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

To: akmike who wrote (11416)	3/31/2000 4:52:00 AM
From: LanceForest	Respond to of 29987

The 'tri-mode' of the QCOM phone is G*/CDMA/Analog. No GSM yet from the Q.

To: akmike who wrote (11416)	3/31/2000 2:06:00 PM
From: Maurice Winn	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 29987

akmike, as Lance said, the QUALCOMM phone can't receive or send GSM signals. Vodafone [that is the real spelling, I'm not kidding] in Australia should sell the QUALCOMM phone for use with the satellite and a cute little GSM phone for use in terrestrial situations. Bundle them together in some bubble-wrap and sell them as a package with the same number in each. When a person is in town, they could carry their nice, convenient GSM phone. When in the Outback, they could carry their big QUALCOMM Globalstar phone. Sure, it isn't ideal, but it would be a pretty good idea. That's what Kyocera did with the Iridium phone except they made the town phone a little clip-on component of the main Iridium phone. That would be better, but life isn't perfect. Suppose somebody says, "Look, I really don't visit town very often, so can't you give me a price cut for not having the GSM unit too?" Sure we can! Just sell them the QUALCOMM phone on its own. Make a GLOBALSTAR GSM minute plan, with specially cheap GSM minutes, so that even if they were wrong, or lied and DO go to town, they'll have no incentive to use the terrestrial component of the QUALCOMM phone. They'll be wishing they had a GSM phone. But if they DO go to an area where is no GSM, then they could ALSO use the QUALCOMM phone in terrestrial mode and they would be really, really pleased with this wide range of options. But what does Vodafone do? They use dog-in-manger marketing. Until CDMA is across all Australia, when Vodafone overlays their GSM network, it would be a very good solution. Your basis for buying Globalstar sounds reasonable [Brazil and Outback locations], but my opinion is that in 4 years, most Globalstar customers will be the wealthy western ones who can afford to always have phone access even for the relatively few times they are out of contact. They will also want WWeb access, which Globalststar will provide. The business plan numbers for Australia, USA etc are quite low. Maurice