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Gold/Mining/Energy : Cybersurf (CY.A) - Bridge between 20th & 21st Centuries -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: J-R who wrote (799)	2/27/1999 12:25:00 AM
From: Robert F	Respond to of 3243

Hi JR The slow connections and problems your friend experienced I have not heard of before with 3web. I do not think it was 3web. I know a few people who have it and slow or hard to get onto is not what they have said. In fact, fast and easy was there experience. I know Telus (local telco) is part of 3WEB. At the presentation Telus was an advertiser but I also think they are involved in providing lines (I do not know this for a fact). So the speed and availability would be great. The people I know who use it say at first they did not like the additional ads but got used to that real fast. I have heard complaints that it is hard to find as you cannot download it from the web site. At one time the tv commercial that used to run on channel 3 (CFCN is channel 3 and why I think it is called 3WEB) said you could get it at First Calgary (local banks). I do not know how they are ditributing it now. Regarding a winner, I think they have a winning product here. Although they give access free they are getting fair chunks of money for the product. Calgary $4M and Edmonton $2.5M. I think they have a real good chance of success based on (my opinion): 1) Baton must see this as a way into a new advertising media. They already have access to almost every big advertiser through there tv side, why not bring them a new media approach? 2) Since Baton is across Canada 3Web could be "walked" into every city in Canada. 3) It seems to be a simple enough concept to work: give away free internet access to users, sell ad space to local/national advertisers. One point I really liked at CFCN presentation was that ads play/display no matter where your are surfing. Most sites I do not stay long enough at the read ad. Here ads do not care where I am. 4) They need to get Vancouver. Calgary and Edmonton are nice but Vancouver would attract attention of international companies. I think CY is too small to carry this product much further. They need to sell it to a well funded company. 5) Vancouver is very real possibility because Telus and BCTel have just merged. Take the same connectivity deal that they have here in Alberta into BC. I believe they are real close to this deal as we speak. 6) In order to be seen as a real serious company they will have to put someone else in front of the microphone. To here him speak it is obvious what role Merchia plays at CY. The days of "nerds at the helm" have long past. I do not believe any company can be taken seriously if there President cannot think through his thought BEFORE it leaves his mouth. Sorry to go on about this but saying that "we would never in a million years have thought about giving away free connections to 30,000 university students" does not make me feel like he should be leading a company. In all of the articles I have seen the picture always shows someone who looks like a kid, wears a teeshirt and has what looks like greasy spiked hair. I do not believe that this accumluation over the last few days was due to the auction press release. I think those new to this thread are soon to have another fun ride very, very similar to bid.com. Good luck to all.