Re launches, there were originally going to be launches from Kazakhstan using some of the rockets that were originally planned to deliver nukes free of charge to the USA. Swords to ploughshares! But that all stopped being mentioned a couple of years ago. Is suppose they will just use the launch vehicle which gives the cheapest, timeliest and safest combination.
Larry, Iridium putting more gateways in shows the wisdom of Globalstar's approach. Iridium has had to acknowledge that some states want imprisoned tenants and their phone service so they can loot them. So they have put in extra gateways. That has the added benefit of reducing the number of calls being bounced around the satellite system, thereby increasing capacity. Of course, carried to the logical conclusion, they could just handle all calls on the ground as Globalstar will do. That saves the difficult and costly space switching.
I don't see how a gateway helps either Iridium or Globalstar get calls into buildings. You'll have to explain that one. I say it doesn't - the satellite gizzardry, number of satellites and handset are the sole determinants of how well a call will complete from inside a building. Even with a gateway next to the building won't help the satellite get the signal through or help the handset get the signal out.
Gateway upgrades really will be a doddle. Even with 150 of them. That is plenty of gateways, including ocean coverage. Far fewer would do the job, but some countries will insist on their own gateway and having more reduces transmission distances and hence saves power in satellites. Even islands like Tonga and Hawaii have pretty regular postal service and it really is pretty simple for somebody to pop a new chip or board in a housing.
Regarding the Deja News stories about what's her name who coached the lies about babies in incubators. It is another indication of the moral quality of the Motorola people. Birds of a feather. I say investing with criminals is unwise. Actually, it continually surprises me how gullible people are; they see it in print or on tv and think "Wow, Iraquis dump babies out of incubators". Same with the big Time article several years ago about male child prostitutes in Moscow, complete with cover photo of a boy dressed up as a girl. It was all so obviously a fake and they admitted later they had been conned. Sure there are baby killers, such as the great American hero Lt. William Calley who murdered a whole village of Gooks, including children. Funnily enough he didn't get hung for crimes against humanity like those nasty nazis after Nuremberg, in fact he is now out - maybe even working for Motorola. But some stories, like emptying incubators, don't have the ring of truth about them. Is Deja a good source? I wonder.
Well, if she lied to them, she'll lie to you. If they stole from Qualcomm, they'll steal from you.
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Personal notes:
Dave, hello, nope, I never did buy any Loral. I'm fully pigged out on Globalstar and Qualcomm, including some margin. I've been a long time [since 1989] proponent of CDMA in cellular. Loral was less attractive as I like to keep very focussed investments. They were into all sorts of space ventures. I was actually wanting Loral at 9 or 10! It got as low as $11.
Don Limb? Well, I guess when the rains finally came he got washed away in the floods. He never did ask us to stop the rain again. Don't know sorry, but I hope like many of us he just took a well deserved break out in 3D. But eventually, probably sooner rather than later, we are going to be dealing with death on-line; disembodied friends finally vanishing from our screens. It's a peculiar world that's developing and Globalstar is part of it. We are all learning how to live with it and within it.
Same for Reagan - I haven't followed the Loral thread assiduously so maybe he is still over there occasionally. |
