DLD Corporation Has Answers
Q: What is "Digital Long Distance
Corporation's" history?
A. DLD is a California corporation spun-off of Digitcom
Interactive Multimedia Corporation toward the end of
1996 to exploit patents and software development in the
rapid-growth Internet and international Public Switched
Telephone services markets.
Digitcom has been in the digital telephony industry for
over ten years.
DLD's senior management has broad experience
innovating telecommunications computer software, digital
network services and international long-distance services
while working with large foreign telephone companies,
and with regional and local service resellers and
equipment dealers.
Digitcom's family of computer-based digital voice
processing equipment has been responsive to unique
design needs of business in many industries.
Q: What are the products and
services that DLD is bringing to market
that will make the investors stand up
and take notice?
A: DLD is marrying traditional high-growth telephony and
long distance with new delivery systems, particularly the
Internet and corporate data networks.
Each product is based on UNIQUE, PATENTED
technology.
The products being launched first are easily understood,
familiar, and provide the Company with unique
competitive advantages.
The initial products DLD will offer to targeted international
telecommunications markets are:
Mobile Callback - "Callback" or "reorigination" has
grown from a 1991 start-up to a $1.5 Billion industry
last year and operates in over 200 countries around
the world. Callback substitutes U.S. international
long distance circuits for foreign "PTT" telephone
company circuits. Until now, callback customers in
those countries outside the United States had to
make a call to a computer telephone switch located
in the U.S., get a recognition signal, hang up and
wait up to several minutes for the switch to call them
back with an American long distance line
connection at the phone number programmed into
their account. DLD's system eleminates this
cumbersome and inflexible approach, allowing
customers to use the least expensive long distance
available, from any phone, calling anywhere in the
world
FAXport ? customers send faxes from their fax
machine to recipient's fax machine using the
Internet to transport the data. In short, your fax
machine becomes an Internet access device. With
radical savings in phone line costs
VOXport ? voice messages of any length overcome
the multi-time zone problem with business calls,
again using the Internet to carry the voice message
to the other side of the world. The user calls a local
number, inputs the number of the person he's
calling, and leaves a verbal message. The DLD
Network delivers that voice message to a computer
near the recipient, and dials out to alert the
recipient of the waiting message.
All DLD technologies provide the Company very
significant cost savings over traditional phone
connections, and give its dealers and agents a decisive
competitive price advantage over PTT charges.
The Company has completed vigorous testing of FAXport
in the field, and will launch service between Hong Kong
and North America in March, 1997.
Q: FAXport is an international fax
technology that uses the Internet to
carry facsimiles around the world. Just
how big a market is that?
A: There is $600 Billion a year in total telecommunications
traffic worldwide.
8% to 12% of that traffic is facsimile transmission, or $45
Billion a year.
Research indicates that the preponderance of the
international fax traffic is between the Far East and North
America, and Europe/North America.
Q: What's the outlook for the callback
industry?
A: International telephone traffic is estimated to be a
$78.5 Billion industry.
Callback is a nascent industry whose 2% share will
certainly grow very quickly.
Studies of traffic origination and termination patterns
demonstrate rapid acceptance of reorigination services.
The weight of the United States' FCC is actively
supporting the callback industry in international
telecommunications treaty negotiations under the WTO
negotiations.
Q: How will the WTO Telecom Pact
just concluded in Geneva affect the
Company?
A: DLD shares in the excitement that has attended the
agreement between the nations of the World Trade
Organization. This pact commits 68 countries to bring
free-trade principles to their telecom industries under the
auspices of the World Trade Organization. Its provisions
come into effect January 1, 1998. The most immediate
effect will be to open 100% of what has been only 17% of
top telecom markets to U.S. companies.
Jeffrey Kagan, an industry analyst at Kagan
Telecommunications Association, was quoted in the Los
Angeles Times as saying, "U.S. call-back services, which
let customers make international phone calls via another
country with cheaper charges, will benefit in the short
term." DLD's Mobile Callback's competitive advantages
will remain a force in these newly-opened markets for a
number of years. The climate of open competition, and
the inclusion of data transmission, satellite services, etc.,
in the agreement sets the stage for rapid expansion and
secure operations in all DLD's target markets.
Q: What's the competitive picture?
Are their other services that will siphon
off some of that business?
A: Right now, FAXport is almost unique in that it doesn't
require any new equipment or "black boxes" to be put on
the line. Customers get the economy of the Internet just
using their fax machine. They don't have to have Internet
access-?they don't even have to own a computer!
This makes it a very attractive technology for markets like
China, Hong Kong, Europe ? places where the
penetration of the Internet is not significant, and where
long distance calls are expensive.
There is no company that is offering the array of Internet
Long Distance services that Digitcom will be introducing
over the next few months.
The principal competition is national telephone
companies in the markets we'll be serving, and the small
share that international callback operators based in the
U.S. have shaved off their in-bound long distance traffic.
Q: As a small company
headquartered in Southern California,
how is Digitcom going to enter these
off-shore markets and get a significant
share of telecom business?
A: Each country presents unique issues as well as
potential partners for Joint Venture. We are in discussion
with PTT's in a couple of the Far East markets we've
targeted, and have an agreement in principal with a
significant ISP in one, as well as large telecom divisions of
companies entering newly de-regulated markets in
others. We should be announcing finalized agreements in
three major markets in a matter of weeks.
DLD's targeted roll-out markets are gateways to large
national markets ? Hong Kong to China, Taipei to Taiwan
and its PacRim trading partners, and Paris, beyond
France to the European Union.
The Company is also marketing through Digitcom's
associated dealers and telecom resellers located around
the world - Australia, Hong Kong, Taipei, Argentina,
Mexico, France, Saudi Arabia, and of course, the US and
Canada.
Q: International telephone traffic is
being handled by some very large
companies right now, some with close
government involvement. How will
DLD compete with them and make
money in that context?
A: DLD has targeted the large metro markets of Hong
Kong, Taipei, and Paris for initial launch of services.
These markets have qualities in common that make them
attractive for initial roll-out of service:
- Hong Kong and Taipei have PTT and regulatory
environments that are rapidly opening to competition.
France's telecommunications industry is similarly
deregulating to competition and diverse product offerings
by independants
- The Company has influential local partners/agents in
each of these markets
- Local joint venture partners will provide rapid penetration
of their respective markets, and will mean that DLD's
services will have a interested local nationals involved in
providing services.
Initial metro markets targeted concentrate considerable
telecommunications traffic in a manageable media
market, amplifying the Company's advertising and
promotion efforts.
These markets have high awareness of the advantages
of callback and the Internet, with "virgin" market conditions
in supplying Internet-based communications services.
Q: What are the "competitive
advantages" of DLD Mobile Callback
mentioned above?
A: By using the transport of the Internet instead of
traditional switched long distance, our cost structure is
extremely competitive.
The difference in the cost of telecommunications in the
US versus the costs in other parts of the world means we
can offer very attractive savings to users of DLD Mobile
Callback.
Customers can access DLD Mobile Callback from any
telephone, even if they are traveling. Hence, it is "mobile".
Connections using U.S. long distance circuits are
established without the user having to hang up, or wait
longer than 10 seconds.
Q: What other communications
products will DLD introduce? Does
the Internet figure in to the Company's
future development plans?
A: What the Internet represents is simply an expansion of
the potential market for development that the Company
already has operating on corporate data and telephone
networks in over 5,000 businesses.
DLD was spun-off a company that has designed digital
voice and multimedia Computer Telephone Integration
(CTI) products over a decade. What the Internet gives us
is a very competitive way to transport information
anywhere in the world.
The Company has a number of products that integrate
the Internet and corporate intranets with the Telephone
network. In the next few months, we'll be launching:
- Video Mail: an inexpensive way to send personal
videophone messages to friends, relatives, or business
associates located within the reach of our Network
- Locator: your DLD service account will be easily
programmable to find you with calls, email, or faxes, and
will read them to you or play back voice messages once
you've answered with your password.
The near future will see the introduction of:
- Voice-to-text technology will allow people to make a
verbal message spoken over the phone into an e-mail
message that will pop up on a collegues' computer screen
at the office
- Voice recognition technology will allow users to browse
the Web and actuate other computer functions without the
use of a keyboard by simple verbal commands.
Q: And how can we find out more
about Digital Long Distance
Corporation or your other products?
A: By calling 1-800-473-76863 you can get a report on
DLD and our plans for growth via Internet Long Distance.
You can also go to our Web site: digitcom.com
.
Of course, we'll be happy to send more information to
anyone that calls our office in Santa Monica or e-mails us
at info@digitcom.com.
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