Don, Globalstar is a bit of a confused shareholding. There are two elements, Globalstar Telecommunications Limited, registered in Bermuda, managed by Loral staff and it is a publicly listed investor club, holding partnership rights in Globalstar LP, which is a USA company. Globalstar Telecommunications is what you can buy and sell as GSTRF. It owns about 20% of Globalstar LP, which will actually own the Globalstar space system for world phones. There are many other partners in Globalstar LP: Loral being biggest, Qualcomm, as the founding partners and main technology providers. Then a whole raft of telecom providers like Vodafone, AirTouch, Hyundai, France Telecom etc, who have rights to supply different areas of the world. GSTRF conducts no business, has no other assets, plans no other assets and is simply a bunch of people like me waiting for the satellites to fly and customers to roll in, the work being done by Loral, Qualcomm, subcontractors and distributors. I don't mean to bore you Don, but I thought the web audience might want some information on just who owns what.
Yes, shareholdings in either partnerships or GSTRF could change and probably will. Or new shareholders brought it to fund a second 48 satellite earlier than anyone is thinking at the moment. If somebody wants to offer me bulk money for my shares, that is okay by me. But I'm such a fanatic, that I really want to own the shares and see them fly, then use my phone to call anywhere through a satellite. It is like a vindication of humanity, intellect, internationalism, creativity, hope and glory. I know it's just a phone system. But look what it really is. People dug into the dirt and with millions of people's efforts in billions of directions: fuel, steel, plastics, aerials, photovoltaics, buildings, computers etc. ad infinitum have created such synergy that at the end of 2000 years, most of which was sheer survival, we will be able to talk to anyone anywhere from anywhere. What achievement. I want to be part of it. Human nature being what it is, we will gobble it up, hardly notice and rush off to the future, but I'll enjoy it for a week at least! |
