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To: Geoff Goodfellow who wrote (7960)	10/22/1999 11:26:00 AM
From: mmeggs	Respond to of 29986

One thing I haven't seen mentioned very much is the possibility of national governments subsidizing air time and hardware costs for remote villages and citizens. Mexico has already indicated they will be doing this, and I would imagine other countries would as well. I realize this is most applicable to fixed terminals, but it would seem to increase MOU substantially if people were calling on the government's nickel to some extent. These arguments about costs being prohibitive to users deny the flexibility of the system, the incentives SP's may put out to induce usage, and factors such as government subsidization. My .02. mmeggs

To: Geoff Goodfellow who wrote (7960)	10/22/1999 2:30:00 PM
From: John Stichnoth	Respond to of 29986

Dear Geoff: While I'm confident that we won't see the SPs' and G's marketing studies, I am also confident that they have been done. I posted a couple of items yesterday that give some dimension to the potential market. Here are some more: Rural Population: 61.6 million in the US, of 248 million total (24.8%). Income Distribution: 70.2MM total households, of which 5% earned more than $128,000 p.a. = 3.5MM over 128K. (I think that the target market is for households somewhat above $128K, probably twice that). I'd guess maybe 1 million households have the money to be interested. Correcting for some (lack of) wealth effect in rural areas, we get 200,000 households in the U.S.* that might be interested from a money and utility standpoint. Using very general ballparks, we get a somewhat smaller number in Europe, because of better cellular coverage, an equal number in Asia (inferior cellular coverage, but more households). Add Latin America and Australia. All total, I have no problem projecting a market of 600,000 households worldwide, for personal use. Of course, households are not the target market in the first couple of years, because of handset scarcity. Best, JS