Word: cellularly
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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That was the point at which some people might have resigned themselves to the thought that it would only be a matter of time. Then last spring one of Strauss's doctors, Kim Lyerly, offered her an experimental therapy being developed at Duke's Gene and Cellular Therapeutics Center, where Lyerly is the clinical director...
...wondered aloud why she couldn't call home from their secluded getaway on Green Turtle Cay. Good question, thought her spouse. By 1988, Bertiger and two colleagues had drafted blueprints for a revolutionary new system that would blanket the heavens with communications satellites--77 in all--bounce a cellular call from one to another, then beam the data stream downward 420 miles to one of 12 earth stations where the call would enter the terrestrial telephone network. Motorola dubbed the system--and the company it spun off to build and operate it--Iridium, after the 77th element on the periodic...
Iridium's chief competition for a piece of this pie-in-the-sky is Globalstar, based in San Jose, Calif. The company, which will build a rival constellation of 48 satellites 879 miles up, was founded by Loral Space and Communications and by Qualcomm, a leader in cellular technology. Its European partners include France Telecom, Daimler-Benz Aerospace and Britain's Vodafone Group. Globalstar's plan is much less expensive than that of Iridium, which has built intelligent satellites that route calls among themselves, sometimes halfway around the planet. That kind of smarts makes for a system that's more...
...arrangement with existing cellular dealers turns out to be a serendipitous marriage of marketing and technology. Without resellers, customers would be few, and without cell technology, service would be limited. At first Iridium planned a purist, sky-to-ground approach that would have cut out the local cellular-network middlemen. But that wasn't very feasible in the glass-and-steel canyons of bustling cities, where customers would be out of the line of sight of the heavens and service would be spotty. (Imagine explaining to an irked CEO that his pricey new handset won't work from his office...
...prospect of such low prices has spawned even more consortiums eager to be top dogs in the satellite-Internet communications business. The most ambitious venture is Teledesic, founded in 1990 by deep-pocket investors including Microsoft CEO Bill Gates, Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal (with a 13.7% stake), and cellular pioneer Craig McCaw, who is the chairman and co-chief executive. Motorola, after a frosty initial reaction to the project, dropped its own system, Celestri, and joined in with $750 million for a 26% stake. Once jeered as the most starry-eyed start-up ever, the $9 billion Teledesic project...