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To: Selectric II who wrote (8236)	8/6/2000 10:20:37 AM
From: Rocket Scientist	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 10852

Selectric, I agree with you that "global roamers" were not supposed to be a big target market...especially in the long term. Schwartz et. al. have said that fairly consistently (and especially emphasized it when it became apparent that inter gateway roaming wasn't initially available) HOWEVER, (a) the most likely early adopters are/were Inmarsat-type users and Iridium crossovers, who often would be global roamers; and, (b) the original point was not the impact of lack of GR on the ultimate purchaser, but on the distributor network. Or, more generally, the fact that G* started up with a less than fully baked product has surely impeded the marketing effort. The slow and unsteady rollout around the world, both geographically and with respect to products and services, must be very confusing to distributors/retailers, most of whom have other products to sell which require a lot less effort to understand. To stay with the coverage issue for the moment: last September, G* first published a list of about 40 countries for "initial service." Some months later, it became a list of 60 countries with "expected service" by March; then it was April; then a list of 70 countries by June; then it became 59; now, in August there is a list of 40 countries (not the same 40 as last September, by any means!) with "expected" coverage by June. What's a retailer to do? I've visited two local points of sale for G; both showed me nice glossy brochures of G service, including coverage maps; the only problem was the coverage maps were two months and three iterations out of date. There's a simliar story with services. How many times was Jim Parkinson assured that the 1-800 access capability would be on line "next month?" Is SMS service still limited to 10 characters? Where is fax/data capability? the new car kits? To the extent we're seeing "bad marketing performance" G* itself has to take a lot of blame. Anyway, I sure hope G* mgmt and the SPs are problem solving and not finger pointing, or we're really in trouble.