re: my tip for 2005--- for meerkat meerkat, re the puzzle as to...

re: my tip for 2005--- for meerkat meerkat, re the puzzle as to why the US market for photo enforcement technology is not dominated by a US company, Paul has covered the reasons very well including the fact that Australia basically had a 10 year lead in taking up photo enforcement technology. However one other tremendously important aspect is management.
ACS State and Local is run by an ex U S Army guy, personally I have noticed that these types of executives do not always have suitable qualifications and the free thinking ability to prosper in the cut throat commercial world. Nestor also is headed by a CEO whose qualifications seem pretty thin. Enough to say that the RTS executive are happy to see ACS and Nestor run by the present CEOs.
In contract to these, Redflex Traffic now has a CEO who has outstanding academic qualifications in engineering and management, has spent a lot of his previous career working in the US in the cut throat aerospace industry, and also heads up Redflex Traffic Systems Inc which to all intents and purposes really is a US company. I believe the CEO is the only non american in RTSI.
Resmed and Cochlear among others have very successfully taken on the Yanks and won convincingly, RTS is doing the same.

There always is the threat of a new entrant coming in but one hurdle here is that with the new, preferred digital technology it is not just a matter of buying off the shelf gear and away you go. The very idea of going digital is to have a seamless front to back system all electronic with little human input needed. Redflex took about 8 years to get it right, even to the extent of having eventually to build their own purpose built cameras. This problem is evident today in the attempt by their main competitor, ACS, to go digital. ACS have always bought in Gatsometer wet film cameras from Holland. Gatso brought out a new digital camera recently so ACS tried to go digital with it. However Gatso only made the camera, no back office system to go with it, and ACS are having a lot of trouble scrambling to put together a decent complete system.
A good digital system does the lot right from capture of the infringement, transmission of the encrypted data to the back office by internet or landline, access to vehicle registration details, processing of the infringement into citation form, provision of full electronic reports to each city, access for the courts, etc. Some human input needed, particularly to weed out doubtful infringements, but that's about all.

Particularly at this stage with only less than 3% of the US market penetrated the front runner with digital technology has a tremendous advantage. Mainly red light camera contracts so far as the Yanks are also at least 10 years behind with legislation allowing automatic systems for speed control. Of course once you have a RLC contract with a city and perform well the eventual contract for speed (at intersections, fixed on highways, and mobile speed vans) falls in your lap. A bit of foresight but all Redflex intersection systems are are already speed capable, just need a few$K for a software change. Speed is the blue sky but as yet investors are taking little notice of this aspect.