Rajala: not quite so certain what a "fanatic" is in terms of Globalstar.
I don't have the view that Air Touch Cellular is run by fanatics, or Vodaphone, or France Telecom. I believe they are shareholders in Globalstar. Valueman can check me on that.
I have had the opportunity to receive research from organizations that are in spoken, not written, contact with executives from these companies. Others on this board have listened to a 70 minute conference call with Directors from Elsacom and TESAM. I did also. I did not have the view I was listening to fanatics.
In listening to the Director General from TESAM, Jean Claude Legarde, on the CC I had the impression I was listening to a very sober, pragmatic, hard business man, aware of what all the issues were, and how they would be addressed to serve the advantages of both TESAM and their Globalstar customer. Thinking of him afterwards I was glad I did not work for him.
No one knows what Globalstar's success will be. It's all opinion, as one poster here wrote, as of this date "The future is not ours to see". I certainly don't pretend to know what it will be.
I think that poster Maurice Winn has made enormous contributions to understanding and alerting all to the pricing issue. I do not know what he does for a living, but his market knowhow on this matter is extraordinary and I have taken the liberty, as he invited me to, to forward his comments on to management at AirTouch and Globalstar: name totally deleted. I have the impression from conversations with research people who speak to the different managements in the partner organizations that they know very well whereof Mr. Winn speaks.
What I do find extraordinary in all this is the sharpness of comments against Globalstar as an enterprise encountered on this board. And elsewhere.
For example, your term, Rajala, "G* fanatic". Whom does use of that word "fanatic" benefit? Is Air Touch Cellular fanatic? Is France Telecom fanatic? Is there some general effort underway to see to it that Globalstar does not succeed, that its shareholders not be rewarded in this high risk venture?
One poster on the Yahoo board on Globalstar, I think with tongue in cheek, refers to many Yahoo comments on Globalstar as similar to KGB disinformation techniques-- the old secret police of the Soviet Union. I'm not so sure I would go that far, but as an example, he points out engineering comments on the board made on Globalstar RAKE by those who do not work for Globalstar engineering. If you have not worked on the system as an engineer, what do you know about it he asks? The answer, by implication, is nothing. So why post? What's your credibility is his point?
So when I see "buzz words", emotion words, like "fanatic", "traitor", and the like I have to review what exactly is occurring in the use of those words.
Another poster on that same Yahoo Globalstar board raises the point that either management is lying through its teeth about the markets its partners, as well as it, claim for Globalstar, or it is not. That is the all-important point to me as a large shareholder in Globalstar. Is the management lying through its teeth at this very late date? And what would the benefit to management be for lying?
Did Iridium have a market that it missed, or is there no market for Mobile Satcom Telephony? That is the question, especially after hearing Globalstar management at this late date still claim the market is there, even with what happened to Iridium known by everyone--almost no subscribers. And that Globalstar management claim is borne out apparently by cellular phone companies themselves.
Iridium Beta testing was never completed by the scheduled date of initiation. The system in fact was not ready to operate as a dependable communications enterprise as late as January 1999, according to papers filed against it by litigants. Handsets were continuously beset by bugs. Handsets were not available. As late as two weeks ago its new President told shareholders he was ordering Kyocera phones returned because they still did not work.
Is this the reason Iridium has failed? Or was it that there was simply no demand for wireless telephony of the sort proposed by the big 3-- Iridium, Globalstar, and ICO? Iridium claimed it has 1.3 million responses to its advertising, and over 100,000 solid leads. Are these lies?
I go back to the stridency of comments issue: this time those made about Iridium once it slipped. Stridency is too mild a word. Who benefits from the viciousness of the comments? I don't know Iridium management, only once spoke to one of its management at a luncheon. It's obvious that Iridium was not ready as late as April of this year, and I don't know if they are now. But what is the benefit of the cruel post-mortems, if they are post-mortems?
But the actual question, to me, is what the poster on the Yahoo Globalstar board raised the other day: is management lying through its teeth about the market it and its partners claim or not? The fundamental inside information is a look at the booking prospects those partners currently have on record. As late as last week, there was no change in the optimism on behalf of one of the Globalstar partners that wireless satcom roaming has a deep market that needs only to be serviced, priced, and targeted in the correct way. And the partner in question has shown itself to excel in that respect in the cellular market.
That optimism does not sound like the comments of a "fanatic". The question is Is it the comments of a liar?
And yes, pardon me, end of this lecture.
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