Mobile Satellite Ventures

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Mobile Satellite Ventures (MSV) is a Reston, VA company that develops telecommunications systems that integrate satellite and terrestrial radio communication technologies into one system.

1 History
2 MSV satellite telephony
3 Planned satellites
4 See also
5 References
6 External links

[edit] History

Motient Corporation was founded in 1988 as American Mobile Satellite Corporation. Its acquisition of ARDIS was completed on March 31, 1998. In April 2000, the company changed its name to Motient, with its stock traded on the NASDAQ National Market under the symbol "MTNT".

AMSC initially provided GEO based satellite services based on its MSAT satellite.

Elements of MSV were previously known as Motient.

Motient was one of the founders of XM Satellite Radio.

[edit] MSV satellite telephony

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(May 2008)

Most of current products and services are aimed at emergency services, law enforcement, and companies that specialize in transportation. However, MSV and Boeing are developing a satellite telephony network for consumers.

The use of Boeing's GeoMobile platform will allow for coverage of the entire United States with a single satellite. This new approach to satellite telephony has already been validated with the Thuraya network. MSV's satellite will use an even bigger antenna than the Thuraya spacecraft (over 20 meters in diameter, it will be the largest reflector dish ever used in space)^{[citation needed]}, allowing it to communicate with phones no larger than modern cell phones. This is now possible since the FCC allowed satellite operators to create terrestrial cellular networks using spectrum previously restricted to satellite use.^[1]^[2]^[3]

This means that phones can be compatible with both the upcoming MSV satphone network and local cellular networks, allowing a user to communicate over the regular cellular network, and only rely on the satellites in areas outside the range of cell towers. MSV has earned patents around this set-up. It will be useful in sparsely populated areas where the construction of cell towers is not cost-effective, as well as to emergency-response services which must remain operational even when the local cellular network is out of service.

[edit] Planned satellites

The MSV-1 satellite, based on the Boeing 702 Geo-Mobile bus, is scheduled for in-orbit delivery during 2009. MSV-2 is scheduled for in-orbit delivery during 2010.^[4]