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Technology Stocks : Loral Space & Communications -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Drew Williams who wrote (5437)	3/7/1999 2:22:00 PM
From: Valueman	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 10852

If we are invisible to the end user, they will not care which supplier their cellular provider chooses. In that scenario, price will inevitably dictate everything. Latency be damned! This might be so except for the fact that our cellular providers are also partners in the G* LP. Thus, they will choose G* regardless of what the others are up to. Remember, Schwartz said the partners had invested $1.4 billion in this venture. They are likely to do their best to support it. Price will be important in every scenario, but so will quality. The technology exists to put up a GEO sat that is mission specific--that is, it would be strictly dedicated to telephony. Such a beast is capable of 250 billionminutes of annual capacity. This could lead to service at a penny or two per minute, and a profitable business as well. The only quality issue there is latency. This is for a fixed system. The mobile GEOs have much lower capacity. My point is that price is NOT everything. If it was, this service would exist in the US right now offering penny per minute long distance. Hmmmm...maybe that is an idea....penny per minute with a little latency.....would people buy it? At a use rate of even 5% of capacity, at $.01/minute, this GEO would generate $125 million/year. Not bad! Maurice, you in?