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Microcap & Penny Stocks : Globalstar Telecommunications Limited GSAT
GSAT 64.93-1.1%Jan 23 3:59 PM EST

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To: A.L. Reagan who wrote (10474)3/3/2000 11:51:00 PM
From: Geoff Goodfellow  Read Replies (2) of 29987
 
"we believe that the quality of our system and the value of our assets should attract additional qualified proposals." said Iridium COO Randall Brouckman .

I don't know what they are smoking over at Iridium. I bought an Iridium phone about a month ago: a y2k scare never used totally new Iridium 9500 phone off of an ebay sale. I was able to plunk in my GSM SIM card and use the system without a subscription to Iridium itself, but rather through my GSM network provider here in the Czech Republic.

My experience has been consistently poor voice quality punctuated with dropped calls (which is what i also experienced at the Iridium display at Telecom 99 in Geneva in Oct). I also spent many many hours dealing with the folks at Iridium with respect to a system design flaw: when I turn the Iridium phone off it doesn't send a DETACH/logout message and my GSM network (http://www.paegas.cz) still keeps trying to forward calls into the satellite system! After going through several levels of management at Iridium and dealing with an engineer in the control room in Arizona it was determined Motorola decided against this "feature" (of logging out at turn off) because it would use bandwidth on the satellites!! As a result, I recieved huge bills from the calls that "looped through" the Iridium system and back to my voicemail system in Prague when my phone was turned off. The satellite network was also pinged each time someone tried to call me or send an SMS message until i could get to another GSM network and force a logout (so much for saving satellite resources!).

My take is: the iridium system is as much a technical design failure as it is a financial & marketing one.

So now you might ask, why did I buy an Iridium phone? For $500 from the ebay sale i just couldn't resist owning a piece (souvenir?) of "history" -- all nicely paid for by a short position in GSTRF.

Geoff Goodfellow
Prague, CZ
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