Bill and all,
First of all, I understand my rump is being royally roasted on RB. The rumors seem to be running the gamut. Let me put my meeting with FNTN in perspective. I work for a very large New York City real estate company. We were interested in seeing what services FNTN had to offer and how that would be of benefit to the marketing of our company. That's it. We were not there to sell them anything or anything else you can come up with. It was a first meeting to discuss our marketing needs. PERIOD!
Secondly, I was very enthusiastic about what I saw at FNTN and put out a short initial post, planning to elaborate the next day. At 5:00am on Saturday my computer fried. I spent all day setting up my new computer and in one of the downloads I developed an extension conflict. At this time it is still not fixed. Posting from home is impossible. The only place I can post from is work. I am sure this could appear as some sort of hype manipulation on my part. It's not, so get over it!
Thirdly, I did not get any more information from FNTN than is already known. I was pleasantly surprised that this was so. It only added to the credibility of Michael and Maura in my estimation. Even though I have visited the company on several occasions, I was treated in no special way. If I ventured into an area that was none of my business, I was politely told that they could not comment. I don't know anything more about the audit, PR releases, contracts, filings, customers, or anything else other than the marketing of my company and the services that FNTN can offer to help that marketing effort.
What I did get to see was the intRAnet. I did get to see a video from a customer, not a sample (no, I will not divulge the name of the customer for reasons already stated on SI ad nauseum). I was most impressed. The videos that you see on the FNTN site via the intERnet are the best available, but the videos on the intRAnet are spectacular. I did get an email from Alan Spar this morning to correct an earlier post that I made. Let me quote:
"I noticed on your SI post that you mentioned 320 or 360 frames per second. Actually, the video you saw was at 30 frames per second (typical broadcast frame rate). The bandwidth utilized for the video was 384kbs (kilobits per second)."
From what I could tell, anything that a customer wants done with video/voice/data, they can do. If a customer wants to set up an intRAnet on the customer's servers, no problem. If they want them to set up an intRAnet on FNTN's servers, no problem. Video conferencing, no problem. Communications solutions, no problem. Etc., etc., etc. They are a provider of video/voice/data solutions. Notice I said PROVIDER. I did not say marketer. At this point, a customer brings their communications needs to FNTN and FNTN will provide solutions and help with the communications planning. They will not come up with a MARKETING plan for the customer. A customer needs to bring in their plan and FNTN is the execution expert. This would be the one area of expansion that I would like to see. In my opinion, this would bring them into a new league. Bring your communications/marketing problems to FNTN and they will help with both of those problems AND provide the services for that plan. However, one step at a time.
Future items for FNTN, V-mail and e-commerce were mentioned. However, they are in development and their current status was not discussed.
Anything beyond what I have said above would simply be projections of my own mind on things that are possible and not based in fact. Since SI is a forum for the exchange of ideas and for conversation (intelligent or not) I invite you to join in a dialogue as to the future applications of different business and marketing plans that might be possible for FNTN.
I regret that I must close, but there is business to attend to. If you have questions, I will try to answer them either in public or via PM.
Best,
Tomato Man
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