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To: Peter J Hudson who wrote (2165)	9/15/1999 9:05:00 AM
From: Mika Kukkanen	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 34857

Pete, When people are on the move for business they usually go to the business areas, i.e., major towns, where most of GSM coverage is there in place. Maybe unlike you, I roam a heck of a lot. Even friends who do little international business want (note: want) roaming for holidays. If they were never offered it, then maybe they wouldn't e bothered. However, GSM was formulated for exactly that. You are right that most customers roaming isn't important, but along with the argument above most customers are going on pre-paid (e.g., kids, the wife for safety etc.). A point about this is that these customers spend less than a quarter of bizz customers. Now, some pre-paid offers are now being extended to be able to roam internationally. Now I can understand most people based in the US are more concerned for national roaming than international. Having said that, I know many US bizz folk who have a seperate GSM phone for when they are over here (and of course, vice versa). Now to the point about if people so concerned for international coverage would use Globalstar. I would say this must be more a US centric view. If these roaming freaks want international coverage they are more likely to be the business person, yes? If so then why did Iridium and ICO fail. I do believe Globalstar offers a better solution, but it has nothing ot do with coverage or roaming. Cost becomes less important than functionality for these high fliers. In most places they are likely to visit will have terrestrial coverage (and guess which standard is most likely?!). Your views gratefully appreciated as I am writing something soon concerning the above issues. All the best, Mika PS Almost forgot. I agree with your first statement that roaming means nothing if coverage is non-existant. Exactly the case of cdma surely? Very few countries and even than they are not as compatible as they may seem.

To: Peter J Hudson who wrote (2165)	9/15/1999 10:01:00 AM
From: Eric L	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 34857

Peter, << ... global roaming? ... How is the GSM roaming in USA, Canada, Korea and Japan and what is the outlook for the future? >> << The countries I mentioned either have no GSM or no hope of ever having adequate GSM coverage >> Outlook improving significantly. * USA & Canada - The GSM operators in their struggle for North American survival have banded together with roaming agreements and extended them internationally. VoiceStream and Omnipoint very successfully filled in major gaps in national coverage in the C block reauction this spring and have commenced build out Chicago, Dallas, St. Louis, and smaller markets. New Orleans will be the only major city in the US without GSM coverage 18 months from now. Microcell's Fido network is reasonably well built out in major cities of Canada. * Japan - NTT DoCoMo is of course building out it's 3rd generation UMTS (evolved GSM) network. USIM functionality and backwards compatibility with GSM should be incorporated into terminals for this network allowing subscribers to authenticate to GSM networks worldwide. See: nokia.com * Korea - SIM specifications were established for Korea for a dual mode CDMA/GSM terminal in 1995. To date no manufacturer has produced a terminal incorporating this specification or functionality, so no GSM roaming here. * Latin America - GSM weak, TDMA strong. Enter the trimode terminal and the Universal Wireless Communications Consortium and North American GSM Alliance TDMA-GSM Interoperability Agreement starts to take on some significance (also strengthens roaming capabilities in Canada and even allowing a call in New Orleans). Seems to me the outlook for global roaming looks petty bright from the GSM-TDMA perspective. Globalstar/GSM terminals with SIM being manufactured in Europe (ERICY's subsidiary I think) represent another way to achieve global roaming. - Eric -