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Microcap & Penny Stocks : Globalstar Telecommunications Limited GSAT -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: John Stichnoth who wrote (7626)	9/28/1999 2:40:00 PM
From: Serendipity	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 29987

The question is how much people will use the phone. Not the number of phones sold. The US is only a small percentage of Globalstar's market. I don't think the management has ever gone into the details of what each country's share is in their business plan. Having killer demand in one country is not the solution since capacity is evenly allocated. i.e. Huge demand in the US and none in Europe is not revenue neutral...only xxx customers can be served in the US. I agree that the vertical markets are big opportunities relatively speaking. But vertical markets cannot carry Globalstar by themselves.

To: John Stichnoth who wrote (7626)	10/3/1999 4:16:00 PM
From: John Biddle	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 29987

. . . the wireless players do not apparently have any plans to provide coverage, because they are still focusing on providing capacity in the areas they do have coverage. John, I agree completely. What's happening is that while competition is up dramatically, with some areas having wireless coverage by as many as 6 or 7 operators and many (most?) with 3 or more, the uncovered areas are remaining uncovered and will continue to be so. It is not seen as profitable to build out with expensive terrestrial infrastructure, vast areas of the US, because the number of people living there who might buy a phone won't pay the freight. Same with the roaming fees which would accrue from visitors. Satalite, however, is a different situation altogether. The infrastructure cost is much cheaper than cellular/PCS for low density markets. So much so that it's not only affordable but could be highly profitable. With Vodaphone/BAM/GTE covering nearly all of the high density parts of the US, their ability to offer G* service to the remaining (60% - 80% you pick) parts of the US they don't cover will be gravy. And for all those semi-covered portions of the US where service is spotty, won't the availability of G* become the issue that pushes the customer's carrier decision toward Vodaphone/BAM/GTE? Seems to me, though, that the value of the G* availability hinges on two things, the cost and the ability to soft hand-off between services while on a call. The first can easily be controlled, and if V* sees this like I do they could sell minutes at lower margin and make it up in increases in marketshare. The soft hand-off issue though is different. I had thought that this was part of the plan, but saw a post today (don't remember which one) that indicated that this is not currently possible and won't happen until generation 2 satalites are up. So a stationary call from anywhere will work, but those pesky on-and-off calls while driving to the office won't improve. Too bad. Anyone out there who can confirm this?