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


To: thomas_l who wrote (8931)12/28/1999 5:06:00 PM
From: Maurice Winn  Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 29987
 
Thomas, the satellites are just 'reflectors' which 'bounce' the signal from the handset down to the gateway which is the base station, which then sends the signal through the fibre 'drain'.

These 'bent pipe' satellites can't be upgraded, other than software which can be beamed up. But the gateways can easily be upgraded and that was a major design plank of the system which gave it yet another advantage compared with Iridium which was all up in space [though they belatedly added gateways which made it operate a bit more like the Globalstar system].

I expect, but am uncertain, that Qualcomm can upgrade the gateways to handle data on the first constellation a lot better, by combining channels and upgrading the handsets to give better battery life and handle data better. The second constellation should be impressive [though not compared with cdma2000 on the ground].

But Constellation1 is going to be a voice system [as far as my valuing it is concerned], though it can handle some data too and that can surely be improved by gateway board replacements along the lines of HDR upgrading the terrestrial cdmaOne systems by board replacement.

Maurice

PS: GSM is toast and GPRS is wishful thinking, EDGE is a joke and W-CDMA will be mired in high-cost patent-sharing squabbles, technological inadequacy and delays. HDR and cdma2000 are the happening WWeb technologies. Globalstar will integrate well with that ever-expanding terrestrial CDMA world.