Teleconferencing: Cost optimization of satellite and ground systems for continuing progressional education and medical services

A set of analytical capabilities that are needed to assess the role satellite communications technology will play in public and other services was developed. It is user oriented in that it starts from descriptions of user demand and develops the ability to estimate the cost of satisfying that demand with the lowest cost communications system. To ensure that the analysis could cope with the complexities of the real users, two services were chosen as examples, continuing professional education and medical services. Telecommunications costs are effected greatly by demographic factors, involving distribution of users in urban areas and distances between towns in rural regions. For this reason the analytical tools were exercised on sample locations. San Jose, California and Denver, Colorado were used to represent an urban area and the Rocky Mountain states were used to represent a rural region. In assessing the range of satellite system costs, two example coverage areas were considered, one appropriate to cover the contiguous forty-eight states, a second appropriate to cover about one-third that area.