The future of voice won't be via geostationary satellites. The cost of providing voice via LEO is so low that the inconvenience of the speed of light makes geostationary a permanent problem for voice which is interactive. The whole point of having an actual conversation rather than just leaving a text message or voice-mail is to have low latency interactive conversation.
The value of our brains is so high that having them idling having said "over" while that message trundles all the way out to a satellite arbitrarily distant from Earth and back is too wasteful. Even if geostationary calls are free, people will prefer to pay 1c per minute or 10c per minute or even $1 a minute for the convenience of having a quick conversation with little latency.
In a 3 minute conversation, there is probably about, umm, let's see, 10 swaps of who is talking. If one person inadvertently talks over the other, that's not just time-wasting but highly annoying as the two parties have to then stop, regroup, and figure out who is to talk and who to listen. 10 swaps at 1 second per swap = 10 seconds. At $36 an hour, a person's time is worth 3600c per 3600 seconds or 1c per second. So that would be 10c in actual cost for the three minute conversation. But add the miscues and that doubles to 20c. Put an "annoyance factor" price on there too and it's 50c. It would be better value to pay 30c to make a 3 minute call than have a free one with the voice delay.
Every day I make that decision, preferring to pay for landline calls rather than free Skype calls via voip, simply to avoid the latency and nasty noises. I say "I'll call you back on a landline" if the call is not good. So not only do I incur the call cost, I also prefer to go to the extra time and hassle of making another call. And I'm a cheapskate.
Once a properly designed LEO is launched and sensible pricing is offered, voice via GEO will be an anachronism, dying out faster than analogue and TDMA phones when iPhone-powered mobile Cyberspace is available.
With more and more satellites being launched, and cheaper gateways being installed all over the world, the capacity of a LEO system will be vast and the cost per megabyte/minute very low. So low that very low income people will find it preferable to free GEO. Certainly cheaper than extorquerationate roaming terrestrial charges and maybe even cheaper than terrestrial oligopolists in their home coverage areas. Then there are the technological advantages such as a shorter transmission distance giving better battery life.
Mqurice |
