Teledesic

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Teledesic Corporation was a company founded in the 1990s to build a commercial broadband satellite constellation for Internet services. The goal of the Teledesic system was to provide a telecommunications infrastructure composed of low-earth-orbit satellites, for use by millions of concurrent Internet users, providing uplinks of as much as 100 Mbits/second and downlinks of up to 720 Mbits/second, using small, fixed, VSAT-type antennas, and completely bypassing terrestrial networks. The original 1995 proposal was extremely ambitious, costing over US$9 billion originally planning 840 active satellites with in-orbit spares at an altitude of 700 km [1]. In 1997 the scheme was scaled back to 288 active satellites at 1400 km [2] and was later scaled back further in complexity and number of satellites as the projected market demand continued to decrease.

The commercial failure of the similar Iridium and Globalstar ventures (composed of 66 and 48 operational satellites, respectively) and other systems, along with bankruptcy protection filings, were primary factors in halting the project, and Teledesic officially suspended its satellite construction work on October 1, 2002 [3].

Teledesic was notable for gaining early funding from Microsoft (investing US$30 million for an 8.5% stake), Craig McCaw, Bill Gates, Paul Allen and Saudi prince Alwaleed bin Talal, and for achieving allocation on the Ka-band frequency spectrum for non-geostationary services. Teledesic's merger with ICO Global Communications led to McCaw's companies taking control of ICO, which has successfully launched one test satellite.