Using Telecom 99 to announce its launch, Globalstar, the satellite phone consortium led by Loral Space and Communications, stressed its differences from Iridium and ICO, and said it would be operating satellite phones by mid-November.

Iridium, led by Motorola, slipped into bankruptcy in August after launching its operations earlier this year. Its prices were too high and it suffered marketing problems. ICO, initiated by Inmarsat, followed suit that same month.

Globalstar - one of three satellite projects underway offering mobile phone connections everywhere in the world - stressed differences such as a distribution system based on partnerships with access providers and a more simplified satellite system.

The cost of communicating with Globalstar is expected to be between one and two dollars a minute, compared with between two and six dollars for competitors.

Terminals - provided by Ericsson, Telital and Cellstar - will cost between 800 and 1,600 dollars in Europe, and on average from around 1,200 dollars globally.

The service will be provided in three test stages for large company clients. It will start operations in mid-November and cover most of the world before the end of March next year.

The service is based on 48 satellites in the LEO (low earth orbit), of which 40 have already been launched.

"We knew that the use of cellular phones was going to expand but it is still far from covering the planet," Globalstar president Bernard Schwartz said.

For its part, Skybridge, a constellation of 80 satellites expected to be launched in 2002 for multi-media purposes, says it is very different to Iridium and is targetting different markets.

"We are targetting the broad band service market and our approach to the market is entirely different from a marketing standpoint, from a technical standpoint," president and chief executive officer Pascale Sourisse said.

"We wanted to make sure very early in the programme that we could be in a position to deliver services at the same price as on terrestrial networks," she said.

Skybridge aims to provide access to the Internet, games and video-conferencing. The network should be complementary to the terrestrial networks, Skybridge says.

Sourisse said the cost would be around 30 dollars a month to subscribe and Skybridge aims for 20 million subscribers.

Sourisse said the company would break even with just a quarter of that number of subscribers - five million. The company would get back its investment of 4.8 million dollars three years after its start, she said.

Skybridge was initiated by Alcatel and the French group remains the major shareholder with nearly 50 percent, alongside other firms such as Loral and Sharp.

A first operator partnership was announced in June with Telstra, of Australia.

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