All right everyone. After about 7 hours on the road today and no fewer than 5 states, it's finally that time again.
I'm hoping to still be able to get the next Artemis post done for next week--I've had it percolating most of the day, but it'll depend on when and if I have time to write with the other stuff going on.
Also, secondly, just a reminder again that we would appreciate people's thoughts on which of Nixonshead's images should be selected to represent his portfolio in the Turtledove nominations. Just a reminder,
they're all collected here on the wiki if you want a chance to review them all together--we're interested in any thoughts. Also, while on the topic, thanks go to him also for providing some technical insight and suggestions that ended up forming the base of a lot of this post.
Anyway, with that business out of the way, without further ado, let's get into today's post...
Eyes Turned Skywards, Part III: Post #19
Even though Motorola was the first to see the potential of a low-orbit constellation of satellites for telecommunications, they were far from the only company to put their hat in the ring in the first half of the 1990s. Dozens of companies, ranging from giants like TRW and RCA to tiny startups like Teleworld and Starcomm quickly followed Motorola into the field, with proposals ranging from Teleworld’s giant swarm of hundreds of satellites, intended to provide global high-speed internet service, to more modest systems intended simply to provide regional telephone service. While American companies were taking the lead, boosted by the strong American commercial space sector and the loosening of regulations that had taken place during the 1980s, firms and even sovereign governments from Japan to Brazil were following close behind.
What all of these promoters shared, however, whether they were a government agency or a private corporation, whether they were based in Tokyo or Los Angeles, was a firm conviction that the market was headed for even more explosive growth than had characterized the satellite business since the 1960s. Not only were there enormous potentials in developed countries, where a few dozen satellites could create a nationwide network potentially far more quickly and at a far lower cost than the already-conventional method of raising cellular towers and hooking them up by wire or microwave to existing telephone networks, but the potentially vast market of the developing world loomed on the horizon as a massive incentive. With the fall of the Soviet Union, the world seemed to be on the verge of a vast burst in economic growth, propelled by laws liberalized by the absence of a Communist counterpart, reductions in defense spending, and the opening up of new markets previously closed or nearly closed to Western firms. Visions of potential customer bases increasing from five hundred million to five
billion people danced in the heads of promoters as they organized, thought, and planned.
Added to this simple growth of adding new customers to existing services was the possibility of adding new services, and customers with them. Almost as soon as the technology of computer networking was introduced, satellites had been used in experimental efforts to link them together, efforts that had only been boosted by the aging of satellite networks and the virtual retirement of older satellites, too small and low-capacity to be economically operated in their design role any longer, freeing them up for experimental use. If these were to become more than mere experiments or small-scale commercial applications, however, dedicated fleets of satellites needed to be created, designed around the provision of computer networking rather than telephony or television broadcasting. If such fleets
were built, however, the vast amounts of broadband connectivity some visionary pioneers expected to be necessary for demand for services such as on-line video, Internet telephony, and other similar services would become cheap and widely available, allowing other firms to piggyback on the success of the constellation builders. It is no surprise that this possibility attracted the most interest from the emerging class of wealthy “Silicon Valley” pioneers--ignoring for the moment that most of them, and in particular the wildly successful founders of Microsoft, the most wealthy of them all, were from nowhere near central California--with the great-granddaddy of all the broadband systems, Teleworld, obtaining venture capital from Bill Gates, among others, before Paul Allen’s own ventures in the space field diverted further Microsoft interest.
Similarly, the possibility of global mobile telephone services, the market that had lured Motorola into entering the field to begin with, offered another lucrative opening to would-be constellation builders. While mobile telephony had been around in some form or another for decades, dating back to the era of car phones, the modern form of individually-carried cellular phones had only been commercialized in the 1980s, and coverage was largely limited to dense urban areas where the cost of erecting towers was outweighed by the density of possible subscribers. Many providers believed that extending coverage to suburban and rural areas would drive a significant increase in subscriber numbers, not only because of the new customers located in the additional signal footprint, but because of greater value to potential subscribers located in already-covered areas. Satellite-based provision of mobile service would drive this to its ultimate conclusion, covering not just suburban and rural areas, and not just a single country, but wilderness regions all over the planet, and even the ocean. Sailors, travelers, and those living in countries where no mobile service had yet been built could subscribe to the satellite service and garner the benefits of mobile telephony even though conventional infrastructure might not exist anywhere near them.
These two potential services, global satellite broadband and global mobile telephony, were the bedrock of all proposed constellation systems. Each and every one of them depended on one or the other as the foundation of their proposed system, and each one needed to capture some fraction, ranging from 5% to 25%, of the global market to make their business case. With more than twenty networks in the proposal stages by 1994, it was obvious, if never publicly mentioned, that some, at least, would fail. And, increasingly, it looked like some would fail without ever building, let alone launching, a satellite, for the easy climate many founders had anticipated immediately after Motorola’s interest was revealed had never truly arrived. With even the simplest networks requiring billions of dollars upfront for the development, construction, and launch of their satellites before turning a single cent of revenue, investors were skittish and concerned about the risks involved. Many investigated the satellite market, then chose to invest in seemingly safer terrestrial ventures; while no cellular network or fiber-optic line could possibly come close to the number of subscribers a satellite system might boast, they were equally cheaper and faster to build, offering the glittering possibility of obtaining revenue and even profits within a relatively short period of time, and at a much lower initial capital cost. With inadequate capital and pessimistic market studies coming out, the economic foundation of the constellations was beginning to crack and crumble by late 1994.
At first, the Christmas Plot seemed to undermine those foundations entirely. Venture capital dried up as spooked investors fled for safer investments, forcing several of the smaller constellations into bankruptcy, while the cascading effects of the sharp, though short, recession that followed did even more in. The most damaging aftereffect of all, however, was the Asian crisis of 1995-1996, where a combination of slowdown in capital inflows and reduction in demand from their primary overseas markets badly hurt emerging economies in Southeast Asia, dependant on exports and massive overseas capital injections to maintain high growth rates. As some of the wealthier of the so-called “developing countries,” and more tied to Western and especially American markets than many others, many of the constellations had aimed at breaking into Southeast Asia as their primary developing-world push. Others had obtained some degree of venture capital from countries involved in the crisis, mostly Taiwan and South Korea, and like the other firms that were no longer able to obtain capital collapsed into liquidation. Even Motorola’s giant Iridium platform and the smaller though still well-funded Starcomm and Gemini constellations found themselves severely pressured despite Starcomm actually launching its first satellite late in the year and the other two being well into the construction phase, and for a time it seemed that the whole sector might dissolve before accomplishing anything at all.
At this juncture, and without any apparent design, the United States government rode in to the rescue, like one of their cavalry units in a Western movie. In the wake of the Christmas Plot, the Federal Aviation Administration, like many of the other government agencies involved, had begun a study of their response to the disaster, both to identify points where they could improve their ability to deal with any future attacks and to head off outside criticisms of the administration. One problem that the resulting report identified was the primitive state of transoceanic air traffic control. Why, the report asked, in an age of satellite navigation (the Global Positioning System having recently been declared fully operational by the Air Force) and satellite communications (referring not only to Intelsat and Inmarsat, but several of the new constellations by name) was it acceptable for trans-oceanic flights to have nearly as little control as trans-continental flights in the 1920s or 1930s? The report called for the design and construction of a so-called “virtual” air traffic control system, relying on data relayed from positioning devices aboard aircraft transiting controlled airspace to provide positions to controllers who could then direct aircraft just as if they were crossing near-shore or overland areas. The relatively low precision offered by GPS was of little concern given the huge airspaces available for errors in trans-oceanic flights, and the advantages of controllers being more aware from moment to moment of what flights were crossing the oceans, hopefully allowing responses in minutes instead of hours in the future if one or more dropped off the grid, seemed compelling. The report even took a step further (and quite out of its mandate) and suggested that such a virtual ATC could replace most of the
actual ATC hardware in the United States at a future date, saving on maintenance and operations costs for items like the network of VOR stations blanketing the United States with navigational signals.
While that particular suggestion was walked back under pressure from smaller domestic operators and general aviation users who feared the costs such hardware might generate, the more specific recommendation of developing a virtual ATC system was not. Indeed, the proposal gained interest from the President himself, and perhaps more importantly from the fledgling constellation industry. They saw, in the proposal, the possibility of a guaranteed userbase and income stream, heady stuff for an industry that had thought itself on the verge of collapsing only a few months earlier. Although a Department of Defense proposal to build a hardened dual-use (but primarily military) network briefly threatened the private operators, FAA and congressional coolness to the proposal, which would amount to a nationalized system and incur considerable expenses and delays above and beyond what was really necessary for the civilian part of the system. Whether or not the Air Force ever launched such a system, the FAA, at least, was going to stick to commercial operators.
By 1997, therefore, the pessimism of a year or two earlier had almost vanished from most of the operators. With the promise of fat government contracts ahead and hardware in many cases either in the factories or actually on the launch pads, a sense of sanguinity settled over management and investors. Aiding this optimism was the general economic recovery; the 1995 recession had undone some of the weaker firms, and the Asian crisis more, but neither incident lasted long or went to work on the pillars holding the economy up, and the economy was beginning to return to a more normal state. Indeed, internet usage had recently begun to rapidly increase, fulfilling every desire that promoters of the larger and more complex broadband systems could possibly want. The only stormclouds looming on the horizon came from the progress made by their terrestrial competitors, who had made giant strides in erecting cellular towers and building fiber-optic networks over the past few years, but even they weren't outrunning the leading satellite firms as they began to launch.
Indeed, the only place where American instigation of what would become known as the TOCNN contracts (for Trans-Oceanic Communications and Navigation Network) was unappreciated was overseas. In Europe, particularly, where the French had been studying and developing their own LEO constellation, there was consternation over the new American push to support satellite communications. While the intent of TOCNN could hardly be faulted, and indeed it would perhaps be a good idea for Europe to follow the lead of the United States here, it had, naturally, focused on contracting to American-based firms and, equally naturally, did not seem to distinguish between foreign and domestic-based carriers in applying the TOCNN receiver requirements. A virtual ATC would have little value, after all, if it was as blind to the existence of aircraft from Britain or Japan as if neither of those countries even existed. Unfortunately for the French, this would make for a huge foothold in the European market for those American firms chosen to service the TOCNN system; this might, perhaps, be leveraged to sell their more conventional and consumer-oriented products into the European market, preventing the Europeans from entering this important technology sector. Moreover, early reports of Defense interest, even if they ultimately came to nothing, led to further concerns that European firms and governments might become dependent on American-provided capabilities that might be deliberately degraded for foreign users, or even disabled entirely under some circumstances. While President Gore tried to reassure European governments that the American government had no intention of disabling the Global Positioning System, and even signed an executive order in late 1997 ordering the controversial “Selective Availability” capability turned off, these were still powerful arguments for governments wary of too much dependence on any outside power.
Therefore, the French proposal at a mid-1997 ESA ministerial meeting to expand their Taos system into a full global navigation and communications network (quickly dubbed a GCNSS, for “Global Communications and Navigation Satellite System”), they received an overwhelmingly positive response from the ministers of the other states, particularly the three other major poles of the ESA collaboration, Britain, Germany, and Italy. Almost immediately afterward ESA, together with the long-established Eutelsat communications satellite organization, began an in-depth study of the proposal, which in one fell swoop would end European dependence on both GPS and the rapidly growing American systems, especially if the FAA could be persuaded to accept so-called “Taos II” data as equivalent to TOCNN GPS and communication relays. Over the next year ESA and Eutelsat slowly ground through their analysis, considering possible customer bases, subscriber numbers, launch costs (whether by conventional Europa or the possible Sanger II system), and more. Ultimately, the Phase A study delivered in 1998 described a system which managed to combine the functions of both GPS and communications in a single network, but not efficiently, and not without a cost. For the complete, globally-available 24 active satellite network, a minimum of 3 billion ECUs, or somewhat less than 3 billion dollars, would be needed for construction, launch, and the first year of operations. Even with the arguments of national security and international competitiveness, most of the member governments blanched at incurring such a cost merely to duplicate existing services, and pushed ESA and Eutelsat to find a cheaper solution.
The result was the Global Communications and Navigation Enhancement Satellite System, GCNESS--or, as it would shortly become known, Marconi, after the Italian radio pioneer. ESA and Eutelsat had concluded that the most expensive portion of the overall system, not to mention the part least likely to bring in any significant revenue, was the navigation system, demanding highly precise time and orbital measurements and requiring radio transmissions which integrated poorly with the communications portion of the Taos II GCNSS plan. A MEO-based system, Marconi would integrate communications functions with a satellite-based correction system that would improve the precision of GPS measurements without completely replacing the American system. While less ambitious, this did have the virtue of being cheaper and faster to build than the Taos II system would have been, at only about a third the cost and time from launch start to Full Operational Capability. Despite a certain degree of reluctance to abandon the full navigation capability, work on Marconi was approved at the ministerial level in late 1999, with ESA serving as the technical lead manager of the project and Eutelsat as the primary customer and system operator.
Meanwhile, TOCNN was coming into its own. While the relatively limited Starcomm system had won the first TOCNN contract on an interim and experimental basis, the kind of virtual ATC the FAA envisioned required far greater bandwidth and much more communications capability than their limited system could provide. Iridium, finally in service as the decade closed, could provide that, and quickly won the second TOCNN contract; a fortunate bit of work, as the company (now independent of Motorola) was only days away from having to declare bankruptcy when it learned it had beat out Gemini for TOCNN 2. The unexpectedly rapid growth of terrestrial systems, combined with the adoption of the European GSM cellular phone standards (allowing roaming from network to network) had badly impacted subscriber growth, a problem not helped in some cases by inept marketing and corporate mismanagement. Now the major firms
needed government contracts to stave off bankruptcy, instead of merely
having them as valuable anchor customers, as they undershot their expected subscriber counts by factors of ten or more. Even if Iridium and Starcomm managed to avoid bankruptcy, Gemini and most of the other weaker providers were, like their counterparts a few years earlier, forced into it. Gemini, which had already built a considerable portion of its constellation and launched a few satellites managed to escape into Chapter 11, continuing as a distinct provider, but few others were so lucky.
Regardless of the fortunes of the individual providers, however, TOCNN was proving to be a great success. The availability of over-water communications and navigation data, together with more direct control by the major oversea control centers was considerably increasing the efficiency of traffic control nearer to major international airports, while airlines were finding the new communication channels useful for their own business operations. Now they could receive up-to-the minute information from their aircraft no matter where in the world they were located, and could even resell the data and voice connections that the TOCNN contracts required to passengers for hefty fees. The FAA hardly needed to push airlines to install TOCNN equipment as they realized the commercial benefits of doing so. Indeed, they quickly realized that the legally-mandated rollout completion date of 2005 would likely be beaten by several years. The only thing approaching a dark spot in the whole picture were foreign airlines, many of whom were waiting on Marconi as their TOCNN provider.
And if TOCNN was proving to be a crucial lifeline to corporations that had fallen in unexpectedly rough financial waters, it was far from being the only business most of them had. Starcomm’s relatively limited system, for example, was seeing great interest from the oil and gas industry to manage a new generation of more autonomous sensing and monitoring devices, while Iridium and Gemini were finding success, if more limited than hoped for, in a range of markets. While not mandated by federal law, the shipping industry was finding in the new system many of the same benefits as airlines in allowing speedy communications between a central office and a far-flung fleet of vessels, and passenger operators were exploiting some of the same opportunities as airlines in allowing fee-paying use of the connections. If, admittedly, the usage of satellites for these roles in ships was much older, dating back to the late 1970s, the constellations at least allowed more widespread and lower cost deployments of the capabilities.
Similar advantages were being found in the military, whose MEO Advanced Global Communications System, or AGCS, was proving to be as delayed and expensive as the FAA and airlines had feared. If lacking many of the features of the mil-spec system, Iridium and Gemini were at least available
now, and they gained a certain following among the units deployed to fight terrorism by Gore’s administration. Elsewhere, the Natural Science Foundation was undertaking a major project to provide Iridium data and voice links at the McMurdo and Amundsen-Scott polar bases, which had previously relied on obsolete geostationary satellites which had begun to drift far enough from an equatorial orbit that they could be seen from Antarctica to relay communications. Iridium’s purpose-built network was of course much more reliable, not to mention less expensive for a government no longer required to pay specifically to keep certain otherwise useless satellites available.
Finally, of course, there were always the bread-and-butter individual customers which the networks had been intended for. If less successful in the relatively cellular-signal blanketed United States, Europe, and Japan than had been hoped, particularly as the disadvantages of satellite phones became more apparent to the general population, they were more successful among international business travelers (for whom the convenience of dealing with only one provider was enough to outweigh other problems) and, especially, those living in underdeveloped countries such as China or many of the countries of Latin America than had dared been dreamed of. After all, in many of those countries no cellular network yet existed, and owning a mobile phone--particularly an expensive phone, and one that would work anywhere in the world!--was something of a status symbol among the right group of people.
If they had not been all that was hoped for, as the next century opened a field of competitors still existed, still pushed forward--bloody and battered, perhaps, but there. With three major American networks completed and a European system under construction, it was clear that constellations were now going to permanently be part of the communications satellite landscape. The world had been changed.
