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

To: Dragonfly who wrote (1195)	12/30/1998 10:54:00 AM
From: Joe Brown	Respond to of 2693

That post is a bit old, and subsequent conversations with IRIDIUM officials have dispelled my concerns about systemic problems. The clearest proof of that I can offer is that I am a happy IRIDIUM subscriber now, with my own phone (which works wonderfully). The tone of my post reflected the frustration I felt then at the delays in handset delivery; obviously that is no longer an issue for me. The satellites' problems were generally distinct from one another, except for a few that had momentum wheel anomalies; software fixes took care of that difficulty. The other problems were the sort of random glitches that all satellite companies are subject to: thruster problems, communications problems, etc. The score is indeed favoring IRIDIUM at this point, and in my opinion will continue to do so. Even if Globalstar completes the 1999 launch schedule they have promised, users of their system and a gateway must still be in view of the satellite footprint in order for a call to be made. There's a lot of earth that won't be available until they have something like 60 gateways built. I know about the argument that IRIDIUM's coverage of ocean and polar regions is overkill, but tell that to heavy maritime users and airlines that ply the polar and ocean routes. Regards, Jack Morgan