But, you can't have it both ways in your criticism, David. Yes, there is general consensus that we wanted them to start service earlier, and have the handsets ready earlier. But, don't impose your artificial date as a measure of how many subscribers have not been signed up. They did not launch on August 1. Therefore, by definition, they had no subscribers.
And, your date is artificial. Bernie said 3Q. If he'd meant early 3Q, he would have said so. Okay, 3Q means to me any time from July 1 through September 30, and probably the second half of the quarter. Instead of Sept 30, they're launching October 11. Big deal.
As to your concern as to the launch being "vapor", we'll see. It's certainly appropriate to voice concern, but they haven't launched yet, vapor or otherwise, so we can't criticize the quality of the launch yet. (And notice the "yet").
One of the lessons of iridium, I believe, is that you have to have handsets ready when you launch. Do you recall that irid launched, had all sorts of prospects identified (from reponses to ad circulars, etc.), but had no system in place to follow up with the leads? And even worse--had no handsets to sell to people who wanted them!
G* doesn't have many handsets available, but there are some, and production is ramping up. The SP's have the marketing and sales infrastructure in place, so they won't face irid's problems on that score. Given the handset scarcity, the soft launch is appropriate.
Best,
JS |
