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

To: Rocket Scientist who wrote (4340)	4/30/1999 1:08:00 PM
From: John Stichnoth	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 29987

You're right on several points. 1. We're all wag'ing 2. The $10MM is Q's cost alone. Installation, shipping, site work all extra. (Forgot those!) But, I'm pretty sure the scale of the operation is smaller than you are estimating. Shouldn't we be thinking in terms of large room in an existing building? (30 by 30, times $10 per sf per month, times 12, equals 108 thousand). Add the costs of additional lines into the equipment. Charge the depreciation to the Gateway. You're still not the critical cost factor. Labor: Piggyback it onto an existing operation. Do you really think it will need 5 people in at all times? I was thinking more on the order of 1 added person per shift required. (5 heads = $500,000? What's a good all-in cost per technician employee?) So, to my number, you've made me add another 2MM minutes per gateway, at 40 cents per minute, to cover the gateway costs. 3. With either estimate, yours or mine, we're still talking about a small percentage of the available airtime. A thought: This $1.50 to $2.00 may just be marketing. It allows them to go into your companies and governments and quote them "very special" deals of $1.00 per minute. That would be fine with me, if they sell the minutes. As Maurice has said, the problem for the first couple of years isn't the minutes available. We want to fill them as fast as possible. I think the problem is getting the narrow supply of handsets into the right hands. There will only be 300,000 available at launch. It makes sense to try to get them into the hands of people who need them, as demonstrated by their willingness to plunk down $1,000 each "knowing" that each call will cost a couple dollars per minute.