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Technology Stocks : Qualcomm Moderated Thread - please read rules before posting -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Maurice Winn who wrote (11206)	6/1/2001 10:02:52 AM
From: Art Bechhoefer	Respond to of 197275

Maurice, I should have been more specific on my AirTouch comments. AirTouch was created when PacTel spun off its wireless unit. The people who ran that unit are the ones I considered to be entrepreneurial. From the moment that CDMA became commercially viable, those people were upgrading their analog service area. These are not the people who ran Globalstar into the ground. The people who ran Globalstar were, first of all, the managers hired by Bernie Schwartz, who had a rather old fashioned view of how to market a telecom service. The second group of people with a policy input were supplied by Vodafone, which had responsibility for operating the base stations and billing users. These people were utterly devoid of any entrepreneurial spirit and were more akin to a bunch of accountants and billing managers hidden away in the bowels of companies like AT&T. It's really too bad that Schwartz didn't try to draw from the original AirTouch talent that got CDMA running so well in the original west coast service area covered by PacTel. In addition, I've always believed, and still believe that no one has really tried to market Globalstar on its main merits--reliable, secure voice and data communications from almost anywhere to almost anywhere in the world. That is a different market from ordinary wireless, and one which the right clientele will be willint to pay a lot more for. The bean counters at Globalstar looked for customers on remote oil rigs when they should have been looking at servicing public safety and emergency medical users, for example. There will always be a few thousand oil rig workers or company executives in remote locations who could use Globalstar services. But there are many thousands, if not millions in the area of public safety who would actually pay less for Globalstar than they pay now for their elaborate, inefficient, and insecure two-way radio communications. Art