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To: Kenneth B. Thiel who wrote (6116)	5/11/1999 2:53:00 PM
From: Jeff Vayda	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 10852

Ken: would that be in 25 words or less? Jeff Vayda

To: Kenneth B. Thiel who wrote (6116)	5/11/1999 3:54:00 PM
From: RMiethe	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 10852

Satellite delivery is far faster, however the debate in the satellite industry is between the GEOsat advocates versus the LEO advocates. I have had the opportunity to read expert papers from research sources outside Wall Street on this and they show the debate between them is acrimonious and bitter. Satellites are economical outside of regions not already served or incapable of being served by conventional systems-- the real question for satellite providers is the demand that non-served regions will have for broadband. You can read hundreds of pages on all this, just like I did on Iridium and Globalstar before the systems were deployed, or the launches occurred. Most of what I have read never came to materialize. It all comes down to, in the end, the ability of management to market and sell their broadband services in the most economical way to both them and the user. You go blind reading all the technical debates among the broadband companies. Further the technology changes so rapidly, as the Skybridge seminars I attended showed. I posted a paper from a seminar on that (Reply #5434). A more concise and knowledgeable presentation on the issue than this I have not been able to get elsewhere. The writer is from the satellite industry however, so you need to be aware of where he is coming from. Although in the Q&A that followed the writer did show pretty well that his claims were well-founded. While everyone has their own fish to fry, it is good for anyone looking at satellite broadband to do his or her own research, rather than just read what either side of the broadband debate (the "landlubbers" versus the 'sky pilots", as I am told both sides are called) says. You also have the question on launch capabilty and predictability and the politics that goes into spectrum delivery. In the end, I think, for what it is worth, that only the markets will tell you the usability of satellite broadband systems-- and the marketing in these cases is going to depend on savvy management that gets out of the aerospace-defense "You need this" mode to "How can we help you" mode. The idea about being a "visionary" only goes so far. Business is primarily marketing-- whoever has the best "spin" usually gets the crowd. That is what is going to happen, I think, in the satellite broadband product line over the next few years.

To: Kenneth B. Thiel who wrote (6116)	5/11/1999 8:46:00 PM
From: JMD	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 10852

Kenneth, I see that RMiethe has responded to your question, but I thought to add this as a very 'real world' example to further buttress his point. When Hughes first brought their ISP satellite service to Joe User the result was an unmitigated disaster: it was hard to use, Hughes had a woefully undermanned service and support operation, customer service was a profane joke, pricing was high, you name it. Funny thing was: the technology worked well--too well. Some guys jumped on the 'all you can eat pricing' and started cramming gargantuan amounts of data through the system. Hughes responded with some lock down rules which hit ALL users rather than the system abusers. I remember Valueman referred me to some internet thread that sprang up just to bad-mouth Hughes. Let me tell you folks were really upset as in: you couldn't print half the posts in a family newspaper. So, RMiethe is right on the money: it's all in the marketing and business plan that underpins customer service. There is no doubt whatever that birds can blast huge bandwidth at your roof top and mine--doesn't mean we'll be happy campers or that the business will prosper. Which reminds me--anybody have experience with the service at the present time? Seems I heard that Hughes had mended fences and had some good things going on in the second incarnation, but that may be just a pipe dream. Best, Mike Doyle