Which is better? Satellites or Towers?

Now that satellites are working like towers we have so many people asking; will towers be replaced by satellites?

For one thing, let me start by saying unequivocally no! It’s never going to happen. They will coexist together forever.

Why?

Because they have too. Each one serves a purpose and they need to be understood as to what they can do and what their limitations are.

There are over 140,000 cell towers in the USA. With that said, they are still building sites even after a tough year, sites are still being built. It’s not going to stop anytime soon.

Just so you know, we’ll call satellites “birds”, so when I say birds, I mean satellites. OK, just setting the stage to save some time.

Satellite technology has come so far, it’s amazing to me that geostationary birds could support this, but when LEO became a thing we had a whole new industry being created. Thank you Elon Musk for creating SpaceLink!!! Now we have more players, like AST, which is awesome that we have competition in space. 

So even LEO has limitations. It needs clear line of sight (LOS) to the sky. When I say LOS to the sky, it doesn’t have to be above you but it could be out on the horizon. The sky is all of the sky. Be open minded. 

Any blockage will diminish or kill the signal, keep that in mind. While you may get lucky and get a signal through a window, it won’t be reliable.

Now that they are putting satellite spectrum in cell phones and testing cell spectrum in satellites, we have a new business forming for rural and emergency communications. 

But tower sites aren’t going anywhere. We need more penetration than ever before. We need indoor coverage more than ever. Things are quickly growing. In fact, we may be using satellites for more solutions than before.

If you think this is new, you would be wrong. Have you ever heard of GPS, Global Positioning System? Satellites!

Do you know that some vehicles have been tracked by satellite for years using Qualcomm’s Logistics and Tracking network for years. I think it was called Omnitracs or something like that. It was a type of IOT network. They also had FreightWatch to track shipping containers across the world.

So moving forward, we can use satellites to give us coverage in remote and rural areas using a smaller device where we once had to have a geostationary setup. The Iridium network was one of the closest things to this that allowed two way voice communications. That is, outside of the military.

If you’re rural or out of range of any towers, then hopefully you can get LOS to the sky and connect, at least enough to make a call or text anyone, preferably 911, to get help. That should open the way to getting closer to 100% coverage across the USA and eventually the world.

• LEO refers to Low Earth Orbit satellites,
• Geostationary satellites orbit the Earth at the same speed as the Earth rotates making it appear stationary. That means when you point the dish at Galaxy 4E it will have a specific azimuth and elevation that you can point it at and it will not move. Think DISHTV. Technically a Geostationary bird normally moves in a figure 8 orbit but from Earth that’s nothing.
• What is the difference between LEO and Geostationary?
  1. LEO birds are always moving in a larger orbit in the sky whereas Geostationary stay in one location.
  2. LEO birds are about 100 to 1,100 miles above the Earth whereas Geostationary birds are about 22,400miles above the earth.
  3. Both rely on RF to communicate with the Earth.
  4. Thanks to Elon Musk! He figured out how to get the LEO birds to talk to each other using optical (laser) communications. Cool, right? I think mmWave would have worked as well, but freaking lasers? WOW!