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

To: Jeff Vayda who wrote (8565)	12/6/1999 1:56:00 PM
From: Rocket Scientist	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 29987

Jeff, I agree w/ you, and I'm still optimistic (though I started writing OOM covered calls a few weeks ago to pass the time). I just wish we knew how many phones are really in the field in the hands of potential buyers as opposed to employees of SPs and distributors. Would be nice (and quite plausible, imo) if each GW, at the time it announces commercial operations, can say it's already converted 5-10K of friendly users into paying customers.

To: Jeff Vayda who wrote (8565)	12/6/1999 2:14:00 PM
From: ccryder	Respond to of 29987

I, too, thought there would be no serious marketing until after all the sats were in orbit because launches do sometimes blow up and it very well could have required the next scheduled launch to have a full constellation meaning a delayed availability of Feb or March. Even with the last successful launch, the time to get to station would be 1 month to 3 months depending on which combination of planes they need to go to. At least the transit phase is predictable and a date for a full constellation is a known (by LOR). If I was a service provider, I would just now be ordering handsets if I had to pay for them. However to say no gateway is in operation is wrong. Friendly "beta testers" are using them. McCaw will be a competitor, but he still has a relatively expensive system to maintain. I suspect Motorola will cut the charges for command and control of the constellation as part of the sales deal. But satellite replacement will be the big expense. A problem with IRID is the constellation functionality does not degrade very gracefully as satellites die. And in-orbit spares are not really cost effective because of the very slow plane changes the polar obit affords. I am encouraged by the potential use of the fixed phones for higher latitudes. A fixed terminal could even also be configured as a local cell phone node for remote sites not serviced by fibre or microwave relay.