There are a number of individuals who are keenly interested in this notion of being able to communicate from the Earth to a satellite.
	When we place a call with our current cellular phone technology, we're sending our signal horizontally across the face of the earth to the nearest tower at the center of our cell.  Taking into account the curvature of the Earth, the broadcasting power of these towers, and the distance they can reliably send and receive a signal, the towers are only able to serve a small "footprint."  As anybody who has ever tried to place a cellular phone call while driving in a car knows, the signal is greatly affected by what lies between one's phone and one's cellular tower.
	The cellular companies would dearly like us to use satellites, but the current set of satellites they could use are too far out in space.  One would be required to tow a trailer full of batteries behind their car to have enough firepower to communicate effectively with one of today's geosynchronous satellites.
	A low-level orbiting satellite would work, except nobody wants to make a phone call once every couple hours for fifteen minutes.
	So several multi-national organizations have gotten together with the notion of putting up multiple low-level orbiting satellites, creating a grid of these around the globe so that at anytime one is underneath a satellite signal.  The satellites would have routing and switching capabilities, much like any Ethernet network, so they can send signals back and forth to each other.
	Under this scenario, one's call could leave the ground and go up to the nearest satellite, the signal would then be switched from satellite to satellite until it reaches a satellite above the destination and the signal is downloaded to the receiving phone.
	This kind of technology promises to offer better clarity too, since there are fewer things to interfere with the signal, making it a much better scheme for transmitting digital data.
	The first of these satellite grids is expected to come online in the next three years.  About a half-dozen of them look financially feasible at this point, so it could be that in five years time you'll be able to purchase digital satellite cellular communication from one of six competing international providers.
	Clearly the reason that Craig McCaw and Bill Gates are spending billions to put up a couple hundred low-level orbiting satellites to surround the world and create a communications grid is to make money.  They expect to extract a good deal of cash from the famous "Henry Kissinger Axis”  (that is that line that runs from Moscow, through London, New York, Tokyo, and Beijing.)  They also intend to service the emergent economies like those in Asia and South America as well as the mobile professional and the transport industries.  But in order to service these large lucrative markets they have to be able to service every point on planet Earth twenty-four hours a day.  That means that in the near future there will be no reason for these new satellite cellular companies to charge more to somebody in a remote village in Africa than they do to somebody in downtown New York City.  (Unless, of course, individual countries impose regulations and tariffs.)