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Technology Stocks : IRID - Iridium World Communications IPO Announced! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Moominoid who wrote (1577)	4/12/1999 6:16:00 PM
From: Bill Jackson	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 2693

David, It is obvious that Iridium can prosper only with a strong local telecom monopoly in a totally regulated telecom economy. These governments and their captive telecom monopolies were salivating at an $8 per minute fee, of which they get 50% plus, so did the batwing(Motorola). Well tech marches on and many countries have deregulated their telecoms and fast agile cel networks have proven quite capable of beating iridium to death when a level playing field exists. Cels are spreading, deregulation is spreading, Iridium is doomed, since there are not enough crooked dictatorships to keep it alive. Life under the batwing was ever thus, the bat looks for gouging margins...so much so that it darn near killed it's own cell phone business. As to the huge donation of $250,000 of telecom service to Kosovo, the out of pocket is zero(unless some handsets get broken/stolen) since the network costs do not increase with loading at all. This means that CNN mentioned Iridium so often as a helping hand quid pro quo that the Australian BC got sick of it and cut away to station announcements. Does CNN or affiliates own much Iridium stock\? Obviously CNN has been told to laud this freebie to the heavens. Bill Bill