More Sat 99 comments, interesting Iridium comment,
Attendees came away yesterday (2/4) from the SATELLITE 99 conference's general session on mobile satellites with a greater
appreciation of the level of progress that is being made by various operators and licensees. The next few months should witness a
flood of new announcements concerning various systems' stages of development.
Representatives of the Big Three - Iridium LLC [IRIDF], now several months into its commercial service rollout; Globalstar L.P.
[GSTRF]; and ICO Global Communications Ltd. [ICOGF] - were front and center at the show in Washington.
Leo Mondale, senior vice president of business development, made an aggressive push to defuse recent concerns over handset
shortages and satellite difficulties. The problems in handset manufacturing have been corrected, he said, although shipments from
Kyocera Corp. [KYO] are still pending. Mondale also stated that Iridium is not concerned about the number of its satellites
successfully delivered into orbit, rating network quality as a higher priority. Iridium is now achieving a 95 percent call completion
rate, he said.
Mary Frost, ICO's vice president and regional general manager, described her company as "tiptoeing into the marketplace." Even
while its initial satellite launch is fast approaching, Frost noted that ICO already is marketing a terrestrial solution, called ICO
Roam, in order to develop and build out its distribution networks.
Though defensive in recent days following news coverage of the company's five failed satellite spares and criticism about
Kyocera's late-to-market handsets, Iridium has maintained that its system is functioning at high capacity. But Mondale said
Iridium's capacity will not be comparable to later system rollouts into the mobile satellite service (MSS) market.
"Capacity is such an arguable issue - wireless service, including satellites, is in peak demand and that demand is never spread out,"
he said. The company plans to spend the next year collecting actual data capacity based on real usage, he said.
But Mondale added: "I don't think frankly you can make a decent comparison among systems until each of us has that operating
experience. Comparisons at this point really are misleading."
Satellite analyst Marc Crossman, vice president at J.P. Morgan in New York, dismissed Mondale's claim in noting that no matter
how early Iridium may be in its business plan, service comparisons are feasible since the system is being marketed to consumers
and will be competing with later entrants for customers.
"That's bulls**t!" Mondale said. Mondale was adamant about the fact that Iridium is not concerned about the satellite network as
the system in functioning at high levels and customer feedback has been positive on the performance of the system.
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