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.
> The Soviets started using it because it would provide good coverage of their very nordic territory
They also used it to surveil/recon the United States as it can loiter in US airspace for a while.
Thing about orbits - anything that's currently high above the north pole will very soon be less high, and above the south pole...
Zoom out and you'll see the geostationary stuff too. E.g. eutelsat.
Not over the north pole you won't :)
With a non-circular orbit you can maximize the time spent over your target area by having a high apogee over target, and a lower perigee.