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

To: Jim Parkinson who wrote (2707)	1/27/1999 7:03:00 PM
From: Joe Brown	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 29987

What I heard on the QCOM CDMA phone that surprised me was digital distortion and fade, along with (and I know this must be impossible) some kind of signal delay, that had me and the person who called me on the phone sometimes both talking at once. The quality sounded very similar to early Iridium voice quality, and I know that seems ridiculous, but there it is. Not all the time, mind you, and always on calls placed from inside structures, but why should location matter?

To: Jim Parkinson who wrote (2707)	1/30/1999 2:33:00 PM
From: Maurice Winn	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 29987

Globalstar Testing: Message 7569607 Jim, you asked: "Does anyone have any information on G* testing with their 8 sats. IR and published info says everything is hunky dory but we know from I* experience things can not go as planned. My question is if most of G* switching requirements are on the ground, can't they and haven't already worked out the software glitches with the existing gateways and 8 sats. This is the second part of one of my prev posts where I asked about hand set prod too. I believe Maurice gave me some comfort that both Qualcomm and Ericsson will have enough handsets when needed. I hope so." Globalstar has 4 tracking dishes at each gateway. As a satellite goes 'down' over the horizon, the dish [the gateway antenna] swings around flat out - taking a minute or so - back to the next satellite coming up over the horizon ready to follow it over the sky and down to the horizon [or 10-15 degrees up from the horizon]. A handset out at Alice Springs [which is in the middle of Australia] might be out of range of the terrestrial system in downtown Alice Springs [= The Pub] so will search the sky for a friend. Three or four satellites might hear it beeping away, but being just bent pipes, they just hand the signal down to the gateway which is watching them. There will be a gateway in Dubbo, which is near Sydney [300km away or so], one in Darwin, and probably one near Perth at some stage in the future. An argument goes on between the gateway basestations as to who is going to handle the call. Mostly, they decide by which one is getting the strongest signal from the handset. They let that gateway take the call, passing it along the optical fibre to Sydney or Melbourne if some dingoes have dug up the cable to Sydney. Trouble is, the satellite is moving over the sky in about 10 minutes so as the person yaks away, Dubbo starts getting a weaker signal than the one in Darwin, or, depending on how the satellites are positioned in the sky, maybe a different satellite near Dubbo is getting the stronger signal. So there is a lot of constant debate over who should handle the call. It sounds complex, but is not too bad - they do it already with terrestrial systems as a handset moves along a freeway, with Babe handing the call off to another base station if she is too busy or is getting a weaker signal than another one. With only 8 satellites in the sky, these being in two different orbits I suppose, there isn't the handoff testing available. Calls will be dropping every 10 minutes, or no signal available. Handoff could be problematic because of propagation distances. If a handset goes behind a building, the gateway will be puzzled at the sudden loss of signal. It won't even know about it for 100 milliseconds whereas a terrestrial system, being only a couple of kilometres away, gets the message very quickly and can handoff faster. So there is potential for dodgy connections. Well, there WILL BE dodgy connections. The question is how many and how well the software/electronics will handle dodgy connections. Iridium has got fairly good connection and call quality. Globalstar should be able to do better, same as cdmaOne on earth can do better with handoffs and voice quality. But they still have to do it and while launching rockets is not amazing these days, it is if you are riding the wrong Zenit! You still have to achieve it. On the big supply of handsets, I'm not at all convinced of that. Valueman is happy. I consider handset supply and pricing and minute pricing VERY big issues which will have a MAJOR effect on how much money we make and how good the service to subscribers will be. From what I've seen, they are following the Iridium model of overpriced minutes and underpriced [and not enough] handsets with subscribers unhappy because they can't get handsets and thinking the minutes are expensive [if they have to pay for them at all that is]. That is NOT a recipe for a successful network maximizing service and profit. Maurice