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

To: Jon Koplik who wrote (26206)	12/14/2006 12:49:22 AM
From: Maurice Winn	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 29987

Thanks Jon. Luck shouldn't have much to do with it, though there is a lot of risk with the 8 satellites to be launched in April. If they do a Zenit, I won't expect a lot of residual value in my shares because the holes in the constellation will grow to untenable proportions before the second constellation is ready some time in 2009. But launch failures are infrequent these days. The main risk is foolish business decisions and there is some evidence of continuing problems in that regard. But they have made some tacit admission that prices per minute were absurdly high first time around. If one is prepared to spend $3300 a year, one can get 25,200 minutes to use in that time [the old dopey "bucket" plan]. Which is 13c a minute if all the minutes are used and no more. So it would probably be more like 25c a minute in practise. That's just in the USA. globalstarusa.com One would think service stations would sell such bucket plans for gasoline if it's such a good idea. One could buy a gasoline plan for $10,000 a year, or $1,000 a month, and get a certain number of gallons, whether one uses them or not. I have a few other concerns about the business and management, but I'm back in the mode "Oh well, nobody is perfect, and most are quite clueless at times, but the opportunity is so good that even when they mess up substantially, there should be enough in it to do pretty well when they finally start to get it right, pressed by competition, and enabled by ongoing technological developments." I suppose you remember the conventional wisdom back in 1999 [by Globalstar and others including plenty in SI] who thought that Iridium wasn't a competitor and that the market was vast and there was heaps for everyone [at extorquerationate $3 a minute prices with $2000 a handset]. Now, everyone seems to understand that Iridium is in fact a major competitor. So that competition limits business stupidity in some respects. Globalstar has the technological pathway to the future and the financial resources to proceed on current projections. Iridium has to replace their constellation too and it will be interesting to see whether they can build a business case to keep it all going. I wouldn't put any money into it. Computers in the sky seems a bad idea - they can't be upgraded. CDMA is much better than the Iridium system. I am hoping that Iridium gives up ideas of another constellation and Globalstar gets 80% of the Iridium customers. The others could switch to geostationary services. The GSP-1700 do seem a big improvement on the old 20th century clunkers. I have broken a share investment rule [one of my basic principles] = do not buy when the share market is at a high. The Dow is at an all-time high. Very scary. Unfortunately, that's the same situation as in May Y2K when I bought a load of GSTRF after it had fallen from $50 all the way to $13. Very scary!! And the housing crash and financial chaos hasn't even got going yet. Which will NOT boost share prices [including GSAT]. I have my fingers crossed and I do need luck in that regard. I am hoping that Helicopter Ben will deal with such matters with vast liquidity injections and interest rate cuts back down to 1%. Mqurice