Competition
The market for our services is competitive, rapidly changing and
significantly affected by new service introductions and other market activities
of industry participants. We primarily face competition from wholesale
telecommunications carriers, wholesale divisions of international long distance
carriers, providers of long-haul fiber services, principal trading firms,
Internet brokers of telecommunications services and other B2B online exchanges.
Our current and potential competitors include Enron, AIG Telecom, Band-X and
RateXchange. In addition, there are a number of companies, such as Commerce One
and Ariba, developing and marketing B2B online solutions targeted at the market
for trading telecommunications capacity. Some of these competitors offer
Web-based solutions that are designed to enable a telecommunications service
provider to more effectively buy or sell telecommunications network capacity.
Some of our current and potential competitors have longer operating
histories, larger customer bases, greater brand recognition and significantly
greater financial, marketing and other resources than we do and may enter into
relationships with larger, more established and well-financed companies. Some of
our competitors may be able to secure alliances with customers and affiliates on
more favorable terms, devote greater resources to marketing and promotional
campaigns and devote substantially more resources to systems development than we
do. In addition, new technologies and the expansion of existing technologies may
increase competitive pressures on us. We cannot assure you that we will be able
to compete successfully against current and future competitors, and competitive
pressures faced by us could adversely affect our business. |
