Frankly, I don't currently like any of them, with the possible exception of ViaSat (VSAT)or PanAmSat (SPOT). It's a tough business, as indicated in todays WSJ front page article. The field is littered with multi-billion dollar corpses going back to the days of some pretty deep pocketed companies in the early 80's (Satellite Business Systems which was a JV of IBM, Aetna, MCI) to more recently with Iridium (Motorola, Qualcomm), Teledesic (Microsoft)and Starband (mostly Gilat in reality, with some minor funding by Echostar and Microsoft). The satellite industry is very capital intensive, very risky (due to having to spend billions to build out the systems in hopes they will come, analogous to fiber backbones), and also very cyclical due to fact that by the time demand catches up with capacity, it takes 2-3 years to build/launch new satellites (and go through the regulatory hurdles for orbital slots etc.)to ease the capacity crunch, and by that time, everyone has tried to ease the crunch and you end up with over-capacity,
etc.
Hope that answers your question. |
