Globalstar in the serious two way satellite business has been a joke for 15+ years, everyone who needs something serious that'll work anywhere on the planet has implemented solutions with Iridium, or something else geostationary based for low data rate (inmarsat isatphone, if not needed for very high latitude services). Or of course the wide array of different types of Inmarsat medium speed much more costly data terminals for briefcase-size folding (BGAN terminals, etc), ground vehicles, ships and aviation.
One of the Inmarsat 3rd party RF/modem partners is now making a data terminal for the medium sized UAV market which is about 3.5 pounds of stuff total including the antenna and good for 200-300 kbps of data, albeit at a typically high inmarsat $ per MB cost.
Or with small ku/ka-band self aiming vsat terminals in radome (commonly seen on ships), which get costly, which are quickly having their market eaten by starlink's much higher speeds and lower costs.
The value of globalstar at this point is probably in its spectrum licenses and legal entity's ability to operate, which given sufficiently deep pockets in capital resources, can be replaced with much newer and better tech in the L/S-band satellite-to-phone RF segment. I would bet good money that the people who are bankrolling this believe that they now have reliable access to two things:
a) relatively low $/kilogram cost for launches to LEO on some spacex competitor
b) low cost per unit mass production of satellites in an assembly line fashion, much as starlink satellites are currently churned out in large quantities.
Obviously they now know that what Motorola designed in 1997 for satellite-to-satellite data links in the same orbital plane for Iridium was the right way to go, I'd be shocked if a replacement Globalstar network did not implement a more modern version of the same. Same general idea as spacex's beta satellite-to-satellite laser links.
In the defense contractor/military/DoD world I have literally never seen a Globalstar terminal in use for anything anybody cares about. The only globalstar phones I've seen were in the hands of the staff of enthusiastic-but-utterly-telecom-clueless international aid NGOs, which not surprisingly completely failed to work in the location where they were trying to use them. They ended up packing them back into their boxes, putting them in a closet and buying Iridium handhelds.
Here's a CURRENT globalstar coverage map:
https://www.globalstar.com/Globalstar/media/Globalstar/Image...
The part in the filing that says this:
> Partner has agreed to make certain payments to the Company for (i) 95% of the approved capital expenditures Globalstar makes in connection with the new satellites described
I translate this as meaning that they intend to forklift upgrade the entire network to something that they think can reasonably compete with Iridium (and now SpaceX/Starlink) in addition to other regional players like Thuraya, and also of course Inmarsat.
If Apple really does acquire, I hope they ditch the bent pipe architecture, work on sat-to-sat connection, and most importantly for us, allow 2-way messaging on phones from sat, enough to send photos and stuff.
They have rules requiring the current Executive Chairman to retain majority control for 5 years. They have a right of first offer with him if he wants to sell stock.
With the company they have the right to submit a counteroffer to any sale of assets required to provide the services, or proposed sales of the company itself.
All of this makes me feel that they want to have this company as an independent supplier, but have buying it up as their backup plan.
From wikipedia.
Their customers seem to be pretty phone-call heavy industries, they aren't competitive on the data front, but aren't they cheaper than Iridium for phone calls?
I'm not sure what you mean by meo operators figuring them out because the only current noteworthy meo operator is o3b and their satellites are bent pipe architecture.
Oneweb satellites, which is presently an incomplete network, also do not implement satellite to satellite data links.
Nobody is going to invest in satellite phones or credits for a provider that couldn’t do space right.
An interesting alternative to sat comms is HF-DL if you don’t care for security. Cool to see all the Russia seized and reregistered jetliner equipment pinging and hearing HF-DL stations around the world on ACARS. Slow though, 300-1200bps.