As the US pursues terrorist networks in remote regions mostly in the Near East, demand is growing for hand-held satellite phones -- giving an ailing industry a needed boost.
Soldiers and intelligence agents are spreading across the globe, reporters following and businesses building emergency communications networks in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
"We have been inundated with requests," said D. D'Ambrosio, executive vice president of Iridium Satellite LLC, which last year bought a 66-satellite network from the failed Motorola spinoff, Iridium.
Iridium isn't offering numbers, but Globalstar, its main competitor, says sales have quadrupled since the attacks. Heavy phone use is breathing new life into Globalstar, which in August announced plans to lay off half its workers to avert bankruptcy.
"Strictly speaking, every minute of use improves our cash position," said Mac Jeffery, spokesman for Globalstar, a division of the British mobile phone giant Vodafone Group PLC.
Globalstar said it is getting queries from the FBI and the Secret Service, television networks and corporations.
"We're providing connectivity in remote areas where there's just nothing, and this investigation will take people to all kinds of remote locations where they need to be in touch," Jeffery said.
Iridium Satellite, a privately held company based in Arnold, Maryland, says that even before the surge in demand, it expected to turn a profit next year because it paid only US$25 million for a network that cost US$5 billion to build.
The company's predecessor, the Motorola spinoff, filed for bankruptcy in 1999, less than a year after launching. It threatened to let its satellites tumble back to earth before a group of former managers and other investors made a last-minute bid.
The Defense Information Systems Agency invested US$72 million in the company last year, in exchange for 20,000 brick-like handsets and unlimited service under a two-year contract.
Because of the contract, Iridium won't get extra income from the heavy use its phones got after terrorist-commandeered planes crashed into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on Sept. 11, knocking out communications systems and generating a flood of phone traffic.
Both Iridium and GlobalStar have donated equipment and air time to help the ongoing rescue-and-recovery effort. In New York and Washington DC, Iridium executives hurriedly stuffed batteries into phones and delivered them to disaster sites. A GlobalStar delivery of equipment from its Toronto warehouse got a police escort across the Canadian border.
The companies say the disaster showcased the importance and performance of their hand-held satellite networks, which are much more portable than more powerful models made by companies including InmarSat and ComSat, a division of Lockheed Martin.
"This let us prove that we can deliver on our promise to jump over an outage and deliver connections where there are no terrestrial networks," D'Ambrosio said. "And that you can `walk and talk' with a hand-held satellite device.''
While satellite phones have a steady customer base in defense, mining and transportation industries, they never attracted the jet-set crowd whose numbers were required to repay the vast investment in hanging the low-orbiting satellite network.
Even though they weigh only about 1.5 pounds, hand-held satellite phones are still pricey -- around US$500 for the phone plus calls that can cost more than US$1 per minute. They work best where there is a direct "line of sight" to the satellite.
So the companies don't expect a surge in demand from average folks trying to keep tabs on their loved ones during emergencies.
And satellite networks, just like cellular ones, can be overwhelmed by traffic.
"If a large number of people had satellite phones in New York, it would've been as bad or worse," says David Farber, a University of Pennsylvania telecommunications professor.
Whether this surge in demand is enough to turn around the satellite phone industry depends on the US government's response to the attacks and whether corporations building emergency networks will turn to satellites or just to backup wireless systems.
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