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

To: Oliver Schonrock who wrote (3526)	3/20/1999 8:26:00 PM
From: David Wiggins	Respond to of 29987

Cool post Oliver, One more point. Globalstar's marketing plan is to sell minutes through their respective service providers, so even if they give them to VOD/ATI for example, VOD/ATI may have their own ideas about pricing which would again lead to supply of minutes greater than demand. An interesting question is 'Roaming' on the satellite phone. Suppose I have VOD/ATI in US at $.90/min or whatever. Will that be the same in China while I am on the Globalstar system? My guess is no. Globalstar will 'run invisibly in the background' and China will be able to gouge me for whatever they can. Regards, Dave

To: Oliver Schonrock who wrote (3526)	3/21/1999 1:10:00 AM
From: Drew Williams	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 29987

<<Is there anyone else out there that has been a Sales Rep? I was one just a few years ago and the number one rule is: "at least fifty percent of the time, customers will make their purchasing decisions, based on non-rational, emotional, personal, or whatever reasons other than the real issues". This is where marketing and sales, can really have an effect. I think your philosophy gives the consumer far too much credit for being a rational being (!), present company excluded of course!>> Depends what you are selling and to whom, of course, but I would put the percentage way higher than 50% when selling to the average American consumer (half of whom are, by the way, below average.) The reasons that really do matter to most of us are "non-rational, emotional, personal, or whatever." So, while "p.....g" is important, the perception of value is even more important. And, as Oliver has pointed out, a company's price does not exist in a vacuum, so it could be useful to be able to track different company's current rates and switch seamlessly between service providers. After all, I can buy gas for my cars at any gas station.

To: Oliver Schonrock who wrote (3526)	3/21/1999 5:22:00 PM
From: Oliver Schonrock	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 29987

*Slightly OT* Has everyone had a look at globalstar.com ? Really cool intuitive explanation! I didn't realise how cool, until the other day when I was sitting at lunch with my parents and my partner. I speak German with my parents and English with my partner. We were sitting, such that two conversations were going on diagonally across the table in the two different languages. Amazing how the two conversations did not seem to interfere with each other at all eventhough both were conducted at normal volume! The other language just became noise in the background! You have to experience this to really appreciate it I think. Only one problem for me: I am a little too fluent in both languages, and so I found myself following both conversations....?! Cool concept! Great explanation! Great company to be part of! Go, Go G* !!!!! Oliver

To: Oliver Schonrock who wrote (3526)	5/19/1999 4:20:00 AM
From: Maurice Winn	Respond to of 29987

P-----g Oliver, just popping back here where you thought a price auction on the screen would leave a subscriber wondering whether they'd been ripped off and therefore susceptible to a competing saleman's blandishments: Refer to the previous post for the full context... ---------------------------------------------------------------- This brings me to *P......g, assuming (!!) that we catch one of those wonderfully educated and rational beings and put them on a leash so they can't get away, we can do some experiments on them. Here he is with his Vodaphone powered Nokia 6110 (no G* sorry, just to keep it simple). He want to make a call and the screen says $7.00/min. Sh...t he says, that's so expensive, but damn it, I really need to make that call, and so he does. This happens to him a few times and then he gets a few good rates and on goes the story. The whole time he is wondering whether he is actually getting a good deal or whether he is subsidising Vodaphone for their inadequate network capacity. So he approaches The "Other" GSM SP in his town (hopefully one exists, I know there's none in my home town)........ Now the b..s..t really starts: "Well sir, given the statistical (!) anyalsis of your call frequency, length and times, and given that you are male, under 150 lbs and your wife has blond hair, we can very accurately predict that your average call cost with us would be much lower than with Vodaphone.".........I don't think I need to continue here as you can see the disaster coming. The only real way would be for at least 3 SP, offering the "same" (and I am sure the marketing guys will have a word or two to say about that little statement) service to all agree to dynamically list their respective call costs on the users phone and he makes his pick at the time and for each call. Then he gets three bills (but, but the marketing guy says, our payment options and the way we print our bills is so much better than XYZ SP!!) Anyway, my point is: Listing call cost on the screen: Only of benefit if there is competition and that is such an incredibly difficult and political (oh no don't go there) task that it'll be a while yet! Even when we are there, marketing will continue to be one of those leachy (lawyer like, but no offence to anyone) disciplines that man-kind has created and now he has to live with them. ------------------------------------------------------------------- The situation you describe would be a problem, but as you point out about Caller-ID, electronic services are very, very cheap to provide. So the handset could keep a running average cost per minute for calls made. It could keep a running average of prices offered with graphs of price versus time. It could call into the handset maker's Web site and get prices being charged in the area by competing service providers [reported in by the same manufacturer's handsets in the area]. The handset maker could recommend [on-line] the cheapest or best quality service provider in the area. Electronics are going to have a very, very big impact on marketing. A lot of flim flam from marketing departments is going to be replaced by on-line information, in the same way that 'full service' brokers have lost huge amounts of business to on-line companies such as Datek. It's hard to flim flam your way past a flat trade price of $8 per trade. Well, there's always an angle, but the scope is vastly reduced. The telecoms and banking worlds are very, very susceptible to electronics and computing power in the hands of customers. They are in big trouble. The old pricing models will crash. Cricket and the flat rate plan is a big success in cdmaOne. When they add peak shaving pricing, they'll do even better. The battle is just beginning. This will be a lot of fun. Maurice