IP: Iridium to cease March 17?

[Dave Farber <farber () cis upenn edu>]

> Date: Thu, 09 Mar 2000 08:47:36 -0800
> To: LUIS77 () aol com
> From: Dan Kasal <kasal () 4cellular com>
>
>
> You are not going to believe this.  A friend of mine who is a big Motorola 
> VIP customer said that yesterday he received a letter via fedex that said 
> something along the lines of:
>
> We value your business and regret to inform you of an unfortunate 
> development about the iridium service.  Unless additional financing is 
> obtained before March 16th 2000 we can no longer guarantee that Iridium 
> service will be offered after 11:59pm of this date.  (This letter was 
> released after Craig McGraw, who many believed was the only likely 
> investor, said he had no intentions of investing).
>
> My friend just bought the new 9505 Iridium phone 3 weeks before the 
> letter.  The letter did not mention anything about a refund for this phone 
> and phones that were purchased in the past.  Can you believe it?  He 
> called his VIP rep and got a recording.  His VIP rep called back and said 
> he (the VIP rep) is out of a job effective next Friday and that Motorola 
> is doing away with their entire VIP program.  WOW.
>
> To verify this I called Seven Seas Communications at 800 566 9600, one of 
> the relseller's of Iridium service.  It is all true. After McGraw pulled 
> out the bankruptcy judge gave Iridium until March 15 to come up with 
> another financing option before he rules on the 17th.  If additional 
> financing is not obtained, service may cease temporarily or permanently 
> after this date.  Customers who did not specifically have a written 
> agreement with Motorola regarding the potential buy back of the Customer's 
> phone will be stuck with the phone.  Isn't that nice.