International direct audio broadcasting from space-a large, new, satellite communications opportunity

The author suggests that services currently provided by shortwave broadcast would be better provided by a common-carrier system similar to the Intelsat and Immersat kind of arrangement now used to provide international long-haul trunk audio, data, and video services. The service would probably use frequencies in the upper end of the UHF band. It would use several geostationary satellites, each able to radiate a total of several kilowatts of RF power from one or more antennas, each with many narrow radiation pattern beams, with each beam driven by a small, separate, subtransmitter. The allocation of channels, subtransmitters, and beams (or aggregates of beams) would be dynamic, and would depend upon the number, size, and location of the audiences to be served, the quality of service to be provided, and the prevailing radiowave propagation conditions. The radios would be small and lightweight, would be able to be easily moved and tuned, would use a small, easily pointed, antenna and would be priced not much higher than 1988's AM/FM `kitchen' radios, i.e. several tens of dollars