Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

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

To: djane who wrote (4514)	5/10/1999 3:57:00 PM
From: Maurice Winn	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 29987

//Analysts point out that Motorola still stands to lose more than anyone else if Iridium goes down. Iridium plans to pay Motorola a whopping $2.89 billion over the next five years for maintenance and operations.// That isn't the same kind of lose as the shareholders are going to suffer. The shareholder loss is a real one. Motorola's will be an opportunity cost. It looks as though Motorola can stick it to the shareholders of Iridium World - run up a big debt then foreclose in a deal with the other creditors, paying out the other creditors a pittance. Motorola can then run it at a low price per minute, make money from the handsets and the minutes since their capital contribution will be very low if any and run it into the ground over the next 4 years. This is NOT a pretty sight. How come the analysts talk of Iridium World share price in the 20s? Dragonfly, please explain how they'll make money. I seriously don't get it. And ICO is going to launch their money [well, somebody else's actually] into this maelstrom? The ICO shareholders backing the 10 satellites at 10,000 km have got to be crazy. At least ICO will be able to claim their system reached a higher level of operations than Iridium. Over 9,000 km higher. If they are lucky, their losses won't be at a higher level. They shouldn't bet on it. Globalstar should demonstrate to ICO now that ICO should not even bother entering the race - then the ICO shareholders could sue the company for false pretences as the company could be shown to have ignored clear evidence that their system will fail financially. Already, the ICO managers should be preparing their defences. Deliberately launching shareholder funds into a bottomless pit is surely an offense in the USA. The SEC must think poorly of such a scheme to produce 'jobs for the boys'. Has anyone seen an ICO business plan with price per minute, capital structure, number of minutes, risk factors and all that stuff? Maurice PS: OT Rant. What with USA rockets failing flat out, the USA should be glad that Bernie has shown the Chinese how to solder so that the USA can get their satellites into space. Hell, I'm happy to launch Globalstar satellites on the French rocket and those bastards already bombed our place once. It's worth the risk. I'll use the Globalstar profits to 'take out' [to coin a phrase] the Arc de Triomphe in a kind of karma unless they hand over the Rainbow Warrior criminals. Actually, Gorby is coming here in the next couple of weeks - there is a good job waiting for him as the first President of the reconstituted United Nations. I'll put it to him that he get it started. France bombs NZ. USA bombs China [the embassy], Serbia, Iraq, Vietnam. Russia invades Czechoslovakia. China invades Vietnam. Vietnam invades Cambodia. New Zealand thought about invading Fiji but decided it wasn't worth it [the ships probably wouldn't get there anyway and the Fijians and NZ soldiers would have found it all too much trouble - so it all has been relatively peaceful].

To: djane who wrote (4514)	5/10/1999 7:21:00 PM
From: djane	Respond to of 29987

I* vs. G* from a Motorola perspective (via I* yahoo board) Top>Business and Finance>Stocks>Services>Communications Services>IRID (Iridium World Comm. Ltd.) I* vs G* or TDMA vs CDMA by: LawrenceCooper (M/The Nation's Capitol) 12672 of 12688 I just finished talking to some Motorola engineer friends who have been busy doing Marketing for Iridium. The constellation is running fine with zero holes (yes, Sparefroh, I said zero) and the system is performing as advertised. Apparently the stories are true that no one has been instructing the users how to use the phone. The users have not been instructed to extend the antenna nor how to dial (you just don't dial like a cell phone or land-line phone). So marketing is making a little headway. Anyway, I have talked in the past how I* useses TDMA with dynamic sat to sat and sat to ground links while G* uses bentpipe. Now all things being equal, CDMA is much more frequency efficient, however in a bentpipe mode, I's technology is superior to G. Here's why: In a dynamic fading environment (users are really mobile in a car or plane or travelling in foliage), the satelite power must be dynamically managed. In the direct mode used by Iridium, the satellite itself will manage the power on the comm link. The power management for G* is done BY THE GATEWAY. This means that there is a delay on G* dynamic power management due to the Gateway having to run the show. This makes the burden for truly mobile calls far higher than I. For satphone to satphone calls, this means the gateway has to manage the power used on each link. G gateways are also limited by the landlines. A phone call to another portion of the globe will go from the gateway via landline to the gateway closest to the call destination. A lot of areas have sparese telephone infrastructures and this will limit G* throughput. The US Army recently cancelled a G* study because they would need a tactical gateway which would be limited by the infrastructure of the area to which they deployed it. Can you imagine trying to use G* in Serbia where the phonesa are down or in areas which have major phone congestion already. Globalstar plans on limiting the actual number of "truly mobile" users to reduce the power management headaches' burden on the gateways. BTW for those who like to crap on Motorola: they do more CDMA business than TDMA business. So they picked TDMA Posted: 05/10/99, 12:51PM EDT as a reply to: Msg 1 by YahooFinance

To: djane who wrote (4514)	5/10/1999 7:26:00 PM
From: djane	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 29987

Iridium Phones Link Russian, U.S. ATC (Air Traffic Control) Top>Business and Finance>Stocks>Services>Communications Services>IRID (Iridium World Comm. Ltd.) Iridium used for ATC; Part 1 of 2 by: Discovery94 12647 of 12688 This sounds like very good news, albeit just a beginning. QUOTE from Aviation Week & Space Technology: JAMES I McKENNA/WASHINGTON Russian and U.S. air traffic controllers are using mobile telephones linked through the Iridium satellite constellation to hand off control of commercial aircraft in the Russian Far East. Air traffic managers in the U.S. and Russia turned to the $4.85-billion Iridium system to overcome communications reliability problems that had triggered severe restrictions on the number of flights that could use three air routes in the region. The old communications links suffered a variety of problems in mid-1998. Among the most troublesome were with one link that used "troposcatter" to route calls from the FAA's air route traffic control center in Anchorage, Alaska, through a facility in Providenya to the Russian air control center in Anadyr, near the Bering Sea. The problems do not affect communications with aircraft, only between the two centers. Troposcatter is a technique in which radio waves transmitted from one ground station are bounced off the Earth's troposphere to a receiving ground station. The technique is not uncommon, and is used to relay communications into areas in which ground stations have not or cannot be set up. But FAA officials said the troposcatter link between Providenya and Anadyr began to break down for reasons that still are not entirely clear. "We had a continual deterioration of that link between the two facilities," Ronald E. Morgan, acting director of the FAA's Air Traffic Service, told Aviation Week & Space Technology. CONTROLLERS TYPICALLY TRY to pass on messages about when and where a flight will transit the Russian-U.S. airspace border at least 30 min. prior to crossing. But the troposcatter link became so unreliable, Morgan said, that "in a couple of instances, we had to turn aircraft around and reroute them" because controllers could not pass handoff messages in time. Those diversions added up to 2 hr. to the flights and required the aircraft to make unscheduled interim stops to refuel. "That's a severe impact" to airlines that strive to schedule and route aircraft on fuel-efficient transpacific passages, Morgan said. Continued on part 2: With the communications links so undependable, air traffic officials slashed the number of flights that could be scheduled across the three routes in question-G212, B244 and A218. The routes had been used by up to eight aircraft per hour, but on July 1, 1998, air traffic officials in Russia and the U.S. agreed the rate had to be cut to just two per hour. The restrictions remained in place until Mar. 24, when FAA and Russian officials agreed to make the Iridium phone link the primary operational means of passing handoff messages. A test of the link in the preceding week had proven the reliability of the Iridium connection, Morgan said. With the new link in place, he said, controllers can handle up to 11 flights an hour on the three routes. THE RUSSIAN AND U.S. AIR TRAFFIC services are paying $10,000 a month to provide controllers in Anadyr and Anchorage with Iridium telephone handsets. When a flight must be handed off, a controller dials his counterpart across the border to pass on the flight information and estimated crossing time and location. Russia and the U.S. are splitting the cost of the setup, Morgan said, with each paying for the phone calls its controller's place. The heart of the Iridium system is a constellation of 66 satellites in low-Earth orbits of 485 mile. Together with a network of ground stations, the satellites are capable of picking up and transmitting the signal from a small handset. Designed for high-end business and luxury users, the Iridium system is seeing what FAA officials said may be its first operational air traffic control use. Though a minor contract, the FAA Russian utilization of the system gives a boost to Iridium, which has been hampered from delays in producing the handsets AW&ST March 29, page 23). Morgan said the Iridium link is a temporary fix. Under a three-year-old contract with the FAA, AT&T Alascom is to install a downlink ground station near Anadyr to improve the reliability of communications with Anchorage. The work has been stalled by problems in securing permits and approval from local government officials in Russia. Morgan said the contractor should begin to install that ground station this month. Depending on the results of its current use and the cost of future services, however, Morgan said Iridium could be retained as a backup communications link between Anchorage and Anadyr. AVIATION WEEK & SPACE TECHNOLOGY APRIL 19, 1999 Page 49 Posted: 05/10/99, 1:51AM EDT as a reply to: Msg 12647 by Discovery94