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

To: Bill Fischofer who wrote (10823)	3/14/2000 11:58:00 AM
From: MileHigh	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 29987

Thanks for your thoughts, I had not thought of that slant. And yes, I too was thinking of some type of government subsidized sat phone calling program, and it does not have to be a booth, it could be a central area where calls are made, could be your cellular idea, etc... But there is a need IMO. MileHigh

To: Bill Fischofer who wrote (10823)	3/14/2000 7:45:00 PM
From: ccryder	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 29987

<<you put up a cell tower or two which itself has a satellite link and now every villager can simply use a conventional cellphone to call anywhere>> Most of the villages in the third world don't have running water, don't have electricity or if they do it is from a portable which runs a couple of hours in the evening, and don't have phones. It would take some larger solar arrays than the usual Globalstar phone booth, some batteries, and the maintenance would be a problem, but the idea would work. The people using cell phones could not charge them except from the occasional car battery, though. The phone booth, or the subsidized entrepreneur with a handset and square foot of solar array, will be 'it' for a while in a lot of places. You will probably find the arrangement you suggest as the next step after electrification. Remember that much of the USA (area, not population) required a huge government subsidy to build out electric service in the US in the 30s and 40s in the form of REA. (Anyone remember what that stands for?) In the USA, the government investment helped to bring economic growth out of the depression era.

To: Bill Fischofer who wrote (10823)	3/14/2000 9:18:00 PM
From: Jon Koplik	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 29987

Bill - Eureka ! etc. -- I think you may be on to something HUGE. At the Qualcomm annual meeting in February 1998 (during the Q&A session of the meeting), I actually asked Dr. Jacobs a question, and it related to wireless local loop (WLL). Someone I had talked to (regarding Qualcomm) once told me that some people at QCOM (including Dr. Jacobs) felt that WLL might ultimately turn out to be an extremely large part of the whole worldwide wireless business. My question was something like : Do you believe WLL will be big; and do you worry about less developed countries (LDCs) needing to spend their limited funds on things like infrastructure for water or electricity (to the exclusion of installing WLL systems) ? Dr. J's answer (if I remember correctly) was : Yes, we think WLL will be big; and -- even though LDCs obviously need to spend money on a lot of things other than telecommunications stuff, it is a fair assumption that an LDC could never become a "developed" country unless a good telecommunications infrastructure were present. (And, a WLL system is not terribly expensive to install). In the last few years (including my own attendance at the next two Qualcomm annual meetings), I have heard almost NOTHING regarding WLL. I kept wondering : where did all of those high expectations go ? Maybe the reason Dr. J continuously "waxes" positive regarding Globalstar is because he has "up his sleeve" exactly what you are thinking ... (Any of you engineers out there who can explain (in a sentence or two) why this is the stupidest thing you have ever heard ... please feel free to straighten us out). Jon.