<< Gstar is going after wealthy people with their dual mode phone - not super rich by US standards, but relatively well-off. Most of those people live in cities. Most people of all sorts live in cities. Cities already have cell phones. Cell phones are more important where there are not decent landlines. Cell phones are the intoduction to Gstar, and the competition. >>
Today I took my daughter to her soccer game at the Phoenixville, PA, YMCA. During the game, I whipped out my trusty Ericsson TDMA phone to get my office voice mail, and found the signal strength meter was showing zero bars. I had lost the digital (TDMA) signal completely and was barely able to complete the call on the analogue signal. Phoenixville is about a forty minutes drive from center city Philadelphia.
I've mentioned this many times before, but my experience has been that as soon as I get outside the major metropolitan areas and off the interstates, American cellular service is seriously Swiss cheese (lots of holes.) Depending on which service you subscribe to, there may be fewer or more holes in different places. The farther away and off I go, the worse the service gets, and I really do not believe terrestrial service will get that much better.
I'm not worried about making calls in the car or in buildings any more with GlobalStar than with my existing cellular. It will either work the same as or better than what I have now.
I'm not worried too much about the price, either. I paid more for an analog phone way-back-when (it paid for itself quickly) than I expect to pay for a GlobalStar phone in the not-too-distant future. Then I will use the relatively expensive GlobalStar minutes only when the relatively cheap cellular minutes are not available. Of course, I only use the relatively expensive cellular minutes when I am not in my home or office to use my relatively inexpensive copper wire telephone minutes.
Am I wealthy? Relative to other people in my neighborhood, no. But, relative to most people living in rural Chinese or Indian villages, I am wealthy beyond belief -- as is everyone else reading this thread. This is a concept my nine year old daughter cannot yet grasp, but I suspect most people here will do better. (My daughter has trouble believing anyone could possibly have ever lived without The Disney Channel, much less television in general.)
I cannot claim to know all the technical ins and outs of GlobalStar's systems. I'm not an engineer and would not know an orthoganal wave form if I tripped over one. But, what I've read of their marketing plans makes sense to me. GlobalStar is one more element of the ongoing change from isolated family units to villages to towns and cities to states and nations to international and finally global communications.
They also have more than one marketing plan, as does any largish concern successfully selling in multiple markets.
1: Get phones into the hands of first world heavy cellular users and generate some cash flow.
2) Get phones into the hands of those people who have no options: international travelers.
3) Get phones into the hands of village chieftains so the gazillions of people who have never seen a televised soccer match or made a phone call, will be able to. At a profit.
There's a few cool paradigms for you. |
