CELESTRI/sup TM/ Ka-Band sharing

The signal processing associated with commerical communications literally is expanding to new heights and into new dimensions as constellations of satellites are built to provide telephone data, pager and fax services heretofore only associated with fictional accounts of the future. The increasing demand for communications both in capacity and in distance can be achieved due to the expanding techncial ability to process and to relay higher quantities of data. Motorola continues to populate the constellation for the IRIDIUM/sup (R)/ system by manufacturing and deploying satellites at the rate of one per week to support gloval, commercial communications services. Each Iridium satellite acts like a switchboard in orbit. These satellites race through the sky at 7.5 km per second simultaneously covering every point on the earth below. The system, which will offer commercial service in 1999, is only the beginning. In the next five years, broadband satellites, each capable of handling more than a gigabit per second throughput rate, will populate the heavens. One example, the Celestri/sup TM2/ broadband interactive, multimedia system which employs both geostationary and low-earth orbiting satellite each with an advanced signal processor, significantly surpasses the current state of the art.