<<I hope the thought of G* disappears. I want Airtouch and Vodafone to offer "enhanced wireless communications" with global roaming, connections anywhere, etc. No need to say satellite phone. Let the engineers work in the background, keep the sats afloat, tweak and improve efficiency, etc. Let the service providers, proven masters of wireless communications, do the selling. I think that way of thinking is becoming the reality. That is a huge plus in my book.>>
Respectfully, I disagree. I think selling the GlobalStar brand name is very important in the long run, both to us and to the various phone companies selling GlobalStar service.
While it appears that for the forseeable future GlobalStar will have either price and quality advantages (or both) it is not realistic to assume that this will always be true.
We should remember that eventually there will be strong competition for this business. A bankrupted and restructured Iridium (should such a thing come to pass) or any of the various other LEO, MEO, and GEO satphone schemes will be looking for customers, too. If we are invisible to the end user, they will not care which supplier their cellular provider chooses. In that scenario, price will inevitably dictate everything. Latency be damned!
All that is necessary, IMHO, is for the various companies selling GlobalStar to put a simple tag on the end of their advertisements that would say, "A Charter Member of The GlobalStar Network."
There ought to be some clever way here of playing off "The network is the computer," but you should get the idea. |
