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

To: djane who wrote (4614)	5/14/1999 11:04:00 PM
From: djane	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 29987

I* price/minute cut? (via i* yahoo thread) Top>Business and Finance>Stocks>Services>Communications Services>IRID (Iridium World Comm. Ltd.) Minute charges cut by: satcatt 13173 of 13192 New I* pricing, max of $3.99 minute, other calls, $1.99 and $2.99 announced by some service providers. Posted: 05/14/99, 9:34PM EDT as a reply to: Msg 13170 by Showbiz_98

To: djane who wrote (4614)	5/14/1999 11:11:00 PM
From: djane	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 29987

Maurice and RocketScientist posts on I* thread Talk : Communications : IRID - Iridium World Communications IPO Announced! \| Previous \| Next \| Respond \| To: Larry L (1772 ) From: Maurice Winn Friday, May 14 1999 5:07PM ET Reply # of 1784 Larry, I really don't 'get it'. You and Dragonfly have persevered for a couple of years. To me the writing was on the wall before the launch, as you know. We all make mistakes and what we don't know far exceeds what we do know and half of what we do know isn't true. But sometimes, the information pointing in a certain direction, such as the world being round, becomes so irrefutable that the fact of a round world becomes accepted. What I don't get, is how you, Dragonfly, Jack Morgan, Tero, Mika, Bill Frezza and maybe me too which is why I want to get to the bottom of this, hold onto positions which seem [to me anyway] to be contrary to so much information. I've bought shares [in my earlier days and even now really] where I had little idea about what was going on. But I didn't have contrary information which I had to dismiss to hold my position. In fact, most people on the thread seemed to hold both Iridium and Globalstar or at least think there was room for all to make a huge pile of money [which always baffled me]. I don't understand [admittedly I haven't number crunched the figures] how Iridium shareholders can get ANY money out of it. The number of subscribers and capital involved, debts and continuing losses seem far our of kilter. Motorola seems to be the one which will make the money. Even the bond holders lose out to Motorola, which can take over the assets for $1,000,000, sell minutes for 20c and handsets for a thousand dollars and make a fortune. The shareholders won't get a bean. The bond holders won't get more than two beans. Where am I wrong? Why do you still think it will succeed? I really don't get it. I'm not gloating because I'd have preferred it to at least make a bit of money but if anything, it's good to have an early failure because ICO might see the body twisting in the wind and think a bit more carefully about their plans. What is ICO thinking, to be launching $$multibillions more into the maelstrom? I suppose like Motorola, it's not their money. Maurice {Iridium $10 per share now!} ______________________________________________ Talk : Communications : IRID - Iridium World Communications IPO Announced! \| Previous \| ------ \| Respond \| To: Maurice Winn (1783 ) From: Rocket Scientist Friday, May 14 1999 7:47PM ET Reply # of 1784 Maurice, I also thought and hoped Iridium would succeed, though I thankfully didn't invest in it. It seemed to me that Iridium had some discriminators in its favor that would justify it's planned higher prices: (1) instant global coverage, (2) relative independence from local ground infrastructure, (3) first to market. Add to that the US military as an anchor tenant and the Iridium "story" for investors was pretty good. And DFly and others were right about one thing: Iridium in the end didn't cost significantly more to build than Globalstar will (counting gateways). (You can argue that G* will offer longer life and more capacity for the same fixed cost, and therefore offer greater returns to investors, but if all we were talking about was servicing debt, G* and I+ financing break even costs ought to be about the same.) What seems to be killing Iridium is it's debt covenants, deplorable marketing, and the Motorola O&M contract (600M$/year!!). The one thing that may save it: if Iridium goes belly up, Teledesic/Iridium Next, etc, that Motorola hopes to build will never get public financing and Mot will lose most of the associated hardware business. So Mot does have an incentive to keep the thing alive. I expect a debt/equity swap that dilutes current equity holders (all of them, not just the publicly traded s/h) plus a substantial reduction in the Mot O&M contract could result in a capital and expense structure that would allow Iridium to survive and maybe even compete w/ g*. Current equity holders might be diluted 3 or 4:1, but better for IRID to own 4% of a going concern than 13% of something in receivorship.