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

To: TMann who wrote (20707)	1/1/2001 2:33:16 PM
From: Pierre	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 29987

... see integration with Verizon, Vodaphone, etc. etc. That means joint advertising, stuffing bills with G* brochures, and adding G* to the service options on the service providers normal cellular plans. TMann, couldn't agree more. My only additional suggestion would be to send the actual customers to a specialty store and keep them out of the Verizon shops - see my previous post. pcstel, I've been ruminating (at my age that's become a wholly acceptable way to bring in the new year) on your gateway theory and, with all due respect, I think you're wrong. Here's why - but first I must give you a personal experience from which I extrapolate my conclusion. Yesterday I took my motorcycle on a long lazy run along the mexican border - a normally well traveled route that is also the primary US entry point into Tecate Mexico. I had dinner plans with friends and was running late, so pulled out my G* phone (after parking the bike, of course) and waited for a connection. The phone cycled through digital - no service, then analog - still no service, so first making sure there were no innocents standing about to be terrorized, I unfurled the G* antennae and within 30 seconds had a connection. I dialed my friends number and got a recording telling me I had mis-dialed. I tried again, same message. I then dialed 611 for G* customer care. A pleasant voice speaking perfect spanish answered. Upon hearing this, I said to myself "toto, the phone doesn't think were in Kansas anymore." Fortunately the customer care rep also spoke very good english (and had seen the Wizard of Oz) and he quickly explained to me how to discipline the phone into believing it was still state side. Had I dialed my friend using the international dialing sequence (I tried it just to be sure) the call would have been completed the first time. OK, so what's your point, you ask. Well, I've had a lot of experience with the G* phone now. It is apparent to me that knitting together these gateways and getting them to create a seamless network - though maybe not rocket science, is pretty sophisticated stuff. And it's still being worked on. So my point is the G* crown jewels are the sats and the software that knits those sats and gateways into a network, not the gateways themselves. As you have pointed out, the gateways are relatively inexpensive, and there are a lot of unused ones sitting around right now gathering dust. Any SP should have no problem plugging one in and having it perform flawlessly as part of the system. As to roaming agreements, and agreements with the various governments - those are already in place. They may need to be re-signed with new SPs replacing the old ones, but the heavy lifting - creating the software and hammering out workable agreements - has already been done. IMHO, owning the gateway gives nada in terms of leverage. Owning the system, and knowing how to forge the agreements, or simply transfer the agreements, is the key to G's value. And G owns all of that. My guess is, were the decision made, G* could work around Verizon in less than 6 months - and in the meantime the Verizon owned gateways would continue to function - under court order if necessary - until the breaching party (Verizon) was removed from the equation. So I guess I disagree with you on two points. One, perceived leverage of the existing gateway operators, and two the attractiveness of data to a major player. I can't argue cash burn rate - its obvious G* needs the cash. Still, it's not the gateway owners who have G* over a barrel in BK - they're just another bidder running the risk of losing access to what will inevitably be a wildly profitable venture. My guess is a new partner interested in data will step up soon. My parting thought is that all the dooms day scenarios spun here fail to take into account just how profitable this system will be when at capacity. These short term shortfalls are chump change in the grand scheme of things. All, of course, JMHO and WAGs galore. Pierre