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

To: Joe Brown who wrote (2957)	2/13/1999 6:17:00 PM
From: djane	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 29987

Fortune. Calling Anywhere on Earth for Just $3,400 pathfinder.com Yuppie Toys Joel Dreyfuss I finally got my hands on one of those satellite phones that have been touted as the ultimate yuppie toy. Okay, so the bulk of Iridium's handset (72 inches; one pound, four ounces) is a throwback to the early days of cellular phones. But the thing does allow me to make calls to and from just about anywhere in the world. Representatives from Motorola--which owns 19% of Iridium--wince at the yuppie reference, but their own promotional literature touts the Satellite phone series as an absolute necessity for globetrotters. Make that well-heeled globetrotters. The basic phone runs about $3,400, and calls cost between $1.50 and $6 a minute, depending on where you call. In case you've missed the media blitz, the Iridium system was completed last fall. Now 66 satellites give the system coverage of the entire world, ostensibly making the phrase "away from the phone" obsolete. (It also offers worldwide paging through the same system.) Not surprisingly, given that technology is often ahead of regulation, there are countries that haven't signed on to Iridium--so if you go to Bali, say, you won't be able to place a call. (The system is smart enough to refuse calls from those locations.) But the list of reluctant countries--available at www.iridium.com--is shrinking daily. Motorola's Satellite phones are easily adapted to work with existing cell systems in the U.S. and Europe. But the real fun is a satellite call. I tried the system out in Manhattan. I extended the antenna--a full eight inches, it looks like a kitchen pipe--and called a colleague in California. Soon I was connected. I got only his answering machine, but I can't complain: It was a thrill to realize that I could have been calling from the jungles of Rwanda. Magazine Issue: March 1, 1999 Vol. 139, No. 4