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

To: Larry L who wrote (1080)	10/27/1998 4:23:00 PM
From: Larry L	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 2693

To all: News from Merrill Lynch. We expect good news on the conference call tomorrow. We believe that the company will confirm inception of commercial service on November 1, 1998 as planned. The company has been making ongoing software improvements to the system. We used the phone week before last. The quality varied across calls, but several were better than my cellular service. The company has made further improvements since then. They indicate the system currently provides commercial quality service. They plan to continue making improvements. As we have indicated before, we expect the system to have stellar performance by Q1 1999. The company plans to ship 7,000 phones this week. Many of these will be used as sales demonstration units. Shipments are expected to accelerate through the remainder of the year, but will remain a gating factor on demand. I have ordered a phone through Iridium North America and Motorola Cellular. They indicate I should receive my phone in late November or early December. We have indicated we would likely become more positive on Iridium when we have two things: 1) The system works. 2) We have a confirmation how quickly demand will develop. We appear very close to having confirmation the system works. Confirmation of demand could come as early as the call tomorrow, if the company outlines how many people have purchased phones. Alternatively, we may have to wait until Q1 when the company's sales effort is fully underway. Overall, we believe Wednesday's call should offer good news that exceeds the market's expectations. A subsequent release indicates that Iridium has received a license from India. Good news everywhere