Gran Colombia subsidiary commences operations in Sacramento
Gran Colombia Resources Inc GRM
Shares issued 35,553,321 1999-10-13 close $0.81
Thursday Oct 14 1999
Mr. Andrew Kaplan reports
Gran Colombia Resources' newly acquired, 100-per-cent-owned subsidiary, Wavve Telecommunications Inc., has officially commenced operations at its corporate headquarters, and first co-location centre, in Sacramento Calif. A co-location centre allows customers to maintain ownership of server hardware and software applications, while enjoying the benefits of a secure, controlled infrastructure and remote management options. Wavve is a facilities-based provider of high performance, managed data and voice networking services providing physical and virtual hosting to e-commerce operations, commercial and industrial businesses and ISPs with mission-critical Internet operations.
While final completion of the 30,000-square-foot facility's leasehold improvements is not anticipated until the end of the year, the facility is fully operational 24 hours per day, seven days a week. In the process of setting up the facility, relationships for the various operational requirements were established with best of breed suppliers such as Pacific Bell, Cisco, Qwest, MCI/Worldcom, Toshiba, Lucent and Xerox.
In addition, Wavve has entered into an agreement with Pacific Bell in California. This alliance with Pacific Bell, which is providing the fibre optic hookup for Wavve's Sacramento facility, provides Wavve with statewide access to potential business customers using the latest DSL and frame relay technologies. Wavve is also actively pursuing the possibility of forming agreements with other well-known suppliers in the industry, such as Sun Microsystems, Hewlett-Packard and Oracle. The prospect of Wavve bringing its highly complex and highly technical solutions to business entities that might otherwise lack these resources appears very appealing to these major organizations. Wavve, in turn, is excited by the additional marketing thrust and legitimacy that alignment with companies of this stature will afford it.
The buildup of Wavve's Sacramento sales force began in earnest in mid-September and it will be in place by the end of October. A number of service agreements have already been executed or are expected to be executed shortly, including the previously announced agreement with Amalganet.com Inc., a provider of virtual ISP marketing services for affinity group dial-up users. This contract is for a term of three years providing minimum revenue to Wavve of $50,000 (U.S.) per month. Amalganet anticipates increasing its subscriber base to in excess of 500,000 in less than a year, providing the potential of increasing revenue to Wavve from this contract alone to a minimum of $875,000 (U.S.) per month. Significant contracts are under negotiation with Virtual Broadcasting Corporation for co-location services, streaming video hosting, and network management services. Discussions are also under way with McGeorge School of Law for the outsourcing of IP services including E-mail and campus-wide VPN applications.
Wavve has also begun establishing its indirect sales channels, including agents and value-added resellers, by identifying 10 sales agencies with whom execution of agreements is imminent. Initial meetings have also taken place with all agents and the total network will represent approximately 15 full-time equivalents.
Wavve has also devised a highly attractive solution for competitive local exchange carriers (CLECs) to offer bundled IP services to their own customers through a co-location and private labelling arrangement with Wavve. Talks are under way with three large national CLECs at present.
Now that the Sacramento location is up and running, attention will be given to the establishment of the next three locations, with operations at the currently anticipated sites to commence as follows: Portland -- February, 2000, Orange County -- June, 2000, and Salt Lake City -- September, 2000. In total, over 40 locations have been identified in the United States alone, and Wavve also sees additional potential to expand in Europe in the future. The scheduling for setting up the various centres will be accelerated as results from the established operations dictate.
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