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Wireless Networking Hardware

Broadband Blimps 232

Posted by CmdrTaco from the i-got-no-strings-to-hold-me-down dept.
mcabiling writes "SansWire Networks will demonstrate their "Stratellite" technology next week. For those of you who aren't familiar with SansWire, they plan to build a wireless network with balloons or "airships" as they call them. "A Stratellite(TM) is a high-altitude airship that when in place in the stratosphere will provide a stationary platform for transmitting various types of wireless communications services currently transmitted from cell towers and satellites. It is not a balloon or a blimp. It is a high-altitude airship." Looks like a blimp to me..."
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Broadband Blimps More

Broadband Blimps

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  • Nice technology (Score:5, Insightful)

    by SIGALRM ( 784769 ) * on Tuesday July 06, 2004 @11:49AM (#9622872) Journal
    A Stratellite is similar to a satellite, but is stationed in the stratosphere rather than in orbit

    Sounds like an attempt to overcome the runaway expenditures of Teledesic's [teledesic.com] failed LEO project. The problem with these high-altitude sender/receivers is that--while they offer a technology solution--there is a corresponding weakness in application.

    For example, latency in these systems make it unattractive for many internet applications (who wants to play FPS's over a spread-slotted Aloha CDMA system?).

    And then there is the monstrous launch and maintenance expense...

    • Re:Nice technology (Score:2, Interesting)

      by KevinKnSC ( 744603 ) *
      I don't think they're going to replace ground-based cables anytime soon, but they present some neat possibilities for replacing things we currently do with towers and satellites. They say that one of these platforms can have line-of-sight to an area the size of Texas. That could do amazing things for cellular phone and wireless Internet coverage.

      • Re:Nice technology (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Stargoat ( 658863 ) <stargoat@gmail.com> on Tuesday July 06, 2004 @12:06PM (#9623087) Journal
        The site's been slashdotted, but the use of technology does make sense. Think about a large conference. The entire area could be given cell phone and wireless coverage for a week, and then the blimp could be taken to another town for another event.

        So an event like the Olympics could have its cell phone and wireless coverage reinforced, and then the week after, it could be back in London for Wimpleton. (Or whatever.)

    • Re:Nice technology (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Davak ( 526912 )
      They could over come this with the old satellite/phone combination. Uploads are started through the phone connection while downloads are largely controlled through the satellite. Tiny up-pipe and huge down-pipe.
      (Obviously I am making this way too simple...)

      Such a plan would not be ideal... but would be better than phone alone.

      Likely the better solution is a combination which also utilizes current cellular providers. If you do not get permission to place a tower somewhere, you use one of these systems t
      • You do know that current satellite internet (DirecWay specifically) provides for two-way communication via the satellite (no phone required).

    • Re:Nice technology (Score:4, Insightful)

      by uncoveror ( 570620 ) on Tuesday July 06, 2004 @12:13PM (#9623161) Homepage
      Nice indeed! What these will really be is Big Brother's floating eyes in the sky. Read more. [uncoveror.com] You can see black helicopters, but white blimps can camouflage themselves against the clouds.
      • At night you can't see black helicopters.
      • That is a very funny site. Like they need blimps to listen to wireless converstations or wifi.
        The US and Russian goverment have had sigint sats for YEARS. They can easly pick up cell phones. It is much easier to just tap a cell phone at the tower.
        Or use a scanner that does not have cell feqs blocked. As to WiFi a notebook with a wifi card is usually good enough to spy on a wifi connection.
        I love the bolt from the blue death ray comment as well. Where do people find the time write such funny joke sites.
    • latency in these systems make it unattractive for many internet applications
      I wouldn't think this would suffer from the latency you get with Sat connections. Sats are thousands of miles above the earth while this is only 13 miles straight up... maybe 25 when you're at an angle. I doubt you'd notice a latency.
      • I doubt you'd notice a latency
        That's exactly the point I was making; these "Strattelites" are interesting because they are designed to overcome the latency (and other) problems inherent in LEOs.

        • Re:Nice technology (Score:3, Interesting)

          by Tassach ( 137772 )
          You are confusing LEO (Low Earth Orbit) and GEO (Geosynchronus Earth Orbit). A satellite in LEO is from 200 - 250 miles altitude, whereas GEO is at 22,241 miles altitude. That's 2 orders of magnitude difference.

          Geosynchronus orbit means that the satellite orbits the Earth once every 24 hours, so that it stays stationary with respect to the Earth's surface. Lower orbits have a much shorter period, meaning that to maintain continuous coverage over a fixed point you need a whole bunch of sattelites. Also,

          • You are confusing LEO (Low Earth Orbit) and GEO

            Not at all. The problem, as I mentioned, is the complex application of CDMA in LEO systems. You are correct that in the physical layer, distance overcomes latencies inherent in GEO/MEOs. However, the time differential in high-velocity LEOs requires a multiplexing protocol like S-ALOHA CDMA [tsc.upc.es] (sorry, pdf).

            To integrate these stat pattern multiplexing applications into the heavy traffic of a dense system creates its own latency.
      • Assuming 25 Miles the signal propagation delay (each way) would be about 135 Microseconds. That does seem reasonable.

        • Re:Nice technology (Score:3, Informative)

          by Dyolf Knip ( 165446 )
          135 _micro_seconds. Times two to get back down to ground-based networks, and you're at a whopping 0.270 milliseconds. I just pinged google and got return times of around 100 milliseconds. So the signal propogation time is essentially totally insignificant.
          • Well it isn't totally insignificant, but it is really good (which is what I stated in the first place).

            I just pinged google and got return times of around 100 milliseconds. So the signal propogation time is essentially totally insignificant.

            Your ping time to google is hardly a scientific measure of what is an insignificant ping time. Not to mention that 100 milliseconds is a horrible ping time.

    • Re:Nice technology (Score:2, Insightful)

      by eofpi ( 743493 )

      latency in these systems make it unattractive for many internet applications (who wants to play FPS's over a spread-slotted Aloha CDMA system?).

      While I don't know what protocol's being used with these, the laws of physics give it a lot more potential than satellite systems.

      The stratosphere's a couple orders of magnitude closer than geosynchronous orbit. Assuming sufficiently fast data rates and no stratellite relay lag, the lag time for bouncing a signal off one of these at the top of the stratosphere

    • Re:Nice technology (Score:4, Informative)

      by Christopher Thomas ( 11717 ) on Tuesday July 06, 2004 @12:21PM (#9623252)
      Sounds like an attempt to overcome the runaway expenditures of Teledesic's failed LEO project. The problem with these high-altitude sender/receivers is that--while they offer a technology solution--there is a corresponding weakness in application.

      For example, latency in these systems make it unattractive for many internet applications (who wants to play FPS's over a spread-slotted Aloha CDMA system?).

      As long as you have a relatively nearby ground station to relay to, latency isn't a horrible problem. Right underneath one of these things, round-trip latency is about 0.13 milliseconds. At the edge of a blimp's broadcast range (around 100 km if I'm reading things correctly), it's 1.3 milliseconds round-trip.

      Think of these as a much cheaper way of building a very tall relay tower, for something closer to reality than the "satellite" analogy.

    • Re:Nice technology (Score:3, Insightful)

      by danharan ( 714822 )
      And then there is the monstrous launch and maintenance expense...
      As opposed to launching a satelite?
    • The problem with orbital systems is that the cost to launch an object in to space is extreme. Furthermore, once it is in space, hardware upgrades are completely impossible. Then there's also the issue of latency as you accruately point out.

      But with a blimp at 65K feet, you solve all of those problems. It's cost is primarily in assembly. Getting it on station is just a matter of letting gravity do it's thing. Once it's there, if you need to perform maintenance on it, you launch a replacement, and then
      • A messh would tend to be a waste if you already have fiber on the ground. Fiber can carry a lot more data than rf. The real answer for bandwidth is fiber to the door. RF is great for mobil users. I would love to get updates on weather and places to eat and stay when I am long drives. Another benifit of using a ground station would be a microwave power feed to the blimp. No need of fuel for station keeping. And should be lighter than solar.
        This could also be very useful in places like Alska where solar would

        • Re:A good solution (Score:4, Insightful)

          by sterno ( 16320 ) on Tuesday July 06, 2004 @01:46PM (#9624207) Homepage
          The problem with fiber to the door is that it has to be to every door. If you put up one blimp, you get coverage to everybody within line of site. Rural areas are not cost effective to provide service to because you have to run so much cable to cover only a few customers. One blimp and you are good to go.

          Now, in areas where fiber is already to the door, this brings in a benefit: competition. Your local bell or cable company can't extort you for access to that fiber because you've got an alternative overhead. Furthermore, you can fit many blimps into the same coverage area, which means, you can have a lot of people competing for your dollar.
        • While fiber has much more bandwidth, and eliminates the problems that shared bandwidth generates, it has its own problems. It's exceptionally expensive to lay, partially because of the cost of the fiber itself, but also because of the physical cost of digging up roads and laying the cable. This should not be underestimated, in built-up areas it typically costs something in the region of $10,000 per foot to lay cable.

          In order to make the laying of fiber (or any other cable) profitable, typically companies

    • And in future news (Score:5, Funny)

      by Marxist Hacker 42 ( 638312 ) <seebert42@gmail.com> on Tuesday July 06, 2004 @12:57PM (#9623654) Homepage Journal
      Spaceship One Launch goes through Stratellite and cuts off cell phone service in the Mojave Desert.

  • Small-scale wifi from balloons. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Gordonjcp ( 186804 ) on Tuesday July 06, 2004 @11:50AM (#9622883) Homepage
    Something a couple of friends and I talked about ages ago was flying an ordinary wifi AP from an advertising balloon. Y'see, the longest run of CAT5 you can use is 300 feet. By coincidence, the highest you can fly a tethered balloon to (neglecting ATS zones) is... 300 feet.

  • Nitrogen as a lifting gas? (Score:5, Funny)

    by NETHED ( 258016 ) on Tuesday July 06, 2004 @11:50AM (#9622886) Homepage
    why use nitrogen as a lifting gas. Everytime I pour nitrogen gas, it settles to the bottom. Maybe they have magic nitrogen.

  • It's a Blimp... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by CommanderData ( 782739 ) <kevinhi@y[ ]o.com ['aho' in gap]> on Tuesday July 06, 2004 @11:50AM (#9622887)
    The idea of blanket wireless internet access for all is enticing, but what kind of battery life are you going to get in your Laptop/PDA when you need a PC Card that can transmit signals over Seventy Six miles to this thing? (Based on the Altitude of 13 miles and an expected wireless coverage radius of 75 miles)

    Not sure about anyone else, but I lose an hour off my battery life for a wifi signal that barely reaches 100 feet.

    • Coverage (Score:5, Informative)

      by YankeeInExile ( 577704 ) * on Tuesday July 06, 2004 @12:05PM (#9623068) Homepage Journal

      The difference in pathloss between the SSP (21km slantrange) and the edge of a 75 mile coverage circle (122km slant range) is only 15.3 dB. Not an insurmountable design figure. You might need to use a directional antenna at the edge of coverage, where a more omni antenna would suffice at the center.

    • How big of an antenna do you want to carry? Rember most of the range issues with wifi have to do with obsticles in your path absorbing the signal and many existing cards will go 1000' or more in the open. The free space loss at that distance would be around 140dB. With a 23DBi antenna on each end you could probably just manage it with existing wifi gear (assuming you didn't run into timing issues first).

  • They are NOT Blimps! (Score:5, Informative)

    by YankeeInExile ( 577704 ) * on Tuesday July 06, 2004 @11:51AM (#9622897) Homepage Journal

    It is not a balloon or a blimp. It is a high-altitude airship." Looks like a blimp to me...
    The sarcastic wicked side of me wants to ask, "Do you also have trouble distinguishing cows from automobiles?". The designation of various categories of lighter-than-air craft is not just random - there are specific design features. OPs glib statement comes across like the PHB who says, "Looks like a television set to me ... " when confronted with a computer monitor.

    The things that make the stratellite airship not a balloon or a blimp, based on reading the fine FAQ are:

    1. Rigid airframe: Blimps get their envelope shape from internal pressure acting against the envelope. These craft get their shape from a rigid airframe.
    2. Airfoil shape: Blimps have a streamlined shape, but it is symettrical with reference to the flight motion. These craft have an airfoil shape that can provide lift.

    A communication platform that sits at 65000 feet and stays relatively still sounds like a dream come true. None of the cost of keeping a constellation of LEO satellites moving, none of the latency of geosync. This would also seem a great technology for providing ad hoc coverage to a remote area for a special event. Put a couple of moderately directional (say +23 dBi) antennas, one pointed at Black Rock City, and the other at Civilization, and you have low-cost temporary ludicrous bandwidth at Burning Man. (Feel free to substitute YOUR favorite boondock~based used-to-be-cool-'til-they-sold-out art festival if you are offended by BM)

    I for one, welcome our helium filled stationary communication overlords.

  • This is gonna go over like a lead balloon [fact-index.com].

  • Looks to me like ... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Aggrazel ( 13616 ) <aggrazel@gmail.com> on Tuesday July 06, 2004 @11:54AM (#9622936) Journal
    These guys played too much Final Fantasy ...

  • Outages (Score:3, Funny)

    by ThetaPi ( 720252 ) on Tuesday July 06, 2004 @11:55AM (#9622940)
    Just imagine, now we can have network blackouts and weenie roasts at the same time! Who is gonna bring the smores?

  • Techsphere (Score:5, Interesting)

    by dmh20002 ( 637819 ) on Tuesday July 06, 2004 @11:57AM (#9622959)
    Similar in concept but targeted at a different market. Their 'technology' link has some good info.
    Techsphere [techspheresystems.com]

  • simpson obligatory quote! (Score:5, Funny)

    by Man in Spandex ( 775950 ) <prsn@kev.gmail@com> on Tuesday July 06, 2004 @11:58AM (#9622971)
    What's next? give controls to Barney again?

    Barney: Hey can I pilot it?
    Pilot: I see no harm in that
    Barney: Wooooooarhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh
    *crash n burn*

    we don't want that now do we

  • Of course (Score:3, Funny)

    by iamdrscience ( 541136 ) on Tuesday July 06, 2004 @11:58AM (#9622975) Homepage
    because when I think of technology in the future, I think airships!

    Also, random fact: The spire on the top of the empire state building was originally intended to be used as a docking point for derigibles.
    • Although the designers knew full well it could never be utilized for docking airships, due to crosswinds at that height. It was a strictly ornamental way to set a contemporary building height record.
    • Yep, I have a very nice famous print of the Graf Zeppelin mating with the Empire State Building. It can be yours for a mere....
  • These guys, Halo Networks [angelcorp.com], tried to do this with planes... I just love the ingenuity that comes from a lack of rational thinking!


  • Blade Runner Here We Come! (Score:5, Funny)

    by venomkid ( 624425 ) on Tuesday July 06, 2004 @12:00PM (#9623005)
    Throw some jumbotron advertising on the sides of these and I just might start going to seedy chinese food bars in the rain.

  • air-space restrictions post 9/11 (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Lust ( 14189 ) on Tuesday July 06, 2004 @12:02PM (#9623028) Homepage
    What additional constraits will be applied to companies that want to float zeppelins over cities? Given the recent restrictions applied to amateur rocket [slashdot.org] groups, I question whether their business model will...take flight.

  • I thought of this years ago. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by pclminion ( 145572 ) on Tuesday July 06, 2004 @12:03PM (#9623045)
    My idea didn't include blimps, though. My proposal was to put roaming access points on commercial jets, essentially creating a dynamic "sky network."

    Considering the immense air traffic over most parts of the modern world, I figured this idea might actually work, and would require basically zero investment beyond the cost of the roaming access points -- no need to invent crazy new technology when there are already perfectly good airplanes up in the air every day anyway. I figured the airlines could be paid a reasonable royalty from the fees collected from users of the network.

  • I'd be worried about outages caused my storms. Also, i would imagine the data would decay based on electricity in the air.
    I think the closest thing to this idea would be to look at the statistics for weather balloons and see how they survive.

    GroupShares Inc. [groupshares.com]

  • Oh, the Humanity (Score:5, Funny)

    by bugmenot ( 788326 ) on Tuesday July 06, 2004 @12:07PM (#9623091) Homepage Journal
    If this ever gets off the ground, I will be very worried the next time my network connection goes down.

  • sounds like Michael Moore (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    has a new website
  • Sideshow Mel (i think), after seeing Homer dangling from a hot air ballon at a football game: "Dear God, look at that blimp! He's hanging from a ballon!"
  • Our subscribers will be able to sit in their home on a laptop computer while connected to the Internet at high-speed. If they need to go to the office or across town, they simply close the laptop and take off. When they get to their destination, they open their laptop and they are still on the Internet. If they need to travel to another city, they simply take their laptop with them and when they get to where they are going, they open their laptop again and they are still connected.

    And

    clear line-of-site to approximately 300,000 square miles

    Now a rough calculation puts its radius of coverage at about 300miles
    radius = sqrt( Area / Pi )
    r = sqrt (300,000 / 3.14)
    r = sqrt (95541)
    r = 309miles


    So the distance between a device and this airship is at least 300miles.

    With that kind of range, is it realistic to have the gear in a laptop/cellphone?

    Would it not kill the battery? I get shorter battery life just using wi-fi.

    Would you need some kind of directional arial?

    I'm sure they have thought of all this, but it does feel like they might be over-hyping the usefulness.

    • Just noticed the bit about Wi-fi area being only 75 miles radius.

      Funny how that is hidden in the specs at the bottom and the "area the size of Texas" bit is in the main sections :->

    • Spherical geometry (Score:4, Informative)

      by pjt33 ( 739471 ) on Tuesday July 06, 2004 @12:44PM (#9623485)
      Don't forget that the Earth isn't planar. Assuming it's a sphere, which isn't too far off,
      Area = 2 PI R^2 (1 - cos theta) where theta is angle subtended by diameter
      cos theta = 1 - Area / (2 PI R^2)
      But
      diameter = R theta
      so
      radius = arccos(1 - Area / (2 PI R^2)) * R / 2
      = arccos(1 - 300,000 mi^2 / (2 PI * (6371 km)^2)) * 6371 km / 2
      = arccos(1 - 777000 km^2 / 255000000 km^2) * 3186km
      = arccos(0.997) * 1980 mi
      = 153 miles.
      • I'm not going to even suggest that I can pull spherical geometry ratios out of my ass on a moment's notice, but I'm guessing one of you is wrong. Over a 300 mile distance, a sphere of the earth's size is pretty flat. For one of you to get an r=153 miles and the other to get 309 miles seems out of proportion. I would have guessed a difference in the under-5% range.

        Is there a factor of two lurking somewhere?

  • Tech support (Score:5, Funny)

    by invisik ( 227250 ) * on Tuesday July 06, 2004 @12:23PM (#9623265)
    I'm sorry, our blimp is down right now--can I have someone call you back when it's up again?

    Doh.

    -m

  • The biggest amount of smallness possible (Score:3, Funny)

    by El_Smack ( 267329 ) on Tuesday July 06, 2004 @12:25PM (#9623285)
    From the article:
    "At an altitude of only 13 miles, each Stratellite will have clear line-of-site communications capability to an entire major metropolitan area as well as being able to provide coverage across major rural areas."

    So what makes a rural area a "major" rural area? A complete lack of people?

    • Re:The biggest amount of smallness possible (Score:2, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      A "major rural area" means a city like Dallas, where most people drive around town in agricultural vehicles and dress up like farm hands when they go out to clubs.
  • I wonder how good these things would be as a camera platform? Never mind the obvious big brother uses but it might do wonders for news service and traffic monitoring.

  • From the specs... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Zone-MR ( 631588 ) * <slashdotNO@SPAMzone-mr.net> on Tuesday July 06, 2004 @12:36PM (#9623400) Homepage
    " Held in position by 6 onboard GPS units connected to the ship's engines"

    WTF? 6 onboard GPS receivers? What's wrong with one good one. Surely a =10m precision is enough, and if it isn't they could try a differential GPS setup with two receivers, but six?!

    • WTF? 6 onboard GPS receivers? What's wrong with one good one. Surely a =10m precision is enough, and if it isn't they could try a differential GPS setup with two receivers, but six?!

      I don't think it is a precision issue so much as it is a maintenance issue. If you only had two GPS receivers and one failed, how quickly (and expensively) are you going to be able to get up there and fix the broken before the remaining one failed and you're SOL? I'm guessing five extra GPS receivers is a lot cheaper than thr

    • Re:From the specs... (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Tassach ( 137772 )
      If you have one GPS (say at center of mass), you know where your GPS reciever within the limits of the unit's precision. Multiple units (say 2 each at the extreme ends of the X, Y, and Z axes) will give you your exact location, altitude, and orientation. Furthermore, because you know the exact distance between the units, your overall precision is improved.

      I'd also point out that there is this concept called "redundancy" which is pretty popular among engineers who build fault-tolerant systems. Look into

    • I imagine it has 3 on each end so it can determine its orientation as well as position. The triple redundancy is nothing new, and 3 cheap consumer grade GPS units are cheaper than 1 "bulletproof" unit which still may fail.

      Read the outputs of all three, throw out one if it disagrees with the other 2.

      -Adam

    • It's always sensible to build in some redundancy, particularly on a system like this where performing any maintainence or repairs will be painful to impossible. GPS units are cheap. Throwing 6 on it is a cheap way to extend it's useful lifetime, since several can fail without having any impact on the usefulness of the craft as a whole.

  • Remember Aerostats? (Score:3, Informative)

    by ishmalius ( 153450 ) on Tuesday July 06, 2004 @12:39PM (#9623431)
    Remember the drug-interdiction floating aerostats [af.mil] that are/were lined up along the US/Mexico border? These would make an awesome set of communications relays. I would not be surprised if they carried transponders or repeaters for just that purpose, even if only to communicate with each other.

    Imagine 802.16 on one of these things.

  • So is my Wi-Fi going to be telling me... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by servognome ( 738846 ) on Tuesday July 06, 2004 @12:41PM (#9623453)
    "A new life awaits you in the Off-World colonies. The chance to begin again in a golden land of opportunity and adventure. New climate, recreational facilities.....absolutely free. Use your new friend as a personal body servant or a tireless field hand--the custom tailored genetically engineered humanoid replicant designed especially for your needs. So come on America, let's put our team up there...."
    "This annoucement is brought to you by the Shimato Dominguez" Corporation - helping America into the New World."

  • rigid airframe (Score:3, Informative)

    by blitz487 ( 606553 ) on Tuesday July 06, 2004 @12:45PM (#9623494)
    The difference between a zeppelin and a blimp is a zeppelin has a rigid airframe. That may be what they're talking about when saying it's an airship, not a blimp.

  • Blimps are airships, and stratellites are good (Score:5, Informative)

    by Foxwell ( 775515 ) <foxwell@sonic.net> on Tuesday July 06, 2004 @12:55PM (#9623621)
    Any aircraft that gets most of its lift from lighter-than air gases and can be propelled against the wind is an airship. It floats in air and it goes where you want it, so it is an air-ship. Ok? Blimps are airships. Or dirigibles--different verbal approach, same idea, because the word emphasizes you can _direct_ the motion.

    Several operations have tried this high-altitude business. There are issues with it but if you can make it work, the advantages over satellites should be clear. Why not use an airplane? Because the damn things use a lot of fuel and must move faster than the airship might be forced by shifting winds to move--relative speed matters with high-bandwidth connections.

    The high altitude is chosen in part for the coverage range, but also to seek a layer of air where the average wind _force_ is lowest, to minimize the power needed to stay in place. With this design of airship they are going to have to turn to keep drag down if the wind shifts. True of all practical designs yet except spheres which have unacceptably high drag in _every_ direction--flattened disks called "lenticular" layouts might have lower inherent profile drag but have a tendency to pitch sideways to the wind that can only be combatted with fins that break the symmetry. So inevitably they will be blown off their ideal station point from time to time, the question is can they turn into the new wind fast enough to keep the divergence small. It depends on what the system users consider a small deviation at that range.

    I would wait and see if their next demo comes off. Their last demo was about a year and a half ago, using Techsphere spherical airships. Just before the scheduled launch date their demo airship blew away! Nowadays Techsphere is persuading the Navy they can reliably operate for surveillance missions--I don't know if they paid attention to suggestions from people like me about how to reduce the drag of a sphere or if they have just had the good luck not to encounter severe winds in their demos yet. But meanwhile Sanswire has clearly washed their hands of Techsphere! Anyway they have been here before. We'll see I hope.

  • line of site? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by slartibart ( 669913 )
    Don't they mean "line of sight"?

    And they claim to have "duel envelopes". Do they walk ten paces, then turn and fire?

    Besides their bad spelling, they don't address some other problems. Like just because the airship is at a height of 13 miles, doesn't mean that's how far it is from your cellphone. That's how far it is from the nearest point on earth. What about the distance to the edge of the coverage area?

    Also, won't this technology force far more people's data into the same limited frequency bandw

  • A Stratellite will have ... clear line-of-site to approximately 300,000 square miles, an area roughly the size of Texas. However, the Company's initial plan is to use one Stratellite for each major metropolitan area

    Why is a complex airborne system more efficient than little ground towers in cities? It seems that huge swathes of rural areas would be better served by such a scheme. OK, so there aren't as many potential customers but there isn't any competition either. Small towns of a few hundred people
  • Sanswire folks are trying to get an airship to reach a desired altitude of 65000 feet. The navy has been working with blimps lately [defensetech.org] which top out at about 20,000 feet, which I would consider pretty good. 65000 on a rigid frame ship is pretty unlikely. However, the unlikelyness of their statements does not make any dent in my plans to steal one and go airship-piratin'. Yeeaaar, matey. I'd like to be the first airship bucaneer, if I may.

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