cable companies and other businesses (which people still do, see the TVRO section). Eventually C_band subscriber services was developed. However, higher frequency Ku band digital transmissions became available and were intended specifically for consumer subscribers. Offering a hundred or more of channels via much smaller dishes, the systems became very popular and have mostly supplanted the C-band business.

SkyB in Britain pioneered DTH. In the US, the Hughes DirecTV and Echostar became the leading providers.

While high-speed internet connections are usually expected to come over telephone lines (DSL) or via cable TV systems, satellite delivery is also an alternative. Rural areas will not have DSL or cable for many years if ever and even some urban areas will not see DSL soon.

DTH internet via geostationary satellites has become more broadly available in the past year . The long distance to GEO causes an additional delay but this is usually not significant except for interactive applications such as network games.

Initially, only 1-way downloading from the satellite was available. A telephone line was also needed for uploading and sending emails, web page requests, etc. Now, however, full 2-way systems are available.

Geostationary Limitations

Several low earth orbit internet systems have been proposed that would eliminate the long delays and provide higher rates. But most of these have been canceled or indefinitely delayed due to the recession in the telecommunications market and the aftereffects of the Iridium and Globalstar satellite phone company failures. So in the meantime, the geostationary systems will be the only option for broadband satellite connections. (Both Iridium and Globalstar offer low speed internet connections.)

The high altitude of the geostationary satellites results in an unavoidable delays (due to the speed of light) of about half a second. This means that gaming and other applications that need fast immediate response will not work well or at all with geo-broadband.

However, once a connection is made the "flow rate" of the data coming in or going out is as fast as most groundbased broadband systems. So for emailing, downloading files, web surfing, etc., the slight delay after "clicking" can be insignificant compared to the usual internet delays.

Note that the satellites currently in use for home internet were not designed for this sort of mass market. New satellites with more spot beams and using a higher frequency band will go into orbit in the coming years and should provide substantially better service. Also, ICO is in the process of building a 12 satellite system in medium earth orbit, which should greatly reduce the signal delay problem.

Satellite Broadband Service

The prices for satellite internet are currently higher than DSL or cable and there can be significant installation costs. Echostar and DirecTV offer combined TV/internet systems with a single antenna and subscription billing.

The geo-satellite broadband systems have had a slow and somewhat rough startup with many customers complaining of difficult setups, frequent down times, poor support, etc. The situation seems to be improving but there are still problems.

See the section below on customer experience with these systems.

GPS - Global Positioning System

As described in the HobbySpace GPS section, the GPS system provides high resolution location finding via a constellation of 24 satellites that send out signals indicating their position. If 4 or more of these satellites are in range of a GPS device, it can triangulate its location. That section provides many applications, tutorials, etc.

There are many GPS devices now available to the consumer. Depending on the design, the devices can obtain location accuracy anywhere in the world to within as small a range as 15m (~50ft) .

GPS devices are now available at prices as low as $100. The low end devices provide basic features such as current position, distance and direction to a set point, current speed, trip distances, track logs, etc.