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VP of Finance comments on personnel issues in Metro One Telecommunications' corporate culture Full article published: 01/12/2001     DUANE C. FROMHART is the Vice President of Finance of Metro One Telecommunications, Inc.


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TWST: Is it likely or possible that you (Nasdaq:MTON) would expand the service beyond the borders of the United States?

Mr. Fromhart: We have talked about that and made some inquiries in the past, and determined that, at least as far as Europe or Asia, for example, are concerned, if we did that it would probably be done with a partner. The investment by the Finnish company, Sonera, that we announced recently, may give us an avenue to do that. I don’t see us going in and building call centers and that sort of thing. With a partner such as Sonera, perhaps we would develop a partnership in moving into Europe and/or other areas. There may be areas in the Americas that we could possibly move into, but we don’t have plans at the moment.

TWST: With the range of services that you’re contemplating, it seems like you’ll have your hands full, right in this country, for a long time.

Mr. Fromhart: There is tremendous growth. We’ve grown over 100% this year over last year, and we don’t see that necessarily slowing down. We have lots of other customers that we are targeting in the US, and we do have our hands full. We’re growing by leaps and bounds in most of our call centers, and expanding our capabilities, both in the call centers and in our corporate infrastructure. Yes, that keeps us very busy.

TWST: Can you comment on personnel issues in your corporate culture? What you do to attract and retain the best people and on the competition for talent?

Mr. Fromhart: Here in our headquarters in Beaverton, Oregon, our employees consist mostly of our development, systems and technology groups, our customer service and customer care operations groups, and our administrative support groups. We also have the operator base and the call center management out in the field that really make Metro One the top performer that it is. I think we have a really great culture. We have a President, Tim Timmins, who is a great leader, who has a vision for what we’re doing (although he’d probably disagree and insist that it is mostly luck), and is able to articulate that, both to the outside world, and to our employees. He also is a very flexible guy. He makes it a lot of fun here. We work hard, but we keep things light and we try to make it a great place to work. There are also, as with any business, incentive plans that reward people for strong performance. So I think we are able to attract and retain our share of the best people. In the call centers, as you may be aware, we are in competition for the same type of employees as many retail businesses and many call center type businesses. We try to keep our wages competitive, but we also have strong incentive plans for operators that allow them to enhance their income through strong performance, both in the quality of their work and efficiency. Our contracts with our carrier customers require us to meet certain quality characteristics and yet, our profitability depends on our operators being efficient. Sometimes those are conflicting goals, but I think we have the incentive plans in place to balance those two objectives, and it’s definitely a balancing act, balancing quality with efficiency.

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This interview is a small excerpt from a comprehensive interview published in The Wall Street Transcript on 01/09/01. For more information call (212) 952 7400. The Wall Street Transcript does not endorse any of the comments made by interviewees, and does not make stock recommendations.

Copyright 2001, Wall Street Transcript Corp.

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