Facts About Satellite Radio

Satellite radio is radio that is made available via outer space. This common form of radio is broadcast by radio stations across the earth's surface, whereas satellite radio beams radio signals from satellites hovering around the earth. Satellite radio has a much wider range than ordinary radio since satellite technology allows radio waves to beam over a very large area, as for instance the entire United States much like television. The technology used in creating and making use of satellite radio is obviously more advanced than ordinary radio. Because of this, satellite radio often sounds clearer and has less static than ordinary radio. The choices offered by satellite radio are also far more widespread than that of ordinary radio. In ordinary radio, the listener has to scan for stations within the vicinity. When using satellite radio, the listener only has to listen to one radio station, which offers plenty of channels, all of which are expected to have crystal-clear sound quality.

How does satellite radio work? Of course by beaming radio signals. The home station of a particular satellite radio service located on the earth's surface sends signals to their satellites in outer space. In turn, these satellites reflect back these radio signals to radio receivers on the ground, which translate the data into digital audio signals and information for radio listeners.

There are currently three satellite radio providers in the world. These are XM Satellite Radio, Sirius Satellite Radio, and Worldspace.

XM Satellite radio currently has over 170 audio channels, and these include various genres in addition to music. XM has talk, comedy, and news channels. It costs only $12.95 a month. It boasts of having detailed play-by-play sports coverage. It can be listened to online and also has an online newsletter.

Sirius Satellite radio, based in New York, relatively has less audio channels than XM. However, more than half of its channels are commercial-free. Like XM, Sirius has specialty channels allowing listeners to listen to sports and entertainment. It features coverage from ESPN. By genre, its audio channels are also hosted by musical experts in their respective fields.

Worldspace International Satellite Radio differs from both XM and Sirius in the fact that its radio coverage is much wider. Rather than cover the United States from coast to coast, Worldspace covers most of Europe, Africa, and Asia through its AfriStar and AsiaStar satellites. It does not cover any part of America. These satellites transmit radio signals to a three coverage areas, each one approximately 14 million square kilometers in land area. Each of Worldspace's satellites release three beams, each of which can transmit up to 80 channels. Worldspace also provides some 10 percent of the content found in XM Radio, as it was a founding shareholder of XM radio. Worldspace has data receivers allowing its users to download multimedia and other data to personal computers.

XM, Sirius, and Worldspace all sell equipment, enabling customers to set up satellite radio in their cars and other moving vehicles. None of them offer their services for free, although the costs they offer are reasonable considering the fact that their customers get dozens of audio channels in every genre, presented in crystal-clear sound.