……….For Satellite Radios Are Live And Kicking

"Good morning London! This is your radio jockey (RJ) Simon, on your very own show 'Lejhoom', the very first song on our show would be “Aap jaisa koi meri zindagee mein aaye”.
If you find it awkward, listening to Indian music on a radio station in London, don't take it for a factual error, for satellite radios are here to jazz up your life 24hrs a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year.
Satellite radios, something different from the FM radios, do not have coverage limited to a particular city or territory. In 1992, the US federal communication commission allotted a spectrum for broadcasting of satellite based DARS (Digital Audio Radio Services) and gave license to XM radios, Sirius radios and Worldspace to launch satellite radios. The major requirement of these radio systems are: ground repeaters, radio receivers and a satellite, which are currently being served by two geosynchronous satellites-Asiastar and Afristar- hovering 35.8 thousand Km over the equator. Each satellite transmits three signal beams carrying over 50 channels via 1.5 Mhz, “L” band covering approximately 14 million square km each. The broadcast signals that are digital in nature are further uplinked through a centralized hub or feeder link stations within global uplink beam. The transmitted signals are received on ground by detachable antennas and these receiver satellites are capable of receiving data at a rate of 128 kbps in different formats. As the signals are beamed directly, transmission occurs in all weather conditions and due to the high baud rate, it is able to broadcast CD quality transmission- that is crystal clear sound, (no comparison with the existent local FM radios).
Amongst the three companies mentioned earlier, only Worldspace has successfully launched its services in India with XM radios, giving a thought to it. “India is some way ahead in exploiting this technology and already boasts of its 55,000 subscribers with a bouquet of around 30 channels”. Satellite radio channels are available in many languages. There are free channels and paid/coded channels with a monthly subscription of Rs 399. Strikingly the Praser trade has maximum number of Indian music channels like: Gandharv(Indian classical music), Farishta( old Hindi music), Lejhoom(bollywood). BPL and Sahara following the same trend have made their biggest investment into satellite radios with channels like indigo fm and indigo fem.
BPL has come out with a multifunctional satellite radio receiver. Also, JVC, Hitachi, Panasonic and Sanyo offer satellite radio receivers. Another option of decoding is the PC card of worldspace, which converts PC into receiver, taking into consideration that the PC has a broadband connection. So, satellite download can be done in two ways: either by using a receiver or a PC adapter that plugs directly into a computer from a receiver data port.
The biggest drawback to this technology is its requirement of keeping the antenna stationary. However XM radios have offered separate adapter kits for cars. Even these being global, they do not provide any local information. They are not cost effective yet, but as they will gain popularity the prices are expected to drop.
'But can these drawbacks compete with the crystal clear sound that these radios provide, NO!'