To: Maurice Winn who wrote (6509 ) 12/15/1997 2:45:00 PM From: JMD Read Replies (1) | Respond to
Maurice, won't argue that, at least in a free market economy, 'something always comes along' to eat in to a monopoly market position. However, there are some industries where the barriers to entry are higher than others and few that I can think of are tougher to jump into than the satellite biz. In addition to the expense, technical complexity, political maneuvering, and on and on, there is one tiny other little problem: the real estate is limited and tightly regulated. This of course refers to orbital slots--even if you've got Bill Gates and Bill McCaw type dough, there is no price on the slots as Teledesic found out recently when they were ordered to share some of their bandwidth with others, mainly LOR. Not saying there won't be competition but can't imagine there being more than 1/2 dozen companies in the world that will wind up with this market and LOR will be one of them, IMO.
