Evening Laz and all...
Man, I go out of town for three days and everything goes to hell in a basket. I think I have the gist of the concern... an old letter that somebody resurrected for some unknown reason, a mass selloff and bailout by oldtimers, the new guard beginning to take over... maybe it's about time.
I didn't have time before I left to post my impressions of my visit to the CTExpo and the conversation I had with Bob Dunagann of Digitcom, but better late than never... especially since no one else seemed to have made it to the show.
Ok, here's a brief summary... I'm not going to try and go thru all the details, mostly because I didn't go there for details and thus don't remember all of them and so, will stick to impressions. I had the benefit of seeing aya's impressions before I went, so I had some clue as to expect. If you're already bored, click next.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
First, the booth...
NMSS had a big space (and in NYC that means big big bucks). They used about half of it and set up dais's around the other half for 12 to 15 of their alliance partners, of which Digitcom is one. Each dais had a work station/terminal on it and most of the partners had some kind of literature, gimmicks, etc (as aya described). Digitcom didn't... but, I don't think that was a big deal, since Digitcom is marketing in foreign countries, not here. On the Digitcom work station, they had a simulated traffic monitoring system displayed.... similar, I think, to what someone acting as a connection hub for a long distance service might have.
The person at the booth was the previously described (earlier posts) Bob Dunagan, Dir. of Sales & Marketing. As described on the thread, he is pretty new to DGIV. I went up as a curious onlooker interested in VoIP products between countries (which I am as a consultant to a legitmate potential client). I pretended to know nothing of Digitcom. Bob began to describe the type of business they were in and some of the locations they have or are setting up in. The list contains the places so often mentioned on the thread... Indonesia, Korea, Japan, Australia, CA, Russia, and maybe one or two others. I kind of led him with curiousity questions and he was quite willing to talk about the how, and the why, and the what of doing what they're trying to do.
I did not ask any questions about financials, filings, etc. Remember, I'm a curious, but now interested audience for what he's got. I asked about activity in the middle east... they're working on it, but the cultural issues are tough to overcome. Europe... working on things there too, but nothing volunteered and I didn't pursue it. He did volunteer that they were working on some different arrangements for their services, but that he wasn't in a position to discuss them. We talked about pricing and how DGIV prices their services and would/will/does make their money. It was pretty interesting how they plan to use the internet for daytime calls, but then switch over to Sprint for the 5pm to midnight run, and then to ATT for the midnight to 8am shift. The latter has very very cheap bulk rates for that period. To summarize using Bob's example: if they charged 50 cents a minute somewhere, it might break down thusly ----> 25 cents total for all connections & line costs, 5 cents to the in-country partner, 5 cents to the prepaid phone card company, maybe another 5 cents for miscellaneous, the rest... is DGIVs. Keep the line costs down, get the minutes up, and the profits grow.
The key piece of Chin's approach, is that all the countries Digitcom is in, or working to be in, have high ethnic populations from those countries here in the US. These people make and get phone calls from their country of origin... families, etc. The economic situations of some of these might limit the calls from there to the US, but certainly not from the US to there. What I see is a built-in captive audience market with a need, a big need that can be filled at a reasonable price by an enterprising firm... guess who.
Of the countries he was willing to mention, they have sites in various phases of testing in most of them at this time. The US terminal site is in Los Angeles from where they can patch calls to anywhere in the continental US for pennies, even less at night. Servers are custom built by a small firm in Los Angeles. NMSS supplies the VoIP boards. Digitcom supplies the proprietary compression software - which is where the value is. (The compression algorithms allow up to an 8 to 1 compression of the packets, which means that instead of getting only 24 simultaneous calls over a standard T1 line, the compression permits up to 192 simultaneous calls... clearly reducing the per minute call cost dramatically.)
Indonesia and Russia are concerns to Digitcom due to their currency and politcal instability right now. Concerns, but only in the short term. In that, he sounded like an ever optimistic salesman. He did say that once the new Indonesian government gets more settled, that they felt their prospects for getting underway were excellent. In all of this, the underlying premise is that the body with the power must be involved... and that does not necessarily mean the government. It means whoever can pull the strings needed to let them get going. This is what JC is doing, getting these arrangements made.
I spent 45 minutes with him and probably could have stayed another hour and he would have kept talking. Several others came up to the dais while I was there. They listened a few minutes and moved on. Bob did not attempt to talk to them.
I went there wanting to know if Digitcom was for real. I came away believing they are. There's a need, they have a solution, they have someone able to establish the contacts and contracts, and the means to make it a go. There is no way this guy could have stood there and lied to me without me sensing it. What does that mean.... Well, as I see it and Laz called it in that magnificent post of is the other day, this company is no scam. They are having severe growing pains (Bob said they have around 30 people). Chin evidently is trying to do it all himself or at least control it and some things are slipping through the cracks. Since I saw no one else from Digitcom there, I can't comment and won't speculate on the caliber of personnel. I had hoped that at least Roger or someone else might also be there, but I don't consider it a failing that they weren't.
-----------------------------------------------------------
I've had the benefit of the weekend to think about this... that's without SI too, so I had nothing to influence my thoughts on this except my own thinking such as it is. Each who reads this will have to form their own opinion. You may take it or leave it. As for me, it's tough to see the price drop this way and not see any response from the company... but the company's there and the plan is there, and it is coming together, and for that I'll hold on.
Chuck |
