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

To: djane who wrote (8641)	12/10/1999 7:16:00 PM
From: David Alders	Respond to of 29987

Too bad G* didn't get commercial service launched sooner. From the Financial Times' ft.com: Y2K: Bug fears spark rush to satellite phones By Alan Cane in London Fears that the millennium bug will disrupt telephone services over the new year have resulted in a worldwide shortage of satellite phones. Big banks and other multinational organisations have snapped up supplies in a bid to prevent their executives from being cut off at the vital moment. The phones, about the size of a personal computer and capable of being packed into a briefcase, are popular with the armed forces, journalists and explorers. They send and receive signals from geostationary satellites thousands of kilometres miles above the earth's surface. At œ2,000 a set they are expensive, but can be relied on when other means of communication fail. Over the past six months, however, banks, airlines and utilities, among others, have been ordering the phones by the hundred. Andrew Marriott, national sales manager for Cell Hire, an international service provider with offices in the US and Europe, said he had never experienced such a situation "I have never run out of a satellite phone before. The manufacturers cannot keep up with demand." He said Cell Hire will would not be able to supply the most popular model, the Nera Mini-M, in Europe or the US until after Christmas. Mr Marriott said. Neras phones can handle voice calls, fax and data. According to British Telecommunications, which markets a satellite phone service called Mobique, the number of systems sold has almost doubled in the past month. The shortage of phones is proving of some benefit to Iridium, the US-based satellite phone service which went into Chapter 11 of the US bankruptcy code earlier this year. It is offering a satellite-based service on pocket-sized handsets Customers are buying its handsets at œ750 a time as insurance against the bug even though its service cannot transmit faxes or data