Proposed World Space provided radio services to Africa and Asia from two geostationary satellites, Afristar launched in 1998 and Asia star launched in 2000. These satellites use the same air interface as XM radio. Plans to launch a third satellite, Ameristar, to serve South America were not implemented as these L band frequencies were used by the US Air Force. This satellite was then intended to be repurposed to provide European coverage with a particular emphasis on Italy. The satellite would transmit and receive with an air interface theoretically compliant with the ETSI satellite digital radio standard that was being extended to include S UMTS and DVB SH and a legacy set of standard documents known as GMR, the geostationary mobile radio standard. World Space had terrestrial repeater licenses for Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates and lobbied for similar license concessions in its other addressable L band markets. 16.23 Inmarsat - L Band GSO Two-Way Mobile Communications Inmarsat have traditionally provided mobile and fixed communication services to the maritime, aeronautical, land mobile and remote-area markets. Recent investments have focused on increasing data rates as part of their Broadband Global Access (B GAN) network. Space to earth links are at 1525 to 1559 MHz and earth-to-space are at 1626.5 to 1660.5 MHz. The network supports user data rates up to 256 kbps. Terminals are typically 1.3 kg or above and power consumption is in the region of 14 watts. There are ten satellites geostationary (GSO) orbit. The latest satellites launched have a planned 13-year operational life and a 9 metre antenna array. Satellite Networks 16.24 Thuraya 2 L Band GSO Plus Triband GSM and GPS Thuraya provided satellite service to mobile hand-held devices that also supported triband GSM and GPS with coverage optimised for the United Arab Emirates and the Middle East. The original geostationary satellite was launched in 2000 with a second in 2003 and a third in 2004. Uplinks and downlinks were the same as Inmarsat. The Thoray