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Wireless Networks

Notes other countries had been involved from the beginning. AT&T had initially negotiated with its
European telephone cable “partners” to build earth stations for TELSTAR experimentation.
NASA had expanded these negotiations to include RELAY and SYNCOM experimentation.
By the time EARLY BIRD was launched, communications earth stations already existed in the
United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy, Brazil, and Japan. Further negotiations in 1963 and
1964 resulted in a new international organization, which would ultimately assume ownership
of the satellites and responsibility for management of the global system. On August 20,
1964, agreements were signed which created the International Telecommunications Satellite
Organization (INTELSAT).
By the end of 1965, EARLY BIRD had provided 150 telephone “half- circuits” and 80 hours of
television service. The INTELSAT II series was a slightly more capable and longer-lived version of
EARLY BIRD. Much of the early use of the COMSAT/INTELSAT system was to provide circuits
for the NASA Communications Network (NASCOM). The INTELSAT III series was the first to
provide Indian Ocean coverage to complete the global network. This coverage was completed
just days before one half billion people watched APOLLO 11 land on the moon on July 20, 1969.
From a few hundred telephone circuits and a handful of members in 1965, INTELSAT has grown
to a present-day system with more members than the United Nations and the capability of
providing hudreds of thousands of telephone circuits.

Notes Cost to carriers per circuit has gone from almost $100,000 to a few thousand
dollars. Cost to consumers has gone from over $10 per minute to less than $1 per minute.
If the effects of inflation are included, this is a tremendous decrease. INTELSAT provides
services to the entire globe, not just the industrialized nations.

Hello Guam: Domestic Communications

In 1965, ABC proposed a domestic satellite system to distribute television signals. The proposal
sank into temporary oblivion, but in 1972 TELESAT CANADA launched the first domestic
communications satellite, ANIK, to serve the vast Canadian continental area. RCA promptly
leased circuits on the Canadian satellite until they could launch their own satellite. The first
U.S. domestic communications satellite was Western Union’s WESTAR I, launched on April 13,
1974. In December of the following year RCA launched their RCA SATCOM F- 1. In early 1976
AT&T and COMSAT launched the first of the COMSTAR series. These satellites were used for
voice and data, but very quickly television became a major user. By the end of 1976 there were
120 transponders available over the U.S., each capable of providing 1500 telephone channels
or one TV channel. Very quickly the “movie channels” and “super stations” were available to
most Americans. The dramatic growth in cable TV would not have been possible without an
inexpensive method of distributing video.

The ensuing two decades have seen some changes: Western Union is no more; Hughes is now
a satellite operator as well as a manufacturer; AT&T is still a satellite operator, but no longer in
partnership with COMSAT; GTE, originally teaming with Hughes in the early 1960s to build and
operate a global system is now a major domestic satellite operator. Television still dominates
domestic satellite communications, but data has grown tremendously with the advent of very
small aperture terminals (VSATs). Small antennas, whether TV-Receive Only (TVRO) or VSAT
are a commonplace sight all over the country.

New Technology

The first major geosynchronous satellite project was the Defense Department’s ADVENT
communications satellite. It was three-axis stabilized rather than spinning. It had an antenna

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