GLOBALSTAR STARTS SERVICE IN EUROPE:LONDON, ENGLAND, 2000 MAY 24 (Newsbytes) -- By Steve Gold, Newsbytes. Three months after the service rolled out in North
America, and three weeks after its Australasian launch, Globalstar finally launched the satellite service to the European public.
While Vodafone will act as the middleman for Globalstar's services in the UK, just as it does in the US, its complete charging model is
different. In place of the traditional "line rental plus optional bucket of minutes" deals seen in the US, Globalstar will not be directly
available to UK and Western European mobile phone users.
Instead, users will be allowed to roam from their terrestrial cellular network - just as they do at the moment when they move between
countries - but roaming to the Globalstar satellite network.
Under the European roaming arrangements for Globalstar, users will only pay Globalstar usage charges when they roam to and use the
satellite telephony service. Call rates for outgoing calls from countries within Europe to European and US call destinations will be $2.24
a minute.
When European GSM (global system for mobile communications) users are roaming in the US, meanwhile, they will pay $2 a minute
for calls to the US and Europe. All call charges will be billed back to the user's "home" GSM network operator, just as happens with
terrestrial GSM roaming services.
Plans call for UK and European dealers to sell three types of Globalstar-compliant handsets from Ericsson, Qualcomm and Telit.
While the Qualcomm and Telit handsets (code division multiple access/Globalstar and GSM 900/Globalstar-compliant, respectively),
and which are slightly smaller than the equivalent units from the Iridium network, the Ericsson R290 is a lot smaller.
This attractive feature is reflected in the price of the Ericsson R290, which sells for $2,800 - about 50 percent more than the two other
Globalstar-compliant handsets.
Colin MacDougal, corporate marketing director with Vodafone, told Newsbytes that the decision to go with a roaming charge model in
Europe, without any line rental, was taken because Vodafone has a 6.5 equity percent stake in Globalstar.
"That means we only have an interest in attracting call revenue, which we can easily do when users roam from their GSM network to
the Globalstar service," he said.
Interestingly, MacDougal said that the difference between Globalstar and the troubled Iridium service, which was suspended at the
request of the US bankruptcy courts earlier this year, is that it is a slow ramp up, rather than a "big bang" - as was the case with
Iridium's service launch.
"We have watched Iridium and how they approached the market. We are aiming at a different and much wider set of customers," he
said.
Now the slightly bad news. The Globalstar service currently doesn't support a mobile data service. Plans call for the firm to start offering
a 9,600 bits per second (bps) data service towards the end of this year.
Globalstar's Web site is at globalstar.com .
Vodafone's Web site is at vodafone.co.uk .
Reported by Newsbytes.com, newsbytes.com .
13:32 CST Reposted 14:03 CST c2000 copyright Post-Newsweek Business Information, Inc.
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(20000524/Press Contact:Emma Terleske, Vodafone Press Operations +44-7000-500100 /WIRES TELECOM,
BUSINESS/GLOBALSTAR/PHOTO) |
