I wrote to "our boys" yesterday. What follows is their prompt response which some of you may find of interest. BTW, Patrick Gilbert (of WAVO) gave me approval to post his response on this forum. Pay paticlular attention to the last paragraph about the Starr report - very cool!
Your email has been forwarded to me by customer support and Jennifer Schreier, our Director of investors relations.
About our dependency on Microsoft
Microsoft is an important partner of WavePhore specifically for WaveTop, however, we are not dependent on MSFT for the success of WaveTop. As you know WaveTop is included in Windows 98 and we have no reason to believe this agreement would be affected in any way in the event of a ruling against Microsoft. WaveTop does use IE as its browser, but even if Microsoft was forced to remove the icon from the desktop, WaveTop would still work as it uses the "IE engine" not necessarily the visible part. That engine is part of the operating system and cannot be removed : in fact it is used by a number of applications (even non-Microsoft products) such as Outlook 98,
Money, Quicken, the AOL browser, to name a few.
WaveTop is also available as a standalone product through download and CDs, and in this case it does include IE as part of the package. This version of WaveTop would not be affected by a ruling against Microsoft either.
About cable modems
WaveTop is a data broadcasting service designed to complement, not to compete with point-to-point services such ISPs using modems or cable modems. By nature, broadcasting will always be a more efficient way to distribute the same information to a large audience than point-to-point solutions because it requires a lot less infrastructure and bandwidth. At the same time, broadcasting is not suitable for email or other type of two-way communication. This is why WaveTop is a complement to the "wired Internet".
The current instance of WaveTop, using the VBI as the delivery mechanism, complements the primary way home PC users access the internet : a 28.8/56Kbps modem. While WaveTop has a similar delivery speed, it reaches potentially millions of users at the same time, something impossible over phone lines. Cable modems are now available, but in very small numbers compared to modems. While they offer higher speed, they are still not better than broadcast for mass distribution applications. WaveTop will also migrate to higher bandwidth with the rollout of DTV. It will have a delivery speed similar to cable modems, but still operate in broadcast mode.
You could say that what WaveTop - VBI is to a modem, WaveTop - DTV will be to cable modems, the perfect complement.
As a final note to illustrate the power of broadcasting : recently, when the Starr report was released, using a cable modem did not increase your chances to connect to overloaded server at the White House or any news organization (more than 85% of the requests were not served). As soon as the report was released, EVERY WaveTop user got it instantly without having to connect, with no wait : it was simply there on their PCs, waiting for them to read it at their leisure (assuming the were interested ...). That's the advantage of WaveTop : one-to-many distribution of digital information.
I hope this will answer your questions. Thanks for your support as an investor, and please do not hesitate to contact us if you have any additional questions.
Sincerely,
Patrick Gilbert
V-P and CTO
WavePhore WaveTop, Inc. |
