It seems you need a morale boost on this thread. I bought in today.
I have been skeptical with regards to Globalstar for a long time, and have posted my misgivings on the Qcom thread. I've owned Qcom off and (mostly on) for a while.
I didn't accept that there were enough yachties in the deep ocean, engineers in Africa needing to call their office, or other migrant workers in African cities wanting to call their home-village; who could pay a realistic fee for this service. I still think that.
It seems to me there are three scenarios whereby Sat systems could be successful. The first is the one I was discounting above; a few people who would have to pay an awful lot. Another scenario is if the price could be brought down so that Sat Com were cheaper than standard terrestrial PCS (standard = 'conventional' - we've come a long way!) I doubt that is in Qcom's mind for the immediate future or they wouldn't be invested so much in terrestrial systems. The third is for the less densely parts of the developped world to pick up the majority of the cost. Both Iridium and Globalstar have three-in-one telephones: Amps, PCS and Satellite. This seems to be the secret to getting satellite usage.
With charges of $1.50 a minute within the US, I wouldn't choose this service, but I would think it would be useful if it were included in a phone I might buy anyway. Once I have it, I'll probably start using it when in the sticks. But tight-wads like me will never be the bread-and-butter of the system anymore than we are for PCS; I see delivery drivers using PCS phones all the time. They, and the high-powered "my time is worth a fortune types" will be the ones who will provide most of the revenues. With all these satellites roaming around of course, they roam over Africa, so the density of users only have to be sufficient to pay for a Base-Station for it to be viable to provide this service there. That's great.
It's also great for the terrestrial PCS providers. When people complain about coverage, they can be pointed to dual or tri-mode phones. It will change an aspect of competition. It will not be simply coverage, but relative prices of the various coverages, and the extent of the cheapest coverage.
By the way, Globalstar will never provide coverage over the deep ocean. I called them on this point for my work; I want communication with the eastern Pacific Ocean several thousand miles from land. It will have to be Iridium. There are no base stations out there, and no plans for them. Globalstar sats. are designed to relay directly down to a base station, whereas Iridium sats. will relay in space if necessary, so they can provide deep ocean coverage. By the way,I was not surprised by Iridium's delay; they couldn't give me accurate costs just weeks before the planned inauguration of the commercial service. I doubt that Globalstar will ever have true global coverage, but that's OK. Their system seems much simpler and should come in a lot cheaper. I do hope, for yachties and scientists, they don't push Iridium out of business completely though.
I was thinking that Gstar might not be such a bad idea, then I saw todays news. Sure it wasn't good, if they lose more satellites, there could be problems. The fall seemed overdone to me though. Everyone is switching to the defensive. There was, of course, also the general market decline. Did people not realise that Starr was going to present his report? Where have they been hiding? That story is the same today as yesterday.
AJ |
