Y2K Insurance Behind Satellite Phone Surge By Neil Winton

LONDON (Reuters) - Multinational companies are rushing to buy satellite telephones as last-minute insurance against the millennium computer bug, company officials said on Friday.

But some industry experts point out that this is unlikely to provide much immunity because satellite phones have to use ground-based facilities to complete calls to traditional users.

The sales surge is helping the floundering providers of satellite telephone services who have invested billions of dollars in space networks but found sales hard to come by.

Potential customers have been put off by the high cost of telephone handsets at around $3,000 and calls costing up to $7 a minute.

But worries that everything will go quiet after midnight on December 31 have prompted companies like information technology giant International Business Machines Corp and global telecommunications operator AT & T Corp to stock up on satellite telephones.

The fear is that computers controlling telephone and utility services might succumb to the so-called Y2K problem. Computers programmed to use double digit dates like 97 might trip over when faced with the zeros in 2000.

Remote Areas Might Be Vulnerable

London-based Inmarsat, which had 140,000 subscribers at the end of 1998, said its sales of Mini-M phones had accelerated over the last few months, but declined to be more specific.

Privately owned Inmarsat, likely to be floated on stock markets in two years, said....

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http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/19991217/tc/yk_satellites_1.html

-- LOON (blooney10@aol.com), December 17, 1999

Answers

...global telecommunications operator AT & T Corp to stock up on satellite telephones.

But aren't they, like, a ... long distance TELEPHONE COMPANY? Obviously just a bunch of doomers. Or maybe it's just their normal precaution they take at the end of every year. Yeah, that's the ticket!

-- Steve Heller (stheller@koyote.com), December 17, 1999.