A plan to challenge terrestrial cellular mobile telephone networks with a continent-wide service operated from a geostationary satellite is being mounted by General Motors’ Hughes Aircraft Co. According to the International Herald Tribune, Hughes is perfecting small-dish satellite technology that would enable it to put up a cellular satellite in 1992 that would provide US- or Europe-wide mobile telephone service – and Hughes reckons that while the dishes and the microwave equipment would cost between $1,500 and $3,500, calls could be priced as low as 15 cents – 10 pence – a minute. And while Hughes envisages the dishes – just a few inches across – being embedded in the roof of a car or truck, while it might prove impractical to wear them as a new form of headgear, there is no reason why they should not be fixtures on homes and offices, by- passing the terrestrial telephone network altogether. Hughes hopes for Federal Communications Commission approval for the concept by year-end.
