We have presented a picture of the total attenuation to be considered in satellite communication and broadcasting systems in the 10-100 GHz frequency range. Although the findings and methodology are of general interest, the numerical results apply to the Italian (mid-latitude) sites of Fucino and Gera Lario and to slant paths of elevation angles 33Β°and 32Β°respectively. The rain attenuation probability distribution P(A), of exceeding the value A (dB) at a given carrier frequency in an average year, has been estimated by the synthetic storm technique and an associated formula, presently derived, which links A to frequency for fixed probabilities. The extra fading due to water vapour, clouds, oxygen and scintillations is estimated by applying the ITU-R formulae. After studying how the received carrier power P R changes as a function of frequency for fixed antenna dimensions and transmitted carrier power P T , we have carried out an exercise to show what first order values of P T we need in an ideal QPSK modulation scheme, with a standard uncoded stream of 64 kbit/s, in a complete earth-satelliteearth connection, with regenerative or transparent transponders, for a given maximum bit error rate tolerated by users. After this analysis we have drawn the following conclusions: (a) the results depend very much on the outage probability and on the site; (b) there are two windows at high outage probabilities, e.g. 1%, the first in the 20-50 GHz frequency range and the second beyond 70 GHz; (c) in the frequency range 50-70 GHz any significant service availability level cannot be achieved because of the very large fading due to oxygen; (d) the transmitted power can show sharp minima which depend significantly on the outage probability and on the site; (e) service availability levels better than 99β’99% of the year cannot be achieved at frequencies of 30 GHz and above, with ground station antennae of 25 cm or less aperture diameter.