Hello, anyone out there? I got into this one just before the rise - around $1.15. They have a name change planned for April, and some more contracts in the works. This could have legs up into the high single digits if the market holds up.
Here's an article on satellite services needing to find the right niches... sounds like Alantra.
Challenges for satellite broadband multimedia
Ingley, Carol
Satellite Communications (Atlanta) Vol. 24 Issue 1 Jan 2000
SOURCE TYPE: PERIODICAL
PM_ID: 18822 ISSN: 01477439
The three areas of dramatic growth in the telecommunications marketplace over
the next decade are forecasted to be broadband, the Internet and wireless. As a
wireless technology that is particularly adept at the delivery of video and data,
satellites are well positioned to be players in all these market areas.
Satellite broadband multimedia systems that are online or in the planning stage
include enhanced direct-to-home (DTH) systems, Ka- and Ku- band two-way
multimedia systems and global two-way systems such as Teledesic and
Skybridge.
These systems are in the fast lane.
The formidable challenges ahead for all of these satellite broadband multimedia
systems include:
articulating a data and/or data-video strategy;
identifying markets;
positioning satellite technology in the minds of consumers.
For systems on line and for those not on line, these are important hurdles to
clear. At stake are billions of dollars worth of market share.
These broadband multimedia systems are also at a crossroads. They must
take the time to learn from the recent setbacks faced on the satellite industry's
narrowband side by Iridium and ICO Global Communications. But there is
precious little time and it must be used wisely.
As a foothold of sorts, it might be smart to dust off an old anecdote from the
satellite history book. Many times these stories tell how businesses in an
industry really work.
In the early days of satellites, a businessman knocked at the door of a well
established satellite company with the idea of using domestic satellite capacity
for television distribution. At that time, however, domestic satellites were
thought to be ideally suited for voice and data only. After meeting with
numerous executives, this entrepreneur was quietly and unceremoniously led
away.
Since then, of course, satellite technology has been widely used as a
point-tomultipoint technology, finding itself ideally suited for television
distribution, in most cases more so than terrestrial systems
At issue here is being idea led and having the foresight that the idea will appeal
to the market and not vice versa (i.e. having the market come to the company
and adapting the technology).
It's a subtle difference but an important one.
In the book "Competing for the Future," the authors (Gary Hamel and C.K.
Prahalad) say that the successful companies over the next decade, in fact, will
not be customer led.
It will be the idea-led, well-strategized companies who are able to grab the
following types of customers - unserved customers with unarticulated needs
and unserved customers with articulated needs -- which will succeed.
How do you create an idea-led company environment and a strategy catering to
unserved customers? Who are those customers anyway? According to Gary
Hamel and C.K. Prahalad, the successful companies will have foresight. As a
definition, they point out, "As much as anything, foresight comes from really
wanting to make a difference in people's lives."
The satellite industry now faces a new market: high-speed interconnection to
the Internet. And it faces potent competition on the terrestrial side. Both digital
subscriber lines and cable modems, as well as fiber optics, will be able to
provide handily that service to the consumer and small business. The terrestrial
alternative will in many cases be the chosen one.
Satellite broadband multimedia systems must aggressively find their own
niches. They will find their own markets by finding a way to make a difference in
people's lives.
And if the satellite industry is really going to make a difference in people's lives
- and it is well poised to do so - it may just have to keep having that
conversation: in meetings, with vertical markets, with consumers, with the wide
variety of markets that they will be reaching toward. In other words, the
successful companies will go, in one way or another, to the marketplace and
find out what the market wants.
An example of note: In the late 1960s Soichiro Honda decided that he wanted
to make a world car. Honda sent engineers around the world, observing the
relationship between the citizens of those countries and their automobiles. This
information was used to design the first Civic.
Adapting a similar approach might fill the gap of what appears to be particularly
missing for these satellite broadband multimedia systems: a satellite strategy
for two-way Internet high-speed access for consumers using their PCs and for
small businesses.
Hindsight is notoriously 20/20. It will be the satellite broadband multimedia
systems that have 20/20 foresight that will succeed in this highly competitive
industry.
Comments? backhaul@intertec. com
By Carol Ingley
President
CA. Ingley &Co. |
