MegaSack DRAW - This year's winner is user - rgwb
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Cannock Chase District Councillor Frank Allen on why he opposed a new phone mast in the scenic splendour and beauty that is the town of Cannock:
"Given the money made by mobile phone companies every year, why can they not put up satellites?"
What?! Just, what?! The mind boggles! Are tiny mobile phones a few inches long now supposed to have transmitters so powerful they can reach satellites many thousands of miles up? That really would fry your brain with the heat from the battery instantly melting under the load.
Why can people in a position of authority not (a) do even a little bit of basic research before opening their mouth or (b) leave decisions about subjects they know nothing about to people who do?
Gaaaaaaaahhhhhhhh
splendour and beauty that is the town of Cannock:
Exactly. 😉
my phone has GPS so it can see numerous satellites at once
And on top of that there is nearly bugger all room to put any more satellites up there.
[i]What?! Just, what?! The mind boggles! Are tiny mobile phones a few inches long now supposed to have transmitters so powerful they can reach satellites many thousands of miles up?[/i]
Erm.. 🙂
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Err. Satphones are increasingly small and portable. He got the tech wrong but it isn't that far off. And you might want to look up the power of communications satellites. Less than you think.
That's you told!
It's no the power of the mobile phone that makes satellite base stations impracticable, there are a few options already - it's the data capacity that's the problem. Think about it - a current base station covers a really quite small geographic area yet requires a fairly substantial amount of equipment and a hefty data line to the backbone. How do you plan to get 100000x that in orbit??
Rachel
With a fleet of trained swans!
I'm still working on the finer details.
Satellite phones are an awfully long way off replacing the common or garden mobile phone, in terms of battery life, data throughput, cost and handset size. Possibly in years to come we'll all have star trek like communicators but that time isn't now so blocking new phone masts because of some possible system in the distant future is stupid.
Besides which his other argument was the normal "scary invisible waves from phones (but not telly, or radio, or or or...) are eeevil!", so I don't how satellite phones could possibly be an improvement in the brain-melting stakes.
Typically, It's Not That Simple.
Let's ignore the cost of a satellite capable phone, which would maybe double the cost of a smartphone.
You've got two options here, geostationary satellites or low Earth orbit satellites.
Satellites comms requires line-of-sight to the satellite. With geostationary satellites you're going to get shedloads of blind spots all over the place (and they're also tremendously expensive). LEO satellites largely negate blindspots by nature of being on the move, so long as you only want to make ten-minute phone calls whlist the sat passes overhead.
You've also got latency issues; you'll have, what, half a second to a second of delay maybe, on your conversation. Fine for consumers perhaps, unacceptable for corporates.
Finally, data. weeeell, good luck with that.
Using M-Rays solves all those problems.
Cos many councillors (and I hasten to add not all) are not the brightest pennies in the pot. It takes time and commitment to be a proper councillor, if you've already got a demanding job it is really hard work to do both roles properly.
It's actually quite frightening who some of the councillors are, but then I don't know what other system to use either, paying for full time councillors wouldn't probably provide the desired result either.
You Mr Munro are really Harry Biscuit and I claim my £5.00.
Yours, Rusty Gently-Benevolent.