The role of satellites in global IT: Trends and implications

Satellite will continue to be an essential element in the establishment of long-distance telecommunications for many years, and it will have a major r ole in the implementation of the so-called global information infrastructur e in the future. This is because of the particular feature of the satellite that can provide wide coverage independent of the actual land distance bet ween any pair of communicating entities. The new generation of broadband sa tellite systems, which can provide high-speed data transmission and connect ivity to terrestrial data networks, will create profound changes in all asp ects of the emerging data communications applications such as Internet and electronic commerce. In this article we explore characteristics of the futu re satellite networks and their interoperability with terrestrial wireless and wired networks. The emerging data and IP applications impose new implem entation issues on the long-latency and restricted satellite channel that m ust be resolved before such interoperability between satellite and terrestr ial networks takes place.