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

To: Oliver Schonrock who wrote (3204)	2/28/1999 2:01:00 AM
From: Maurice Winn	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 29987

Good point Oliver - get the fixed stations out fast. They can gobble up lots of minutes in a short time. In India, people queue for the privilege of paying heaps for a call to a couple of hundred kilometres away. Since people don't have phones, they use a 'phone box' which is a little room with somebody collecting the money as the calls are made. Imagine selling Globalstar phone boxes to India and China, then selling the minutes for the terrestrial component only. That would give them a good economic boost, use the minutes, get them hooked and result in lots of minutes used for not much capital outlay. The phone boxes would run flat out 24 hours a day. Even with an enthusiastic madman a handset can't be used more than an hour or two a day. Handsets are almost always personal - used by one person. So a phone box would get a lot more use for less capital. You have persuaded me that the phone boxes should not be left to priority 3. Their development should be going flat out in parallel with handsets. The locations should be selected now and local entrepreneurs enlisted to take the money from people who queue to use them. I'm also seeing how important the Vodafone/Airtouch marketing oomph will be from having Globalstar handsets to boost their terrestrial revenues. They'll be pushing Globalstar flat out. Instant Global Coverage [apart from some water, a bit more rollout time, poles etc]. Certainly this year they'll be able to boast "Travel anywhere in the USA and if you can see the sky, you can make a call on THIS phone with NO roaming charges". They could even say "Anywhere to anywhere in the USA on this phone at a dime a minute". Another little angle is that if a terrestrial network is full up at lunch time or whenever, then Globalstar will allow peak time calling with no busy signals - at least for three years. Vodafone is going to make a fortune for terrestrial sales. No wonder they bought AirTouch! I hope Qualcomm can produce a LOT of handsets quickly. Similarly, they can claim "Travel anywhere in Europe and this GSM/Globalstar phone will see you right if you can see the sky". They can even claim it won't cost them any more than the regular cellphone call because of the high European prices per minute. Same again for China, Korea, Japan. This is going to be much, much better than Iridium. Heck, demand could go a bit berserk. Maybe cheap minutes will only last a year. Better get those village phone boxes rolling out! Actually, handsets might be just as good. The village chief can hold the handset and leaving it plugged into a photovoltaic/recharger/lead acid battery or generator charge people to use it. The chief could dial the number and supervise the call. Maurice