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To: Timothy R. Tierney who wrote (15627)	8/11/2000 9:46:40 PM
From: Pierre	Respond to of 29987

if anyone can afford G..the U S consumer can...and they are not buying...* To some extent it depends on just how important it is to have a phone, any phone. I have assumed Russia and China are important because unlike US, large areas are under served by land line or cellular. Since I've never been in a situation where there wasn't another option, I don't know what I'd pay for the G* phone and minutes under those circumstances. I guess it would depend somewhat on whether there was anyone out there I wanted to talk to who had a phone. :>) In reference to Vman's position on the IFN deal, I don't understand his skepticism. I have asked on this thread, and the Q thread, on several occasions whether HDR was a viable option with G. Consensus seems to be it isn't, but nothing definitive. What keeps me wondering is that there was a time not so long ago G was assumed to be limited to 1.4 or some such. Now it seems much more is possible. Until someone has a definitive answer on G* data capacity I am prepared to give the IFN people the benefit of the doubt. They must have some reason to believe G* is a viable data delivery vehicle as conceived under the IFN plan. IMHO the IFN deal is a classic case of what's wrong with G* marketing. It takes an outsider with lots of clout to recognize and secure a service from G* that G* should have itself recognized and pushed long ago. If I had that kind of clout, I'd be happily taking and receiving calls in my car without fear of dead zones and dropped calls. Pierre

To: Timothy R. Tierney who wrote (15627)	8/12/2000 10:29:32 AM
From: Drew Williams	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 29987

Tim, I think talk about "discretionary income" misses the point. Right now I have two wired telephone lines into my house, along with two cellular phone and two pagers. I have a dedicated wired phone line and a shared fax line in my office. My wife's office has two wired phone lines and an additional dedicated fax line. That adds up to eleven (11) phone numbers between us. Had I done the same math when we first got married in 1979, it would have totalled two (2): One line at home and one in her office. I was a manufacturer's representative who worked mostly from gas station pay phones. There were no fax machines or cellular phones or pagers available to us at anything like a reasonable price. Now there are, and we've bought into them big time. That's "discretionary." The old way worked. Our parents and grandparents (and some of our great grandparents) got along fine at that level. We think this way works better. As a society, we've gone from being able to communicate with others when we were at home or in the office and so were they to something that is approaching being able to communicate with anyone anywhere anytime. However, in China and Russia, outside of a few major cities the basic infrastructure does not exist for most of their population to have even that first phone line we had way-back-when. And who would they call? They need basic communication. Nothing discretionary about that in the twenty-first century. The question is how they can provide that least expensively. Wired is certainly more expensive than wireless because of infrastructure costs. My guess is that the Leap Wireless model (whether executed by Leap or someone else) will be useful in any reasonably sized metropolitan area. Out on the tundra, the Russians (or whatever ethnic group lives out there) have about as much cellular coverage as we would in an area with similar population density: zip. What options do they have? To paraphrase the great taxicab mechanic and philosopher, Latka Gravis (sp?), "Talk or death?" (If you don't get the joke, PM me for the not-too-obscure cultural reference.) So far, most everyone has chosen to talk. So they need to have phones. G* provides basic communications in remote areas right now for less money than it would cost to set up any other phone system without the quality issues of GEO systems. It's already in place. It works. The rest is political and marketing, which, contrary to what most people think, are the really difficult problems.