The Federal Communications Commission has finally given the go- ahead to Teledesic Corp, licensing its two-way telecommunications services via a constellation of low-Earth-orbiting satellites. Teledesic was established by Bill Gates and Teledesic chairman, Craig McCaw in 1990. Its global, broadband Internet-in-the-sky, is the first FCC-approved satellite network designed to provide affordable, worldwide access to fiber-like telecoms services – including broadband Internet access, videoconferencing and interactive multimedia. The new network will operate on 500 MHz domestic radio frequency in the 28 GHz band – the uplink portion of the Ka-band – and a corresponding 500 MHz of downlink spectrum. With our FCC license in hand, we now have the regulatory certainty to move forward and begin building the network, said McCaw. David Twyver, CEO, commented: After almost seven years of development, the Teledesic Network has the green light. It was not until July last year that the FCC agreed a band plan designating the spectrum for primary use by non- geostationary fixed satellite services – which Teledesic has been developing for the best part of a decade. It is due to go live from 2002, providing switched, broadband connections through service partners in host countries worldwide, ranging from large urban centres to remote regions. The network emulates the Internet, but the difference lies in the quality and location-insensitive access. The geodesic or mesh topology consists of several hundred low-Earth orbit satellites operating in the Ka- band. Each interconnected satellite provides coverage over a small portion of the Earth’s surface and it projects multiple beams within its footprint. This provides more efficient use of the radio frequency spectrum and supports higher capacity, lower cost services. The satellites orbit about 50 times closer to Earth than traditional geostationary satellites, eliminating the long signal delay associated with conventional satellite communications, and enabling the use of compact, low-power user equipment.
