ITEXPO Miami 2014 Interview with Globalstar

Well, Globalstar is a mobile satellite service company. We provide voice and data services via satellite to over 550,000 subscribers around the world, most of them centered in North America. We're located in Covington, Louisiana. We moved there in 2010, and we've had quite a lot going on over the past couple of years as we have launched a new constellation of satellites. Our final launch was in February of last year, and we put our last satellite into service in August of last year. So with those new satellites, we are back in the duplex business of providing crystal clear voice service via satellite at a very competitive price.

Okay, so Saffi, we introduced that earlier this week. We hope to be in market second quarter with the first combination product and service in that offering. But it essentially turns your existing smartphone into a satellite phone. You have an app on your phone that you can actually use to send and receive voice calls and text messages via our satellite system, regardless of where you are or what circumstances you may find yourself in. And it works via a small piece of hardware where your phone is essentially connected to a satellite hotspot.

Well, with all of Globalstar's products and services, we do our best to target the consumer market and also serve the traditional vertical of MSS, from government, major enterprise, mining, maritime, forestry. And we think that there are applications for this service throughout our target market — the consumers as well, recreational boaters — because it essentially allows you to send and receive using your existing mobile phone number calls and text messages as long as you're within range of the satellite hotspot. With Saffi, you have seamless connectivity. So what we plan to do with this is essentially fill in all of the existing gaps in people's coverage with whatever their existing mobile service is. A person can actually call your mobile number, your regular mobile number, and you will receive that even if you're off the grid, over your existing smartphone.

Sure. We have a major initiative at the FCC that would allow us to use our mobile satellite services spectrum for certain terrestrial mobile broadband applications. Our downlink spectrum sits adjacent to the public Wi-Fi band at 2.4 GHz, and we have asked for — and the FCC has actually proposed — new rules that would allow us to essentially open up a fourth non-overlapping channel, Channel 14, under the existing 802.11 standard. So your existing Wi-Fi devices would be able to operate over a completely new channel, and we could essentially increase the nation's Wi-Fi capacity by a third at the 2.4 GHz range very quickly. The rules have been proposed, we're waiting for them to be published in the Federal Register, and we will be working on that rulemaking proceeding this year. And hopefully by the end of this year, be able to provide what we're calling Terrestrial Low Power Service. Once we receive authorization from the FCC, we've committed to do two things: we're going to provide 20,000 free access points to schools, hospitals, and other special interest groups that utilize this dedicated 22 MHz channel. And on the MSS side, once we receive the authorization, we commit to provide our mobile satellite services for free in any federally declared disaster area.

Absolutely, very happy about that.