The inventory challenges faced by Mobile Satellite Ventures (MSV) and others underscored the importance of what MSV and other Mobile Satellite Services providers are doing to develop its next generation satellite network with an ancillary terrestrial component (ATC).

ATC will provide users with a mobile phone capable of using terrestrial wireless networks as well as satellite networks when the phone is outside of cell coverage range, all in the compact size of today’s cell phones rather than the bulky satellite phones.

Assuming consumers and other organizations adopt hybrid wireless/satellite phones on a wide basis, inventory challenges such as those experienced by MSV could become a thing of the past.

In the next generation system, a lack of available inventory “won’t be an issue,” MSV Vice Chairman and CEO Alexander Good said. “If [consumers and organizations] are subscribers to our service, they will already be equipped” to maintain communications during a disaster, he said, adding that because cost of handsets for the next generation will be significantly cheaper than current satellite phones, “we will have more ready sources of supply.”