Avalanche Fox said:
... i guess i just see all this as a logistical nightmare. yes, it would be nice to have the best of both channels, but how would it affect our current xm/sirius receivers? and w/ them having a monopoly, i don't see the price going down, but rather up. ..
Each service has their own 12.5 MHz allotted space within the 25 MHz licensed service in the 2300 MHz part of the spectrum. Each service is split into three sub-bands. Sirius has three polar - low-earth orbiting satellites over the Americas. Any two of the three are within view at a time, over the Continental North America. XM satellites are geo-stationary in the Clarke belt, 22,500 miles up, as DirecTV and Dish, etc are.
In order for XM to provide a "saturating" signal from such a distance, to a small antenna, they're more powerful than any of their TV counterparts! Both services use the upper and lowermost portions of their allotted bands for their satellites and a center band for their terrestrial repeaters.
OK, now picture what could or would they do with the current hardware?
■ Offer upgraded factory-integrated units?
■ Add-on external dual-platform receivers?
■ Cross-port popular channels?
I would be certain they have some plan in place to convince the powers that "it's in the best public interest" as they see it. They need to both become more competitive with the world of the other gadgets like HD radio, iPods and cellphone entertainment video/audio and quite likely this scheme will come in with something appealing.
By the way that the spectrum of the services is set up, adjacent sub-bands of each could be used for this type of technology. There's just nothing but the news releases and speculation at this point.