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Technology Stocks : Loral Space & Communications -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: brian h who wrote (2125)	3/7/1998 9:33:00 AM
From: Valueman	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 10852

Conference notes: Misc.-- PanAmSat is impressive--I am sorry I sold out in the 48 to 50 range. They have a sweet deal with Hughes carrying all their programming. --The gentleman from Iridium was downright hostile towards anything G, while Mr. Moren from G was calm and cool. Iridium was extremely defensive about everything, but I think they are right on schedule.They discussed the power issue quite a bit. Iridium must be at max power all the time while G* has power adjustable on a per-user basis. When shadowed by their own head, a tree, a building, G* automatically turns up the power, but lowers it when signal is clear(power is the scarce commodity here). Iridium must be at max power all the time because it has to assume blockage at any time. It will not adjust. The other fact was that Iridium has a capacity of 1.5 billion minutes per year, while G* has 1 billion per month. --Breakevens---Excess cash flow for G* at 400,000 subs at 160 minutes per month. At 800,000 subs, enough cash flow is generated to build system #2. Iridium expects financial breakeven at 600,000 subs(mid 99). --Capacity issues--G8 model is based on 98% availability(current cellular is 90-95%). Iridium counters that they are being extremely conservative with expectations on capacity because they want to offer a premium service--always available, no "system busy" --Teledesic rep, when asked about cost, replied that the luxury of being a private company is that he doesn't have to reply --Mr. Schwartz gave a "vision of the future" speech--no meat. In questions, as Readware stated, he denied anything doing with Comsat. Also said SS/L is the "technical engine" of Loral and they will never get rid of it. They will never be content providers. He stated that the lack of radio spectrum is "of enormous comfort" to him. Also, when talking of C, said that they very much want to acquire the tools to format digital content. In other words, how to take all this info and organize and make it useful, easy to get at, etc. C--here is what C1 through C4 are: C1---One way sat downlink with telephone wire uplink--beta in April C2--two way over sat, demo in 1998 over Telstar, produce revenue in 99, cost about $1000 C3--attached Ka-band payload on Telstar 8 or 9, available Jan 2001 C4--program start 99, first launch 2002/3 Telstar 5 has total capacity now of 32*27Mbps=864 Mbps The Ka-band sats of 2003 will have 64 spot beams, each with 85Mbps capacity=5,440 Mbps There is more to come later.