Iridium Inc was the first to announce, Inmarsat was quick to follow, Teledesic Inc conferred added glamour to the concept, but even these are not the only low earth orbit satellite telephony games in town: TRW Inc is rallying a consortium, and Loral Corp has been muttering about its own plans for some time too. Yesterday the New York defence electronics company went public, announcing that it would call the system Globalstar and that Vodafone Group Plc would pay $37.5m for a 10% stake payable over the next 12 months. Total cost of the venture is put at $1,800m – up from $1,500m originally envisaged. Other investors include Qualcomm Inc, San Diego, Alcatel NV, Alenia SpA, Dacom Inc, Deutsche Aerospace AG, Hyundai Corp and AirTouch Communications Inc, formerly PacTel Corp, which will also be a service provider. The founding partners in Globalstar LP will put up $275m of the cost. Globalstar will use Qualcomm’s code division multiple access technology to offer speech, data, facsimile, paging and position location services throughout the world at a modest premium over existing cellular services. The Globalstar network will consist of 48 low-earth-orbit satellites being produced by Space Systems Loral that will orbit 750 miles above the Earth.
