Ofcom graciously gives satellites go-ahead UK regulator Ofcom has decided not to restrict what satellite operators can do with their Complementary Ground Component, but still intends to make serious money out of them. Back in May the EU awarded 60MHz of paired spectrum to two prospective satellite service operators, Inmarsat and Solaris Mobile, and advised local …
The half-second lag isn't for reaching geostationary and back; it's for reaching geostationary and back twice, which is what the signal has to do when you communicate with a second terrestrial station via the satellite.
If you had two people on different, non-cooperating satellite telephone services talking to each other then the lag would presumably be a whole second as the signal would have to make the 36000 km journey 8 times for you to get a response.
They couldn't sell that part of the spectrum to anyone else because it'd interfere with the statellite signals, but because it's the same company who is transmitting from space - they can charge them a fortune for the same piece of spectrum??
Huh?!?
As a licenced radio amateur, I get access to oodles of MHz for free... I suppose it's this sort of story that demonstrates that amateurs really must use as much of our alloted spectrum as we can. If we don't use it, at some point Ofcom will want to sell it off!!
Would they be allowed to use mirrors, cunningly angling the satelite signal into a building, instead of repeaters? Would this be free?
Bunch of thieving &^%$s
Incidentally, the half-second lag. The lag is about 0.24s from your speaking to the other person hearing (3*10^8m/s for a combined distance of 7.2*10^7m). But you then wait the 0.24s for them to respond, taking the perceived conversational lag to be 0.5s. Generally speaking, people on sat phones are talking to people on the same network, or a landline.
All this assumes you're both directly underneath the satelite of course (or it would be longer)... which would defeat the purpose. You could just talk to each other.
Nice to see the board of Ofcom are so well paid, I make their total remuneration £3.2 million (see page 67).
http://www.official-documents.gov.uk/document/hc0708/hc06/0608/0608.pdf
If they stopped working, you know, just stopped, did nothing, packed up their bags and didn't show up for work. Everything would go on as normal, only the telecoms/broadcast industry would have £200 million more to spend on broadband and making TV and launching satellites.
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