let me explain.....
I would like to comment on the $24 mil losses in the Bulletin article. GCN is not a company that has been around for years and years. After 4 years including the seed capital stage, the company has been developing its internet TV business on a global basis. It has also during that time been developing a technology from scratch. Hence the past 4 years were very much business developmental stage. The $24 million should be viewed as an investment to take the company to the present stage where it is now on the verge of an expected takeoff in revenue. All R&D expenses have been written off as incurred and so have international business development expenses. After $24 mil, the company can now say with more confidence, it has positioned its business, its technology, and its global focus right and at the perfect time.
The good thing about GoTrek is that this is actually a very stable technology. After going live since April 2000, we still have not seen any other technologies competing with us as everybody else has gone about "pull" rather than "push" and pull has been migrated to the mobile environment from fixed line as well simply because the world is more used to taking on what's given rather than breaking out of the circle as we have done. What is rapidly changing however, is network technology. From fixed line narrowband to wireless broadband. In the latter case, WiFi has been much talked about but two other technologies to be launched commercially and Australia is luckily the first country in the world to get them, iBurst and Unwired. iBurst will be national while Unwired will only be available in Sydney from the first quarter of 2004. I prefer iBurst as the pricing is right and it will be nationally available. The only problem is iBurst is proprietary and is not supported by device suppliers such as Intel as yet and it is not international like WiFi. It relied on the unpaired 3G spectrum, delivering 1.2mbps anywhere in 8 capital cities.
GoTrek can run efficiently over all these networks. As a push technology, eventually it will be like TV delivered over the air to your TV box, except in our case, it will be delivered over wireless broadband to your laptop or PPC. Now, how amazing is the world becoming. The days of video walkman with music or adult or business or sports video delivered to your laptop or PPC anytime anywhere is only 6 to 12 months away. iBurst signal will be transmitted from antennas from a number of existing mobile phone base stations around Australia. Hence, GoTrek EV or m-Vision can be delivered via a wireless broadband network that works like a mobile phone network but not relying on GPRS or 3G or CDMA1x. The mobile carriers and the ADSL providers will have much to lose. You will be able to make VOIP on this iBurst network at far cheaper rates charged by data packets rather than the expensive timed local or long distance calls. I trust you can see how valuable push is and will be. When you can download m-Vision content anytime anywhere at high speed, the time sensitive news content can be delivered to you at near to real time without any download delay.
With that vision in sight, I had to laugh when I read the MUL research yesterday regarding satellite broadband. Why the hell do you want satellite broadband which needs a dish on your roof when you can have wireless broadband everywhere. Just plug an antennaed PCMCIA card into your laptop or a iBurst CF card into your PPC and the way you go. I am sure it will be far cheaper than satellite broadband.
The long winded explanation above I hope puts you in the picture as to how adaptable GoTrek m-Vision is from network to network. The future value of internet TV has yet to be fully realised and wireless broadband will ensure the real pot of gold is going to be much bigger and be more visible in 6 to 12 monhs.
A shareholder of Unwired asked me two days ago, so with wireless broadband, wouldn't everyone just pull videos down and watch them on their PCs? I said, well, TV now is wireless, do you think if everyone can call up Packer to deliver individual Channel 9 content to his TV box at the time of their own choosing, there will still be a Channel 9 business? No, that is a pay per view model, not a media model. Without push, how can Channel 9 aggregate the audience to sell ads? You still need push to establish a successful media business in internet TV land. Yet, there is no push except GoTrek and m-Vision. He had to agree and he did.
Now I trust you understand why Microsoft accepts that m-Vision makes good business sense to them. There aint no other push technology to the mobile device.
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