"Message from the Chairman" [Excerpt from B.Schwartz letter in October 99 Globalstar Communications Magazine]
"I have been asked over and over again, "What assurance do you have taht you can sucessfully launch a new satellite-based international telephone service when others have seemingly failed?" I tell them that my confidence stems from Globalstar's world-class partners and service providers who have an established presence in 125 countries, established reliationships with regulatory authorities around the world, a combined subscriber base of 100 million customers and in-place distribution channels. More than any other source, our service provider forecasts validate Globalstar's market-one that far exceeds the capacity of current and potential service providers."
As I've opined before, relying on existing SP/Distributors, provides the compelling benefit of their in country relationships with regulators, distributors and customers at the expense that G* is dependent on them to get moving. That means, SP by SP, distributor by distributor, region by region, operating managers and marketing people have to be convinced G* service really meets its specs, sales and customer care people have to be trained, product staged for resale, billing systems updated, etc., etc.
BLS could have followed the Ed Stiano/Motorola/Iridium model and bypassed all these extra steps, but that didn't work very well, either. |
