Bloomberg article (Part II)
Ideal Customers
There clearly is a market for Iridium phones among at least
one class of customers -- chief executives negotiating
multibillion-dollar deals in remote locales. Sprint Corp. CEO
William Esrey says he worked out the details of his company's
proposed merger with MCI WorldCom Inc. on an Iridium phone while
riding his horse in Colorado. On the other end of the line was
MCI WorldCom boss Bernard Ebbers, the architect of the record-
breaking $129 billion deal, which was announced in October.
Motorola, meanwhile, using technology developed largely on
Iridium's nickel, is getting ready for its next life as a
telecommunications satellite contractor. The company is busy
coming up with a blueprint for Teledesic, a broadband satellite
communications system. If Teledesic approves it, Motorola will
begin designing the system.
``We will spearhead the entire engineering team and all the
subcontractors and do most of the satellite communications' and
ground stations' software and hardware, much the same as we did
with Iridium,' said Motorola spokesman Robert Edwards. ``The
same people working on Iridium would be transferred to Teledesic.
The engineers, research, everything.'
Of course, Teledesic may be no more successful than Iridium.
Hundreds of small and large competitors have filed for U.S.
Federal Communications Commission licenses for similar systems.
Shosteck, the Iridium Cassandra, is equally bearish on Teledesic,
giving it only a one in 10 chance of ``having a viable market'
-- the same odds he gave Iridium.
Still, as Standard & Poor's analyst Bruce Hyman points out,
``Motorola has gained substantial experience in commercializing
the technology of manufacturing communications satellites in high
volume.'
Tom Sawyer might have approved. Motorola gets the fence and
the paint job. The other Iridium partners are still hoping for
some kind of return.
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