HALO

Abstract

Passage of the 1996 Telecommunications Act and the slow growth of infrastructure for transacting multimedia messages (those integrating voice, text, sound, images, and video) have stimulated an intense race to deploy non-traditional infrastructure to serve businesses and consumers at affordable prices.

The game is new and the playing field is more level than ever before. Opportunities exist for entrepreneurs to challenge the market dominance enjoyed for years by incumbents. New types of service providers will emerge.
An electronic "information fabric" of a quilted character-including space, atmospheric, and terrestrial data communications layers-will emerge that promises to someday link every digital information device on the planet. Packet-switched data networks will meld with connection-oriented telephony networks. Communications infrastructures will be shared more efficiently among users to offer dramatic reductions in cost and large increases of effective data rates. An era of inexpensive bandwidth has begun which will transform the nature of commerce.
The convergence of innovative technologies and manufacturing capabilities affecting aviation, millimeter wave wireless, and multi-media communications industries enables Angel Technologies Corporation and its partners to pursue new wireless broadband communications services. The HALO™ Network will offer ubiquitous access to any subscriber within a "super metropolitan area" from an aircraft operating at high altitude.
The aircraft will serve as the hub of the HALO™ Network serving tens to hundreds of thousands of subscribers. Each subscriber will be able to communicate at multi-megabit per second data rates through a simple-to-install subscriber unit. The HALO™ Network will be steadily evolved at a pace with the emergence of data communications technology world-wide. The HALO™ Network will be a universal wireless communications network solution. It will be deployed globally on a city-by-city basis.

Wireless Broadband Communications Market

There are various facts that show the strong interest in wireless communications in the United States:

" 50 million subscribers to wireless telephone service
" 28 million dollars annual revenue for wireless services
" 38,000 cell sites with 37 billion dollars cumulative capital investment
" 40% annual growth in customers
" 25 million personal computers sold each year
" 50 million PC users with Internet access
"The demand for Internet services is exploding and this creates a strong demand for broadband, high data rate service. It is expected that there will soon be a worldwide demand for Internet service in the hundreds of millions". (Lou Gerstner, IBM, April 1997) The growth in use of the World Wide Web and electronic commerce will stimulate demand for broadband services.

Broadband Wireless Metropolitan Area Network

An airplane specially designed for high altitude flight with a payload capacity of approximately one ton is being developed for commercial wireless services. It will circle at high altitudes for extended periods of time and it will serve as a stable platform from which broadband communications services will be offered. The High Altitude Long Operation (HALO™) Aircraft will maintain station at an altitude of 52 to 60 thousand feet by flying in a circle with a diameter of about 5 to 8 nautical miles. Three successive shifts on station of 8 hours each can provide continuous coverage of an area for 24 hours per day, 7 days per week. Such a system can provide broadband multimedia communications to the general public.