>*Iridium* Ira, sure, Iridium will continue and sell their minutes and I've explained that
> before. But they have only about 1.2bn minutes to sell. Globalstar has 12bn minutes
> to sell.
*Qualcomm* Mqurice, sure, Nevada has much more land to sell than Maine. From this we can conclude, well, what can we conclude from this?
>Forget about Iridium, it's now of academic interest only.
Even supposing its over and out for I* after five years, which is quite possible, it is certainly not of academic interest if you are an investor in an another multibillion USD satellite co which is supposed to get some dough back within the next five years.
Is I* going to give up without a fight? Hell, no. They are filling the minutes like an airline is filling the seats, like they say themselves.
However, it's a mystery to me how do they fill these bad quality seats when there is usually a much better alternative available, a terrestial system.
Imagine the scenario: you are in a restaurant in need of a call. You have to pull out an ping-pong pad sized satellite phone and answer the numerous questions from your friends how much you got ripped off. If that wasn't humiliating enough THEN you have to go outside, point the antenna wherever you think the satellite is, walk a block if there are too tall buildings in front of you and hope that just at that moment you are not exactly in the time gap of the satellite coverage.
Meanwhile your pals are having good time taking the mickey out of you, your girlfriend laughs just a little too eagerly to your best friend's jokes and everybody is putting used serviettes in your leather briefcase you always carry for the phone and left behind in anticipation of getting mugged.
So these are the minutes I* thinks of selling like aeroplane seats.
- rajala
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