The continuing high demand for global, regional and domestic communications is being satisfied by a variety of satellite systems of ever increasing capability and complexity. It was not until 1963 that rockets sufficiently powerful to launch satellites into geostationary orbit were available, and SYNCOM II was the first to lie on the geostationary arc 35,800 km above the equator. INTELSAT (the international telecommunications satellite consortium) commenced operations in the mid 60's. INTELSAT provides multichannel trunking facilities for international carriers as well as leasing transponders to individual nations for regional or domestic systems. WESTAR, RCA, SATCOM, Satellite Business Systems (SBS) and EUTELSAT are examples of domestic/regional systems. INMARSAT provides ship/shore communications in the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian Ocean regions, and a specialized search and rescue system exists in the form of SARSAT. High-quality signals are trans mitted over satellites to cable network link-ends, and more recently, directly to consumers in their homes. Direct-broadcasting should arrive in the U.K. after the launch of UNISAT, and should that system not materialize, it will be one of the services available from OLYMPUS.
Satellite communications, Page 1 of 2
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