>I guess you could possibly launch one satellite and see if people would subscribe For that, though, you'd need to put the satellite in geosync (nobody is goin

>I guess you could possibly launch one satellite and see if people would subscribe For that, though, you'd need to put the satellite in geosync (nobody is going to subscribe to a phone service that's usable only every 100 minutes), which costs more to launch and requires the phones to have stronger transmitters. Thuraya uses geosync, but they started out as a regional carrier, so they could cover their region with one satellite. Iridium went with polar LEO--I suspect that was partly because their goal was global coverage. Without a polar orbit, you can't get coverage at the poles. Insert cynical laughter about the profitability of such coverage here.