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


To: Maurice Winn who wrote (3143)2/26/1999 6:19:00 PM
From: Valueman  Read Replies (2) | Respond to of 29987
 
A key point made by Bernard Schwartz was that Vodafone was planning to offer a deal whereby their best clients could exchange their phone for a G* phone for $50. Obviously these are the high use individuals. They said that this represents about 7% of their customers! That's 9.5 million customers worldwide at last count, and that does not include AirTouch.

This is a profound event that bears closer examination. It is the first example of a telephone company in action in regards to G*. Contrast that with Iridium. G* partners are service providers, and telephone companies. They know how to sell wireless services on a grand scale. G* will prosper if the service providers are successful. Their track records say that should be a slam dunk. Stay tuned!



To: Maurice Winn who wrote (3143)2/26/1999 7:29:00 PM
From: Oliver Schonrock  Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 29987
 
Hi all, I have been long on G* since Nov 98 and have been reading this thread since then. I finally decided to pay my dues to SI and get into this discussion since it's the only place where most people seem to have a clear handle on the issues.

I am confused.......

Why does everyone here spend most of their time discussing handsets, satellites, CDMA, 2nd, 3rd, 4th constellations etc?

The reason I ask is that, as I understand it, G* (+ IRIDF + ICOGF)phones will use frequencies that don't propagate well through buildings and other obstructions. So I ask myself where are people going to use handsets? I am a very frequent GSM user (in New Zealand) and 90% of the time I use my cellphone in locations where no sat-phone would work (except in Terrestial mode, and then why do I need a sat-phone). These are buldings, cars and streets where there are too many buldings around to get a clear view of the sky (and Auckland isn't even that built up).

In other words I would have zero use for a more expensive phone with more expensive minutes (my company pays about US 10c/min for the GSM) which switches to my old GSM system whenever I want to use it. I travel overseas, mostly in Asia, and take my Nokia 6110 with me. It auto roams and works for both data and voice just fine. Yes, it's very expensive in roaming mode but I suspect that will change as the extra cost is mostly inter SP billing.... e-commerce should take care of that in the next couple of years.

So why am I long on G*? Because it is able to provide (relatively) cheap minutes to an area the size of Australia by building one(!!) gateway. This is very powerful compared to building a terrestial GSM, CDMA or whatever network and, more importantly, much cheaper than building a landline network. In my view building one gateway in a strategic position in China (which they have done) and the doing the deals with local towns, businesses, and SPs is the real market. I know this is not new, but where is the discussion, the info.....

What does the car-kit look like?
How does the fixed station work?
what does it look like??? How much does it cost?? Who is making them?? How many do we have built by Sep99??

grrrr having trouble with this editor... see next post



To: Maurice Winn who wrote (3143)2/26/1999 7:56:00 PM
From: Oliver Schonrock  Read Replies (3) | Respond to of 29987
 
Post continued............

These are all important even for those yuppies with ski-huts on mountains with no terrestial mobile or landline coverage. When it's 20 degrees below and snowing 50cm every hour how many people want to go outside to make a phone call?????

Anyway my second point for today is that I mostly agree with Maurice that it is imperative that G* fills their constellation ASAP before the inevitable competitors arrive (putting up satellites isn't that hard anymore). However I believe a more profitable and quicker way is to start putting some really sharp "Account Managers" into the field in China and start signing deals!!! My business is in distribution (although not Telco) and the only way things get sold in volume is if you get some top people doing deals! The format of those can be something along the lines of: if you sell a minutes and b stations (so many fixed and so many mobile) for us in the next c months you will receive the minutes at d c/min and the phones at $e each. These deals can be done now!!! This will ensure immediate usage of the system when it becomes operational and will stop the guessing game of how many subscribers G* potentially has. All this ""market research"" during which they ask people if it wouldn't be really cool to have a phone to their mates from the ski-hut is b...s..t! Start to try signing people and you will very quickly find out how your package sells... if the news is bad, you either pack up and go home or start employing some real clever marketing guys to start moving that demand curve or find new markets.

If I am right and the real market is fixed stations (because people don't like doing business on the front lawn in the rain), then the deals need to be signed even earlier, (ie yesterday) because not only do the Chinese SPs have to sell to the end user they have to organise hundreds of "cable-guys" to install the tens-of-thousands of fixed stations that haven't been manufactured yet.

Have I missed s.th. ???

Go Globalstar!!!!!!!!

Oliver Schonrock



To: Maurice Winn who wrote (3143)2/26/1999 8:02:00 PM
From: Oliver Schonrock  Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 29987
 
Oh Maurice, I forgot to ask.....

Re: As pointed out, this makes Globalstar competitive in downtown Paris since Globalstar can sell minutes for 10c and still make a profit. Especially with constellations 2, 3 and 4.

How is that? By detecting that there is no G* signal in the buidling or too many obstructions in the street and auto-switching to GSM????