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

To: Maurice Winn who wrote (8625)	12/9/1999 7:50:00 PM
From: Maurice Winn	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 29987

$3075 gets the handset and car kit, with all the accessories including a spare battery. Now to buy a service plan. That will be $70 per month for both voice mail and SMS and $1.69 per minute for calls just around USA. So for 100 minutes per month, or 3 minutes per day, the annual cost will be $2628 for the minimum plan calling just in the USA. So to get the first year in, in a car, somebody will need to fork out $5703. I suppose sales tax goes on top of that. So that will make it, at 10%, nearly $6300. They say they only charge sales tax for Florida delivery. So maybe nobody else pays sales tax. Calling outside USA costs heaps! Anyway, this is NOT a mass market. This is very much a niche product. There will NOT be 1 million handsets sold this year, or next year, or the year after that [2001]. Not at those prices. Looks as though Oliver was right - minute sales will depend on phone boxes in lower income places where they run hot all day long so can justify the extorquerationate capital cost [and where the minute charges might not be absurdly high as these ones are]. Prepare for a long, slow, lukewarm, soft, unhurried rollout with few customer complaints. Then again, for emergency backup only, people could pay just $1500 [assuming no sales tax], forget any accessories, buy the cheapest plan and not use the phone, forget the voicemail but maybe keep the SMS which is really convenient though 10 characters is absurd and useless and shows bloody-mindedness. 10 characters doesn't even give a phone number. "Phone home!" is 10 characters. Nah, don't even buy that. So for $1550, one gets a handset and signed up. Then pay $360 per year and with maybe one emergency call per month at $1.69 per minute will cost $400 per year running cost. That will allow terrestrial service, but with a dirty great clunky handset, so might as well have a ThinPhone as well and a normal terrestrial service with a bit of WWeb and some convenience around town. I suppose Globalstar will sell to a lot of people as it doesn't take many emergencies to justify $400 per year with $1550 capital [which will last maybe two years before an upgrade]. Well, that's the way I see it. Not many minutes going through there! Which is not good for Globalstar Telecommunications Limited shareholders. Then again, there might be vertical farmers and tree climbers who need to stay in touch regularly and they might buy heaps. We'll soon know. Maurice