Satellite Capacity

When Sir Arthur C. Clarke suggested in his 1945 article in Wireless World magazine that the communications needs of the whole world could be served by a network of three geostationary satellites above the Atlantic, Indian and Pacific Oceans he really didn't know what he was starting off.

3 geostationary satellites can cover the whole world Today several hundred commercial satellites are in orbit around the earth. As the technology has moved on, satellite dishes have shrunk in size from the monster 30 m diameter antennas found at major earth stations to the 40 cm antennas widely used across Europe to receive DTH satellite TV today.

In the 1990s there was even a brief foray into hand-held satellite terminals to work with Iridium, Globalstar, and the other huge constellations of low-earth orbiting telephone satellites. Today''s satellites operate in a range of different frequency bands including L-band, C-band, Ku-band and Ka-band, each having their own characteristics in terms of coverage, capacity and connectivity.

Global satellite capacity isn''t being used fully. There is enough satellite capacity in the sky to meet the health and education public policy objectives of every country on earth.