Chapter 186: The Communications Revolution

If you talk about who is the most dazzling technology company in the United States right now, then Iridium is definitely a well-deserved No. 1. A week ago, Iridium officially announced that the Iridium satellite global communication system has completed all the launch and commissioning tasks, and can officially provide high-quality global satellite communication services to the world. At the same time, Iridium's board of directors also announced the company's financial report for the first half of the year, which showed that Iridium has reached two million active users and has begun to achieve profitability.

Iridium's outstanding performance stunned Wall Street, but then AT&T's earnings report made the entire Wall Street begin to be impressed by the excellent management ability of Eva, the richest woman in the United States. AT&T's first-half earnings report indicated that the company had completed a fiber-optic backbone connecting the east and west coasts of the United States. As a next step, AT&T plans to work with European telecommunications operators to build an undersea fiber optic line across the Atlantic.

The rapid development of communication technology has completely changed the way American college students communicate, and now that most colleges and universities in the United States have been connected to the AT&T network, all kinds of novel gadgets have begun to enrich the lives of American college students. Some university students invented a cartoon made in plain character and put it on the school's public network, and then a text-only version of the online game (Multiple User Domain game) appeared. College students in the U.S. affectionately call it a mud game.

However, these things are pediatric compared to the Gopher information retrieval system developed by the University of Minnesota. Relying on the Gopher system, websites that support Gopher technology have sprung up all over the network. Speaking of Gopher developed by the University of Minnesota, he was originally an information retrieval system developed by the University of Minnesota itself, which predates the AT&T's network plan. The name Gopher is derived from the University of Minnesota athletic team's mascot, the golden gopher, Gopher. When U.S. universities started a wave of connectivity networks, Gopher was found to be a good application to the network, acting as a basic protocol. As a result, many college students have joined in the support of Gopher.

The advent of Gopher made it possible to discover that AT&T's network was not just for communications, but could do a lot of interesting things. For example, you can play MUD games, and you can use Gopher to retrieve some content that interests you. This has brought more and more new customers to AT&T.

The development of network technology seems to have exceeded all imagination, and it took Americans a hundred years to connect the Atlantic and Indian Oceans with railroads, and now AT&T has spent just a year connecting the east and west coasts of the United States with fiber optics. Now the whole of Wall Street does not know how to evaluate Iridium, Yota Communications, and Telecom U in dollars, and all three companies are in the hands of the same person.

With the advent of the Iridium system, Seryosha was finally able to throw away the bulky and expensive old satellite phones of the past. Seryosha can contact Eva of the United States at any time in Moscow, but the only problem is that the Soviet government has not yet joined the Iridium system, so Seryosha is far less effective talking indoors than in an open space. The Iridium system is completely firmly in Eva's hands. Seryosha had no need to worry about the K.G.B. and C.I.A. surveillance of him. This made it easier for Seryosha to control his business in Western Europe, North America and other regions.

Now Seryosha can talk on the phone with the core members of the Gorky Brotherhood on the phone every week about business. And give instructions to his subordinates. Seryosha had basically completely handed over the business of the Soviet Union to his henchmen trained from the Komsomol, and they could take over a lot of business affairs in the Soviet Union. If there is an emergency, then Hasan and Petrov's father, who are left behind in Moscow, will help Seryosha to deal with it. This also means that people like Boris, Yakov, Mikhail, Yuri and others do not have to return to the Soviet Union, they have worked hard with Seryosha for so many years, and they can finally enjoy a good life.

Boris has been kept in the country by Seryosha for several years, and as Seryosha's right-hand man, Boris has now grown up completely. Now it's time for Boris to go abroad and take over some business matters. Seryosha planned to send Boris to London to replace Nastya, who had been in London, to handle the affairs of the Soviet Foreign Trade Bank in London, and by the way, Yuri's hotel chain and sports betting shop business left in England would also be transferred to Boris.

Seryosha called Nastya back in order to facilitate control of Komsomolskaya Pravda. And to a certain extent, to counterbalance Gusinsky, to prevent Komsomolskaya Pravda from becoming someone else's wedding dress. After all, Seryosha did not know Gusinsky, and he was not at ease in sending the entire Komsomolskaya Pravda to outsiders.

In June, the sixth phase of the Workers' New Town, which had almost become an unfinished building, was finally completed, and at the same time, Volkswagen's car manufacturing plant in Gorky was successfully put into operation. In order for Volkswagen's cars to sell better in the USSR. Seryosha selected a number of subordinates from the Youth League Committee who were interested in entering the automotive industry to join the Volkswagen Group, and Berezovsky, a professor of mathematics at the USSR Academy of Sciences who had worked with Seryosha for a long time, took nearly one-tenth of the production capacity of Volkswagen's production line.

After Nastya returned home, Seryosha pulled Khodorkovsky back from his position as interim head of Komsomolskaya Pravda to make room for Nastya. Seryosha had a long talk with Dolkovsky, and he hoped that Khodorkovsky would be able to deal with the deficit of the Soviet Foreign Trade Bank as soon as possible. After more than a year of hard work, there is now very little foreign exchange left on the books of the USSR Foreign Trade Bank. Seryosha needed Khodorkovsky to clean up these bad debts as soon as possible and prevent a surprise attack by Ligachev's Ministry of Foreign Trade and Economic Cooperation.

Seryosha already has a plan for the next step, he wants to help write Waldnadze on the Georgian issue, the focus of Ligachev's and Shevardnadze's rivalry. Now Komsomolskaya Pravda can be used as the main battlefield this time, and Seryosha wants to put under the microscope everything that the working group that Ligachev sent to Georgia does, so that whatever Ligachev does, it will cause discontent among the population.