Telephone has made the world much smaller, and distances have shrunk metaphorically to a substantive extent. For long, telephone used to be wired machines. The wireless phone added limited mobility, while cell phones added even more mobility. However, even mobile phones require operator presence and physical towers, as well as deals with other networks for greater coverage. What if I need a phone connection on sea? What if I need to call my sponsors from my desert excavation site in the middle of Nevada? What if I want to call my mom from the top of Mt. Everest? What if I have got lost in a forest, or shipwrecked on a distant Robinson Crusoe island? Aladin’s genie can come to the rescue, or you could take the help of the satellite phone.
A satellite phone is a phone that communicates to another phone – landline, cellular, or another sat-phone – by relaying the information through a satellite. Wireless connectivity can progress through line-of-sight connectivity, which is not practicable on all landscape or beyond a certain range. In such a situation the satellite system can take the data beyond what is possible through line-of-sight. The satellite phone infrastructure can be through geostationary satellites, three or four of which can cover the whole earth, or they can be through a larger number of Low Earth Orbit satellites with fast rotation times.
The LEO option is significantly costlier due to the multiple launch costs involved, but the phone can be significantly smaller than the Geostationary satellite phone. While Inmarsat has been a successful provider of sat-phone services through GeoSat option for long, Iridium and GlobalStar followed the LEO option. It is certain that with more satellites going up in the air, the need for and the practice of satellite phone communication will go up while its cost will come down.