Globalstar in South Africa
vodacom.co.za
Vodacom has put up some new info on G* in South Africa. Acknowledges it's waiting on a license, but nevertheless presents tariffs amounting to 20$/ month, 2$ per minute used, SMS available for 0.25$/minute (all prices converted from S.African Rand at 0.15 USD per Rand)
Remarkably, it says that ONLY the Ericson phone is available in S. Africa, but instead of local prices for it, provides a link to Ericson press release saying phone will be available in second quarter 2000 (sigh)
Lists 18 countries "in billable service" and 11 Gateways in service as of February 7. GW list includes S. Africa, Australia, China, Argentina, Mexico, Finland and South Korea, but the list of countries excludes them.
I wonder what if anything stops the S. African Gateway from serving neighbors...Botswana, Lesotho, Mozambique, Namibia, Swaziland and Zimbabwe are all supposed to be served from this GW, but there's no indication that that's happening. Would have been good PR to have Mozambique flood relief workers equipped with G* phones, for example. |
