02.22.02
TechTV.com
by Bob Hirschfeld, Tech Live
Balloons Improve Cellphone Reception
Space Data teams up with National Weather Service to increase cell coverage in remote areas.
You're driving down a deserted highway in the middle of nowhere. The nearest town is hundreds of miles away. And you need to use your cellphone, but it keeps displaying "out of service area."
A solution is now in sight. By the end of this year, weather balloons may soon be providing wireless service to remote areas of the United States beyond the reach of traditional cellular towers.
Space Data of Chandler, Arizona, says it's on the verge of launching the service, piggybacking on daily balloon flights made by the National Weather Service.
Extended range
Traditional cell towers
have a coverage area of only about 12 miles. But the range
can be extended to more than 350 miles by putting a miniature
version of the same equipment on board a weather balloon
and letting it go up to 100,000 feet.
Space Data is getting a partially free ride by taking advantage of new technology that's too expensive for the US government. In exchange for Space Data's GPS information on wind speed and direction, the National Weather Service plans to include the cellular 2-watt transceiver instrument package on its twice-daily balloon launches.
Space Data CEO Jerry Knoblach explained, "They have to add a GPS receiver to each and every weather balloon, which costs them about $100 extra per flight. We need a GPS receiver like that for positioning and timing. We'll simply trade the National Weather Service the wind data we get from the GPS in exchange for them launching the balloons and providing us antenna sites."
Space Data will also provide the biodegradable latex balloons at 70 locations around the country, to be launched twice a day — at noon and midnight Greenwich Mean Time.
Instrument package
The instrument package
weighs only 6 pounds. It includes a digital software radio
inside a Styrofoam box to keep it warm.
The box is equipped with a parachute, so when it completes its mission, usually after 36 hours, it gently falls back to earth.
Each box includes a note asking for its postage-paid return.
Profitability
Even with the expense of
launching 140 balloons accompanied by $300 instrument packages
every day, Space Data thinks it can make money.
It saved considerably in its initial spectrum purchased from the Federal Communications Commission, paying only about $6.5 million. It is also benefiting by negotiating with American Indians.
According to Knoblach, "We're taking advantage of a new program with the FCC for bidding credits if you cover tribal lands. So we're working with the Indian reservations around the country to provide wireless communication to them in exchange for a reduction in the cost we're paying for the spectrum."
Knoblach also engaged in a bit of number crunching:
"Eighty percent of the population lives in only 10 percent of the land mass in the US," he said. "And if you want to cover those people with towers, you need to deploy about 5,000 towers. It will cost you $1,000 each a month to rent. That's $60 million a year, just in the tower rental space. We have to launch our Sky Sites twice a day from 70 sites. That's 50,000 units per year, but they only cost us $300 apiece. So that's $15 million, a quarter what it costs the tower to cover 10 percent, and we cover the other 90 percent."
Space Data will sell its service to the nation's wireless carriers, who will then resell it to consumers or include the capability in a variety of plans.
Initially, the company will provide only wireless data service. By the end of next year, however, it expects to add voice service — and eventually, broadband Internet access as well.