8 Firms to Build Satellite System : Project to Provide Widespread Mobile Communication

After 15 months of negotiations, Hughes Communications and seven other companies Tuesday formed a consortium to build a $730-million satellite system that could make voice and data communications possible to and from trucks and cars virtually anywhere in North America.

The joint operating agreement forming American Mobile Satellite Consortium marks the final step in seeking Federal Communications Commission approval for the system, which would begin operations in January, 1990. An FCC decision is expected late this year, said Lon C. Levin, a spokesman for McCaw Communications of Kirkland, Wash., a member of the consortium.

The proposed three-satellite system would involve putting terminals on the dashboards of cars and trucks and antennas on their roofs, allowing drivers to communicate with their home offices and anyone else with a telephone.

Looks Like Pop Can

The antenna at first will be a five-inch-long tube with four short, sharply bent prongs coming out of the top. It would be covered with a fiberglass dome to protect against weather and vandalism.

“It’ll just look like a pop can--a can of Coca-Cola--on top of your car,” said Michael L. Exner, president of Skylink Corp. of Boulder, Colo., another consortium member.

Later models of the antenna may be flat, foot-wide discs or swiveling, 18-inch-long arcs.

Unlike cellular telephone systems, which rely on two-way radio broadcasts of limited range, mobile satellite communications could be used in rural areas. As much as 85% of the United States lies outside the range of the two-way radio towers used by the cellular phone systems.

The new consortium’s main initial market will be among trucking companies, fire fighters, search and rescue teams and other emergency personnel working in remote or rugged areas, said Carson E. Agnew, vice president for planning and research at El Segundo-based Hughes. Even firefighters working in Los Angeles County canyons have asked to borrow Hughes’ satellite gear because their radios and phones were not in line of sight of any two-way radio towers.

But mobile satellite communications are not likely to replace cellular telephones in urban areas because tall buildings can interfere with the satellite signals, several executives said.

The first of the consortium’s three satellites is scheduled for launch in 1993, Agnew said. Leased satellite capacity will be used until then. The cost of the three satellites plus their ground control equipment will total about $730 million during the next eight years, he said.

Head Start

Other members of the consortium are Satellite Mobile Telephone, MCCA, Mobile Satellite Corp., North American Mobile Satellite and Transit Communications.

The consortium’s system would compete with Omninet, which has a long head start.

Using existing leased satellites and wavelengths already made available by the FCC, Los Angeles-based Omninet by the end of this month will begin operating a two-way, data-only satellite service.

Omninet has already signed contracts with 30 trucking companies to deliver equipment for more than 35,000 trucks over the next two years, founder and President Allen Salmasi said Tuesday. But the company has no current plans to add voice communications, he said.