Regarding Inmarsat, the post I saw said it charges 2.50$/minute, not 1.95$. It wasn't clear whether that's wholesale or retail (retail rate I've seen are generally never lower than 3$/minute).
I think it's a little funny that Inmarsat is ballyhooing itself as the
"only successful mobile satellite business in the universe" on the verge of a new IPO. It's last real business venture, ICO, didn't work out to well, but let's not scare investors by reminding them of that. Inmarsat, itself, is not publicly traded and to my knowledge doesn't publish P/L statements, so we have no idea how spacecraft depreciation, cost of capital, and the value of its orbital slots, to name a few issues, are handled. It's a treaty organisation, and run something like the UN; it got it's start up money from governments and monopoly PTTs. Now it's become fashionable for such enterprises to "privatise." Well, good luck to it, but to call it now a "business" and suggest it's a better one than real commercial enterprises funded by investors is a big stretch. |
