SAS Sydney / Melbourne meetings

Nothing new from the presentation - we should all already know what is in there. And it gets a bit annoying at meetings when people are asking questions for information that is clearly available on the company announcements page. Sorry, but the below points from me will probably go over some of these old points but hopefully it will help people spend their questioning time more constructively in Melbourne and give you a bit of a head-start.

Try to hold off on the questions while the guys are stood in 'presentation mode' at the front and instead save the majority of questions for the more informal chat over drinks and nibbles which will come after the presentation. You will find they talk much more freely and relaxed under this circumstance. And remember there are simply things that legally they cant divulge (IE the F* word ...FUNDING!).

My take-away points written below are my recollection of conversations I had with Meir and Meidad separately after the presentation and are my interpretation of what was said, may not be accurate and should be taken as opinions, not facts. And please - if you are in Melbourne - it would be great if you could build on the below conversations.



-Meir clearly went over the fact that revenue from the Diamonds is irrelevant. He mentioned briefly that it could be between 500k and 3mil but ultimately that is irrelevant as they were never intended to generate income but only to be used as a commercial demonstration (I know this has been posted many times before but thought I'd refresh the point). It is also irrelevant as it is an insignificant amount in consideration to the end goal.

-We should be launched and in orbit by this time (Jan) next year (not sure if they were managing expectation here and there is potential for an earlier launch but this is what was said).

-We will be cash positive very soon after the first batch of pearls are up.

-For anyone who is not already aware - a POS is pretty much identical EFTPOS device.

-There will be many ways to connect to the satellites - either through the use of the router or a sat sleeve or other sat phones - one such example is the $30 socio eco phone. Currently 1 million are about to come online in Pakistan I was told. Obviously Pakistan has no connection with SAS before anyone asks.

-You will be able to call into or out of the SAS network. (IE you could be sat in a foreign country somewhere around the equator - use a phone connected to SAS and call someone on the telstra network in Australia for example.)

-It will have its own country code (E.G. +61)

-The increase in power from 3w on the diamonds to 120w on the pearls allows much greater capacity (much more people connecting through each satellite) I would like clarification, if someone in Melbourne could ask - if this allows a potential to increase the pearls from 2 megasymbols to something larger? I was told that 2 megasymbols (2MB) is relatable to connecting your phone with 2.5G. Currently in developed countries we use 4G - and I was told that in the future we will be able to upgrade the satellites to transmit to 4G or whatever the technology is when the upgrade takes place. 2.5G really meets the demands from the population around the equator.

-I also clarified that an upgrade of this kind would not affect the amount of S-Band bandwidth that we have licensed from Ofcom as we have much more bandwidth than we need to take us way into the future.

-I put to Meir question of the cost of the insurance from the UK regulator and if there was any saving to be had here by licensing elsewhere ... he enlightened me on the fact that part of the criteria for licensing the bandwidth with ofcom is that the satellites are (3rd party) insured. He explained that there is pressure from the space community in the UK to licence nano satellites differently so that each satellite may not have to pay the high price for insurance in order to meet licensing criteria. Ultimately he said if this doesn't change in the UK then there are potentially other options - for example in the U.S the licensing criteria are different - I think he feels the UK regulator will change its criteria due to this and because of the broader picture of the increasing amount of nano satellites that will be launched in the coming years (Ofcom wouldn't want to lose business). I think there is a healthy amount of money that we may save on the cost of each pearl if this changes so lets keep our eyes on that.

-The pearls are not currently being built as they are still in design phase. The design phase takes much longer than the actual build phase which I'm told is actually relatively quick. All seems logical here.

-Richard Branson is not going to fire our pearls at the sun (...with him being connected to OneWeb).

-We are and always will be a B2B..2C company.

-They see oneweb and more recently gomspace as no competition as they are either different markets or different technologies.

-Apparently the market is so large (3 billion people+) that even if there were 5 or 10 companies similar to SAS that were setting up to achieve the same goals it would still have no affect on SAS.

-An interesting point when chatting with Meidad - was that if the connections to the pearl satellites met capacity... then we would all be extremely happy shareholders!

-There are probably a few more points buzzing around in the back of my brain so feel free to ask me and I'll try and answer to help you get ahead before the meeting.



Overall the guys came across very realistic in managing expectations and were not here for a circus show - they said there will be problems or setbacks along the way which they will be prepared for as best they can. Ultimately its up to us to decide if we have confidence in their abilities to realise the SAS vision and bring online this much needed service.

I think people going to Melbourne should remind themselves that this is an opportunity to fill in any gaps in your research and if possible to contribute to SAS also and not just use it as an interrogation to get the answer to the funding question.

This is a great opportunity and I personally think they are a very capable team - not just from meeting them but just look at what they have achieved thus-far! ...I also have a great bullshit detector too - which remained silent during the course of the evening.

I hope you make them feel welcome in Melbourne and please post on here after you have had the chance to fill in any gaps in your research by putting questions to them / proposing your own ideas or sharing your research with them.

Enjoy Melbourne SAS crew! And I look forward to hearing from you on here soon after the event!

GLTAH!!