George Gilder - Forbes ASAP Message Board

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Technology Stocks : George Gilder - Forbes ASAP

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To: Bill Fischofer who wrote (1156)	4/4/1999 1:31:00 PM
From: Scott C. Lemon	of 5853

Hello Bill, > Satellite Second Thoughts I never had first thoughts! ;-) Quite a while back I had read Negroponte's book "Being Digital" and agreed with most of the logic presented ... the usefulness of satellite communications I believe is related to quantity ... broadcasting. > The recent lackluster performance of IRIDF and GSTRF has prompted > me to ask the folks here to discuss just how important satellites > are likely to be in the future of the telecosm. I agree with you points below ... it just doesn't quite make sense if the majority of the people using wireless communications, are doing so in densely populated ares with much more efficient cellular technologies. What is the benefit of Satellite? > Except for communications at sea (where INMARSAT and others already > operate), I have to question just how large a market there is for > being able to make phone calls in the middle of the gobi desert. I will say that a small portion of the population is going to want to do so for work purposes ... and another portion will want to do this for "Extreme Vacations" where they still want to check e-mail. But the majority will have no use for it ... > With T and others finally getting serious about providing real > roaming for cellphone users it seems to me that the occassions > when a cellphone subscriber will find themselves outside of their > calling area are going to diminish very rapidly over the next five > years. This means that the satellite companies will be fighting for > an ever-smaller number of potential subscribers who happen to > travel frequently to underserved areas. This is why I guessed that Iridium decided to partner with cell phone vendors ... they realized that it just wasn't going to work any other way ... > While satellites will undoubtedly remain important in the carrier > market, the notion that millions of individual subscribers will be > "talking to the sky" seems a lot less convincing than it may have a > few years ago. I'm not sure that it looked convincing a few years ago! ;-) > Second, given the rapid pace of technology change, isn't anybody > concerned that the "huge" bandwidth provided by these systems will > seem little more than a useless trickle by the time the systems are > deployed? If it takes 3-5 years to fully deploy a satellite system > and terrestrial bandwidth is growing by hundreds (if not thousands) > of percent per year, then there is serious risk that these systems > will be obsolete before they are ever completed. Just how much will > folks pay for 9600-baud service these days? This is the biggest point of all ... I was shocked when I learned that these satellite folks weren't going to deliver high-speed networking, but instead something less than 19.2Kbps ... that's useless for anything other than basic verticle applications. Even e-mail these days, with the rich data types being sent around, can be very difficult on a 19.2Kbps line ... I have yet to hear a really good explanation of what these guys are going to offer to really make money. I'm sure that they have a lot to recoup, but it just doesn't make sense to me ... Scott C. Lemon

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