worldwide wireless messaging

From: Rick Bensene <rickb_at_bensene.com>
Date: Mon Sep 25 22:11:59 2000

> BTW are there any truly worldwide, affordable messaging systems these
> days? Like a 2-way paging service or email service or whatever. Even
> the satellite 2-way paging services I've seen use geosynchronous birds
> over the US and maybe Europe and the Far East, but they aren't truly
> worldwide. I also found info about the Garmin Global Communicator,
> which costs $1000 and the service is very expensive and very limited
> (can send a handful of really short messages for $30 a month, and going
> over the limit cost a couple of cents _per character_). So that doesn't
> fall into the "affordable" category.
>
Simple answer. No.

Not yet, anyway. There's some stuff on the horizon, but still a way off,
and
once available, it still won't be cheap.

In the US, the closest you can get is CDPD, or one of the Mobitex services.
Limited coverage, but, in general, it works. I use a CDPD modem (a Sierra
Wireless
PC-Card), and service through AT&T wireless, and it works pretty well. I
use it both
in Windoze laptops (Win2K, Win98) and HP 690 CE handheld.

The big problem worldwide is a lack of standards in many areas...telcos,
cellular,
utility rules & regs, radio spectrum allocations, and signalling...it's a
really ugly mix world-wide.

The only real solution is to put it all into orbit, and have everything talk
over a standardized
'network' created by a constellation of LEO (Low Earth Orbit) satellites.
Iridium was
an attempt at this...and was a dismal failure (look for a pretty cool light
show in the sky
when they deorbit the constellation of satellites sometime soon!). There
are others that are working on getting a world-wide satellite network up,
and already some of the constellations are
partially built, but...building such infrastructures is incredibly
expen$ive, and frought
with numerous problems... on being that of making a handheld device that can
transmit a strong
enough signal to reach a satellite in orbit is a bit of a challenge....but
not insurmountable. But again, it's all expensive. Such a system is
likely to be really spendy for the
early adopters to use...but it'll be world-wide, and allow for more than
just data...it'll
do voice (goodbye all the myriad cellular "standards"), and, perhaps even
limited video.

Rick Bensene
Received on Mon Sep 25 2000 - 22:11:59 BST