What is finely printed in their advertisements is that one still needs a telephone line to connect to their servers. Until ATT, MCI and others can work out a method for wireless telephone connections for data, we're still left with the need for a classic telephone line to take advantage of this offering. Some people think Hughes Corp. will offer this service from the regular satellite TV receiver and dish antenna. This has never been the case. One must purchase a separate dish antenna and either a ISA board for insertion into a tower PC or procure their stand-alone box to interface a laptop via the serial port.
Iridium offers two way telephone calls and paging via their worldwide satellite system.
Before the system became operational, it was hoped this was the answer to our problems. Needless to say, the average citizen is not knocking down their door to contract for this service. Laptop PC, Radio modems and their ISPs Radio Ram still works as well as it did a year ago, but has been bought out by South East Bell. Bell systems have not been expanding the coverage areas, like was being done before. Ninety two percent of people living in large metropolitan areas can use it, but there are very few RV parks in those areas.