Sirius Satellite Radio is Founded

In July 1990 lawyer Martine Rothblatt founded Satellite CD Radio, Inc., and petitioned the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to create a Satellite Digital Audio Radio Service in an underutilized portion of the 2300 MHz frequency band.

"Her vision was to adapt GPS patch antennas to a national, digital, radio service, for which she claimed in her Petition for Rulemaking that there was a large, unmet public need. Rothblatt first demonstrated the service via terrestrial emulators of a satellite to FCC officials in 1992 outside the offices of WPFW in Washington, DC. In that year her daughter was diagnosed with life-threatening pulmonary arterial hypertension, and she resigned as Chairman & CEO to focus on finding a cure for the medical condition. She selected David Margolese to succeed her, and he subsequently venture capitalized US$20 million over the next five years lobbying the Federal Communications Commission to allow satellite radio to be deployed" (Wikipedia article on Sirius Satellite Radio, accessed 03-23-2012).

On February 14, 2002 David Margolese launched Sirius Satellite Radio on a pay for service subscription basis in four states, extending the service nationwide in July of that year.

On July 29, 2008 Sirius Satellite Radio and XM Radio merged to form Sirius XM Radio