Rollout Status: Behind Schedule or Proceeding According to Plan?
To address this question, it's interesting to compare what BLS said in the last conference call October 26 with the report C.E. Unterberg prepared based on survey of LSPs in several countries. CEUT's Report, sent to me recently by an anonymous source, was dated October 18, and covered most of the countries mentioned by BLS plus several others.
According to my notes BLS said that 9 GWs were in operation and initiating commercial service according to the timetable below. CEUT, based on information from LSPs came up with different dates also shown below:
Country, BLS, CEUT
Brazil, November 15, January
Italy, November, January
US/Canada, Nov (subj to FBI apprvl), February
Argentina, November, not surveyed
France, December, January
China, December, January
S. Korea, December, 1st Quarter
S. Africa, January, not surveyed
The CEUT survey included a number of other countries/regions not mentioned by BLS, including Central America, Mexico, Australia, none of which expected to start commercially before January.
Why the lag between BLS's dates and the LSPs? Is BLS a hopeless optimist, or hopelessly out of touch? Could it be that G* the wholesaler starts it's clock on "commercial ops" when the LSP formally accepts the GW, notwithstanding when the LSP starts reselling the service (as opposed to free samples to "friendly" potential customers/distributors)? Does G* get paid by the LSP during this interval? Is this lag take into account in G*s business plan and subscriber count forecasts?
Inquiring minds would like to know.... |
