Rick, my two cents. I see the NOC as the most flexible and
not a show stopper. First, seems Wildfire is just selling a
packaged NOC or a NOC kit/recipe. General Magic can do this
too in the future. Seems selling right of use for MagicTalk
VUI would be one example of this.
I see keeping control of the NOC during this market/product
formation phase the best way to go because:
-- It let's General Magic enhance Portico with new features
and respond to competition quickly (Wildfire may have a
very hard time moving network Wildfire carriers to new
network Wildfire versions. This can lead to a heavy
maintenance burden as different carriers want only their
fixes and upgrades and refuse new features or delay
important changes for months/years in order to test. I
have experience with this on a day to day basis in my
day job. We even give away upgrades and provide extensive
support and some vendors still want to wait for good
and not so good reasons, such as asynchronous schedules,
low perceived value, risks, ...)
-- It keeps control of the Portico/MagicTalk brands during
this formative period (It would be very bad it one
of the Wildfire carriers takes a divergent path from
Wildfire)
-- It allows General Magic to insure common high quality (It
could be very very bad for Wildfire if one of their carriers
does a poor job of implementing, providing, servicing,
maintaining network Wildfire)
-- It provides the carriers a way to get into a relatively
new and changing market for low cost
-- Carriers and businesses use ISPs and outsource
parts of their business all the time so GMGC is not blazing
a new trail here. I'm expecting General Magic would be
very accommodating to the large carriers (e.g., board
seats :^), on site personnel, extensive contractual
commitments such as availability requirements, equity
investments, ...)
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