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

To: Jeff Vayda who wrote (4720)	10/19/1998 1:41:00 PM
From: Valueman	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 10852

To all: There has been speculation at times about various companies acquiring Loral--they include GE, Boeing, LMT, Alcatel, and most recently, AT&T. An analyst report out today says that they learned last week that AT&T did recently make an offer to purchase Loral--obviously a rejected offer. Let's look at whether this makes sense. Armstrong, CEO of T, came from Hughes, and definitely knows the value of the sat industry. It is only logical to conclude that he may desire to remain in the sat business in one way or another. How would T benefit? With the purchase of TCI, and the programming assets owned by TCI, T would be able to utilize the Telstar family of sats to deliver programming to the cable head ends. @Home, controlled by TCI, has always been rumored to want to partner with C* to cover internet access where cable doesn't reach, as well as deliver high-traffic web content out to local caches where access times would be shorter. G* would benefit from T's worlwide fiber network, and the possibility of routing G* calls along these cheap routes once they hit the gateway. This is not feasible in many areas, but very much so in others. It also works right into T's plan to provide phone service everywhere. There is also talk of T acquiring the 110 slot that Rupert Murdoch and MCI co-own. The FCC issues are looming large there, but it would allow Primestar(A TCI controlled entity) to provide high power service to its existing 2 million subs, and be able to offer interactive servcies as well. Whether the FCC would go for that I don't know. There are also many areas that use sats to deliver long distance still. AT&T uses Intelsat birds for this. Fiber backup? Satellites are excellent. Also remember that Loral won a $300 million contract to build the KaStar birds. KaStar is half owned by United Video Satellite, which is controlled by TCI. From their web site--"United Video Satellite Group Inc. (a subsidiary of TCI) has recently made an investment in KaSTAR and Space Systems/Loral is under contract with KaSTAR to construct two advanced Ka-band satellites. The contract is valued at over $300 million. KaSTAR's prime ka-band locations of 109.2° W.L. and 73° W.L. provide full U.S. coverage and also offer a unique opportunity for partnering with DBS and other satellite operators to provide combined services of high speed internet access and other digital transmissions." Note the slot--109.2 degrees--cozies right up to 110. All in all, an idea worthy of speculation. there are many more areas where the two would mutually benefit. Who knows what will happen, but a compelling argument can certainly be made. In the fullness of time, we will know more!