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

To: Dragonfly who wrote (486)	3/14/1998 3:49:00 AM
From: Maurice Winn	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 29987

Dragonfly, it never occurred to me that Globalstar subscribers will pay for incoming calls. Surely not. Anybody know? In New Zealand, cellphone subscribers pay for their calls and people who call them pay for their calls. The initiator pays. Seems easy enough and what we all do here. Other than 0800 numbers and special services where the recipient chooses to pay. End of the line for the first Iridium constellation? Well, Motorola has already caved in on the air interface and [though Readware says no] might be going cdmaOne. But let's get real here, to coin a phrase, Iridium is much more expensive to make a call because that is the way it is built. Nothing that anyone can do about it and they are stuck with it. So Iridium calls are inherently more expensive. Now people keep saying these are separate markets, people want the expensive phone and all that rot. These are not separate markets and "positioning" in this case is a lot of hokum. These are just cell phones, not BMWs or Mercedes or Cadillacs with image and all that jazz. And advertizing that you have the premium product won't make it so, even if you spend $200 million. People talk about business people as though they are some species of moron who go around seeing how much they can spend on a cellphone so that they have the coolest gear. Well, some are. Sure enough. But there is an evolutionary process in business which whittles away the wastrels. Globalstar phones can do the same as Iridium phones. The competitive advantage of Iridium is that it is there first, so it gets some early customers. But then it is a feature and benefit competition. Nobody wants to make calls at the north pole, so let's leave that out of it. Globalstar's cdmaOne should have better voice quality, more security, I don't know about the handset size, convenience etc, but I guess they are similar, and Globalstar can be cheaper. There is no reason for Globalstar to sell much cheaper than Iridium. Unless they think it better to sell them very cheap to get volume up quickly and get the system full - which is what I think they should do. What advantage does Iridium have? A slight advantage on propagation delay due to lower satellites, but since they are space switching I think they use that advantage up. They are there first, but that is a temporary advantage. Quite seriously, I can't think of any other reason why a subscriber should buy an Iridium handset instead of a Globalstar one. Though I haven't seen the Iridium handset yet. Maybe it is smaller than the Globalstar one. That will be a problem compared with tiny terrestrial handsets. If Globalstar subscribers have to pay for incoming calls, that will be a big advantage. But I don't know that is true. I reckon that these comments are something to suggest that constellation number 1 for Iridium is the end of the line. They have crusty, big, out of date handsets and Globalstar will sweep the field. There is not rooom for two. Despite that criminal state monopolist Janet Reno attacking anyone who does something really good. Nature's law is that the superior stag with the best antlers wins. Okay, so too much wine isn't good before starting a rant. But that's what I thought when I wrote it. I think. Not sherry. Wine. Shee, shophisticated. Maurice Maurice