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To: Thomas who wrote (10005)2/9/2000 11:55:00 AM
From: Jim Parkinson  Read Replies (3) | Respond to of 29987
 
In the US, who would you pick as an sp over Vod/Airtouch? I can't think of anyone. In fact, I suspect they know more about how to successfully roll out this service than anyone including G*. Having the strongest sp's in the partnership is one of key strengths to the business plan. Iridium tried to do it themselves and they obviously had no clue what they were doing. As BS said in the conf call, G* is not trying to be a telephone company like Iridium tried to do. They are trying to be a cellular extension and accordingly provide an add on service to the existing cellular market. I think that is the right approach.

We currently have a tug of war with G* wanting an aggressive hard launch and the sp's saying, "its coming but only when we have all our people properly trained on the system and you (G*) have all the annoying bugs worked out of your network." I suspect those bugs have to do with billing tracking, 800#'s, what happens when the network is loaded, training gw personnel and testing, etc. As Airtouch told me, this is all new technology and there will be a few glitches but that everything is on track for a hard roll out by end of 1st qtr. They also have stated that once voice is running smooth they will go after data. I believe they are very committed to this and its long-term success.

Short-term expectations are too high and long-term expectations are too low. I also feel the street is Iridiumizing everything they do i.e. every little setback or delay is being viewed as exactly what happened to Iridium. I think G* is far different from Iridium and that there is no comparison. For starters, the systems works well and their's didn't. G* has the world's major sp's gearing up to offer the service in their respective markets. Iridium had a handfull at best who had no incentive to perform

We have a timing issue going on here with BS beating the drum. I guess that is what I would want him to do. Let him make some forward looking optimistic statements and we can decide what is real. For example, I don't believe Airtouch will soon have G* handsets in the kiosks in the malls. They don't view that as their target market despite BS saying otherwise in the conf call. (He said they would be in the retail outlets which I interpreted to be mall kiosks. They may very well be available at the regional offices.) Airtouch is going after the verticle markets who they view will be high users. I agree. MOU's are what really matter, not handsets.

As you can see, I am still the optimist. If we are still talking about the coming hard roll out six months from now, my tune will change but I seriously doubt that will be the case.

Best regards!



To: Thomas who wrote (10005)2/10/2000 6:49:00 PM
From: Jon Koplik  Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 29987
 
Thomas -- "minute ho's" ? Velvet Jones school of technology ? Jon. eom.