By David L. Chandler, Globe Staff, 02/11/99
Less than three weeks ago, a team of adventurers reached the South Pole after an overland trek by a new route - and promptly pulled out something that looked like an ordinary cell phone to receive their congratulatory calls, by way of a satellite link.
Such instant communication is a far cry from 1912, when Robert Scott's team made it to the pole only to find that a rival team led by Roald Amundsen had already reached it five weeks earlier. If they had only known that their quest to be first to the pole was already lost, they might have turned back and been spared their tragic end out on the ice.
Today, it's getting to the point where it will be difficult to be out of touch with the outside world, no matter where you are ... unless, of course, you choose to be.
First came portable global positioning system or GPS devices that could tell you exactly where you were; now, with the launch of a satellite-based cellularlike phone service last November, there's virtually no place left on Earth, even the poles, where you can't just call someone instantly, using a pocket-sized phone.
The first, and currently only, of these ''anywhere, anytime'' phone services to reach the market is called Iridium, a 66-satellite system owned by Motorola, Sprint, and other investors. But Iridium won't be alone for long. At least two other companies are about to introduce similar services, and others say they may enter the competition before long.
Why are companies lining up to invest the billions of dollars it takes to start launching the required ''constellations'' of dozens of satellites and the related ground equipment needed to create a full-service satellite system?
''Our studies show there are 20 to 30 million potential subscribers to this kind of service worldwide,'' says John Cunningham, a spokesman for Globalstar, a satellite-based system that expects to begin offering service by the end of this year. Even if all the companies that have announced plans to enter this market really did so, he said, ''we think there is much more demand'' than hey could meet.
The basic principle is simple. Most of today's communications satellites are in an orbit 22,300 miles up, where they appear stationary over a point on the Earth and can be reached by antennas over a large portion of the planet but require lots of power to beam their signals back to the ground. Wirelss phones, by contrast, rely on thousands of local antennas that each can only reach a few hundred yards. The new systems use satellites in much lower orbits, such as Globastar's 900-mile altitude. At that height, they are within reach of small, cellularlike phones. (Most companies provide phones that can also work with ground-based wireless systems as well.)
The penalty for having the satellites in orbits within reach of small antennas is that they cannot stay put over a given spot on the ground. Instead, they go whizzing by, propelled by inviolable laws of physics. That means that in order for every place on Earth always to be within view of at least one satellite, there have to be a lot of satellites up there. Globalstar will use 64 satellites, Iridium has 66 (reduced from the originally planned 77 that caused the system to be named after element number 77), and another competitor called ICO, which plans service by late next year, will use 10 satellites in a somewhat higher orbit.
The price tag for consumers is steep, at least so far; but then, so was the price of the first generation of cellular phones. Competition in the market is likely to drive prices down fast, just as wireless phones have now become so inexpensive that they can sometimes compete with regular wired phone service. But for the moment, making a call on the Iridium system will require users to plunk down about $3,000 for a phone, and then pay as much as $7 a minute (depending on your location) for calls.
Still, if you're planning to hike up Mount Everest, take a trek across Antarctica or the Sahara, or sail singlehandedly around the world, that may seem like a small price to pay for instant contact - something past generations of explorers never even imagined.
By next year, the prices should come down substantially. ICO says its handsets will sell for less than $1,000, but will not quote a figure for its per-minute rate. Globalstar's Cunningham says he can't predict the retail price of their phones, since his company will sell them only to local service providers, not directly to customers.
The cost of the service itself, he says, will be close to the roaming rates charged by many wireless systems: perhaps around $1.50 a minute on average around the world. (Iridium says that in some locations, its present service price is also in that range).
But for some people, the price just won't matter. Take the group that made the recent trek to the South Pole. Led by Peter Hillary, son of Sir Edmund Hillary of Everest fame (who, in 1957, had also reached the pole), the expedition was caught in blizzards along the way that kept them tent-bound for days. When one member suffered frostbite, he was able to get crucial medical advice by phone from doctors back home.
And when they finally got to the pole, the team almost immediately received calls with messages from Australia's prime minister and Queen Elizabeth II.
