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Technology Stocks : IRID - Iridium World Communications IPO Announced! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Bill Holtzman who wrote (1019)	8/27/1998 12:25:00 AM
From: Snake	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 2693

Teledesic is data, Iridium and Globalstar is telephony, plus Teledesic is many years away, if ever.

To: Bill Holtzman who wrote (1019)	9/6/1998 4:15:00 PM
From: Lu_Xun	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 2693

Mr. Holtzmann: Yes, Teledesic is looming over both stocks, but from my reading of the situation it looks as though Teledesic is far from having a system that is actually up and running. I don't think they are even scheduled to begin launching satellites til after the millenium. By then both IRIDF and GSTRF will have been up and running for several years. That kind of headstart is practically a lifetime in this business. In fact, I'm not even persuaded on my reading of the situation that Teledesic even has a launch schedule. I'll bet if you asked them right now they couldn't even tell you when, where, or how they plan to do the launches or, most importantly, who is going to do all the launches for them. Don't get me wrong. I think, with you, that Teledesic represents some very sexy technology -- maybe the sexiest technology in this whole field -- but I suspect the whole project is MUCH farther from actual implementation than any of its backers presently want to let on. Meanwhile, IRIDF and GSTRF will dominate the playing field. Incidentally, my own personal opinion is that IRIDF is much more threatened by Teledesic than GSTRF is because the latter seems much more geared to providing basic telephony to underdeveloped nations. So GSTRF may be going after a market which is sufficiently primitive from a technological perspective that they may not have much need for Teledesic's vaunted "Internet in the Sky" any may be quite satisfied with more limited but cheaper service from GSTRF. Lu_Xun