The Federal Communications Commission added a new lane to the information superhighway Tuesday when it granted licenses to three competing companies to provide telephone, fax and data communications via low-earth orbiting satellites.
Motorola Inc., TRW Inc. and Loral Cellular Systems Corp. have been working to raise money for the systems, which will allow people using special hand-held phones to receive calls anywhere, anytime.
Schaumburg-based Motorola’s system, called Iridium, was the first such system, proposed in 1987. Motorola completed a $1.6 billion equity drive last year for the $3.37 billion, 66-satellite system.
Loral has raised $275 million for its system, while TRW has pulled together about $75 million.
Iridium plans to launch the first of its satellites in 1997 and offer service by 1998. Loral and TRW won’t have global systems in place until after 2000, analysts say.
