Satellite radio, officially known as broadcasting-satellite service, is a fairly new technology that allows you to receive radio programming over huge swaths of the country using satellites. The three major providers are Sirius, XM and Worldspace. All provide music and talk channels, but each differs in the number of available stations, and in the type of content offered. Most important of all, Sirius and XM charge a monthly subscription fee to receive their broadcasts. This provides you with commercial-free broadcasts, whereas traditional radio stations usually air 10-12 minutes of ads per hour.
Unlike FM and AM broadcasts, which are limited to terrestrial radio waves, satellite radio can transmit signals over huge swaths of territory, providing coverage in rural areas and cities with tall buildings and bridges that interfere with conventional radio reception. In addition, a satellite radio signal can be transmitted in digital form, which dramatically improves sound quality and allows text information to be transmitted alongside musical signals.
The most successful satellite radio providers, XM and Sirius, have negotiated deals with the major automakers to include their satellite receivers in the cars they sell. The receivers work just like a standard car radio, but are specifically designed to transmit the satellite signals.
The XM and Sirius transmitters operate in geostationary orbits, allowing their signals to cover most of North America (Sirius, however, uses highly elliptical satellites that provide more coverage to Canada and the United States). In the beginning, this caused some issues with mobile receivers since you need to be within direct line of sight of the satellite in order to receive the transmission. This was mostly solved when the XM and Sirius systems were merged in 2008, and the companies began broadcasting on the same satellites.
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