Comparative economics of very high capacity communications satellites

Technology advances expected by the late 1980 or early 1990 time period will allow the construction of powerful and complex communications satellites with large multibeam antennas and very many transponders, and their operation and maintenance in geostationary orbit. The high sensitivity and effective radiated power of such satellites will enable the Earth stations using them to shrink dramatically in size and cost, thus becoming readily available to very large numbers of users as well as making possible new kinds and levels of communications services simply not possible with smaller satellites. This paper briefly describes three such new designs, concerning electronic mail transmission, educational TV distribution, and mass personal communications; it compares the users' service costs with those of terrestrial networks designed for the same performance.