Comment by ovi256

It's called a Molnya orbit. The Soviets started using it because it would provide good coverage of their very nordic territory, something geostationary sats would not do. Of course, the sats are not stationary (from the point of view of earth, so that excludes stationary parabolic antennas, as are very common with GEO sats) and you do need at least three for continuous coverage in time.