LEOs-the communications satellites of the 21st century

By the start of the new millennium a revolution will have occurred in the communication satellite industry with LEO satellite networks becoming key pathways of the information superhighway. LEOs are global systems, capable of providing service to all areas of the world. The evolution from geostationary to low Earth orbit satellites has resulted in a number of proposed global satellite systems, which can be grouped into three distinct types: little LEOs, big LEOs, and broadband LEOs. These systems can best be distinguished by reference to their terrestrial counterparts: paging, cellular, and fiber. On the ground, paging, cellular, and fiber services are complementary, not competitive, because they offer fundamentally different kinds of services. Similarly, the little LEOs, big LEOs, and broadband LEOs are complementary rather than competitive because they are providing distinctly different services targeted at different markets, and have different pricing structures