Pooky, I think you misconstrue Mr. S' postion:
<What bothers me is that BS always points a finger at either the manufacturers or the
regulatory issues or Iridium's failure etc.>
BLS is not pointing fingers because (he says) everything is going great. I took verbatim notes on this part of the cc: he said "G* is in great shape; could not be in better condition;" Loral has "absolute confidence."
You, I or the market are free to disagree with that assessment, of course, but I never heard him complain or "point fingers" at anyone. Personally, I think most of the dissatisfaction expressed here lately results from comparing the damn good to the perfect, and preferring the latter.
<What bothers me is that BS never talks about how the service would have been
delayed even if the 8 satellite had not crashed to earth last year>
It was 12 satellites, of course, and there's no reason to believe this is true at all. IMO, it's virtually certain that GWs and user terminal expenses were minimized post-Zenit, until such time as they had 32-36 sat's up and operating. If the three Zenits had succceeded on schedule, I don't doubt the GWs and UTs could have been ready fir roll out in the first half of 99, in accordance with the pre-Zenit plan.
<What bothers me is that BS never gets into specifics about who has ordered how
many phones?>
OK, this one bothers me a bit, too, but compare the level of detail G* has disclosed with IRID/Mot. To this day, I believe there is no public information about how many phones Mot and Kyocera actually built, or at what price. |
