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

To: brian h who wrote (3533)	3/21/1999 12:06:00 AM
From: Joe Brown	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 29987

Brian h: I'm afraid I have to come to the support of Goodboy's argument about Iridium. Soundview Financial projects 9,000 subscribers at the end of this quarter...a complete disaster. Motorola has apparently felt compelled to issue a statement that they will support Iridium, and that "Iridium is not going under"; this is not what you say when there is NO problem - you simply ignore the possibility. Goodboy talks of restructuring, and I suspect he's correct in this. And he says the capital markets, in essence, will be wary of other ventures in this sector because of Iridium's problems. In this, I don't think he goes far enough... The buildout of cellular, as detailed in Tero Kuittinan's post, has perhaps rendered moot the need for the kind of satellite telecom systems envisioned a decade ago, and the long lead times required for development means that companies like Iridium and Globalstar may not be able to adapt quickly enough to the market to be compelling consumer cases. I will add, however, that Globalstar does now appear to have the best chance of success in the MSS arena, given Iridium's difficulties... Globalstar, while the lower cost producer, still has an extraordinarily high cost compared to the cellular alternative, and while it is tempting to dismiss this or to say that Globalstar will be an attractive add-on to cellular (via the Vodaphone or Airtouch partnerships), it is beginning to seem that the price may not justify its adoption by the number of subscribers necessary to make the proposition pay. In other words, is it just possible that the most high tech telecom solution for the new millenium is not the most high-tech solution after all? Just trying to stimulate debate on this issue, since Iridium is giving us all a wake-up call here on the pitfalls of technology seduction...