To: Maurice Winn who wrote (4742 ) 5/20/1999 12:49:00 PM From: John Stichnoth Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 29987
Yeah, Handsets again! :o) <Actally, you are wrong about passing the handsets around - a company could rent them at an airport or somebody will sell minutes in some out of the way village and those handsets might be the busiest handsets, passed around to those who need them most. > I knew someone would call me on that one. The pass-around phones, however, will be the stationary models. At least for airports, villages, mining operations, other "vertical" operations--I like that term! My point really was more on the order of: The vast majority of mobile handsets would be available to one user at a time, much the way laptops are used. My wife has a laptop from work, which she uses exclusively 97.3 pct of the time. Once in a while a co-worker will need it, and she will lend it to them for a couple of days. Similarly, sometimes she doesn't want to lug her 8 lb IBM 760 around and will borrow someone else's for a day. I, on the other hand, have never lent my laptop and never had to borrow someone else's. Some offices will buy--say--4 G* handsets to be shared by a dozen people when they go on trips outside of reliable phone contact. And that will boost minutes per handset somewhat. But, neither activity will boost the minutes per handset much beyond its "natural" level. The seers at G* seem to be anticipating that they will get something like 5 to 6 hours per month per phone (if I remember right--200MM minutes breakeven; breakeven at end of year 2000; 600K phones at end of year 2000). I'd feel a lot more comfortable if we were counting on an hour of G* time per month per phone, not 5 hours. We can't really control minutes of use. The number of handsets can be controlled. Here's to lots of new-model handsets, and cheap minutes!