Satellite radio has actually been around for quite some time, but it was unavailable to most people because the stations that were broadcasting were pretty obscure, the apparatus was expensive and the antennas, usually in the form of dishes were extremely directional, which meant you had to use expensive, skilled installers.

For proof of this you should look no further than bookmakers and betting shops who needed specialized satellite broadcasts beamed to their shops with the results of the races live.

The difference now is in cost and the power of the satellite radio transmission devices as well as the receivers. In other words, satellite radio technology has advanced a long way since the Eighties. Satellite radio can also be received more easily nowadays, although the reception of satellite TV broadcasts still necessitates a directional receiving dish. This is why satellite TV cannot be received well on a boat or in a car, but you can still get satellite radio and you can still use your mobile phone.

Satellite radio broadcasts are digital so most of the advantages of using it are linked with digital technology. Some of these are: the ability to pick up signals from all around the wold through the satellite network and the lack off interference - that annoying hiss that you often could hear at night while listening to a distant broadcast. Reception is now invariably crystal clear owing to the simple rythym that is digital - on and off or high and low.

Digital only makes use of two signals so they are impossible to mix up, whereas analogue had millions of them allowing for mistakes due to bad weather or / and bad apparatus. That has been basically eradicated.

The situation in the US is that there is still competition between two opposing systems: XM and Sirius and it is to be hoped that this situation will soon be resolved as it was thirty years ago between VHS and Betamax, because otherwise it will only be the customers who lose out in the end - the customers of the firm that goes through.

There were initially problems with satellite radio in some areas because natural or man-made structures would block the line of sight from the antenna or dish to the satellite causing a break in transmission. Typical causes for this would be tunnels, mountains and sky scrapers.

However, the satellite radio service providers soon came up with a solution to the problem by bouncing the signal from the airborne satellite off terrestrial dishes, in other words, reflecting them at closer to ground level, thereby providing satellite radio to millions of inner city dwellers.