Dr. Hamilton: The company was founded in 1994. It was a spin-out of Harris Corporation based on some technology they had developed for government applications. We started shipping our first products in May 1997, and have been steadily growing our business and the customer base since then. Based on fiscal 2000 financial results, AirNet is now a $34 million-a-year company. The analysts are projecting $70 million in revenue this year, and the company has moved from selling primarily to entrepreneurial or smaller network operators to now selling to larger operators, and we have five trials now under way with large operators. This has been our long-term goal ' to move from the entrepreneurial operators, which is where you need to start to validate the product and develop the reference accounts, to the large operator segment of the market, where operators will buy infrastructure in $50 and $100 million increments.
TWST: You speak of validating the product, could you explain the
products, and could you explain where you are different from your
competitors?
Dr. Hamilton: AirNet is focused on GSM base stations, these are base
stations that network operators like VoiceStream buy so they can offer
sale of telephone service. Our base stations are unique in that we are
the only manufacturer selling base stations based on 'better, faster,
cheaper' products as opposed to 'relationship and price'. Our products
have three compelling advantages over the competition. The first is that
our base stations are software upgradeable to new standards and new
features. In particular, standards that will support new high-speed data
services and wireless Internet applications that will be deployed soon.
The second advantage is that our base stations are software upgradeable
to offer operators in urban centers twice the capacity and twice the
data rate of conventional base stations. And finally, the third
advantage is our AirSite backhaul-free base station, which is the most
cost-effective coverage solution for those areas where operators need
better coverage. This extended coverage is important because operators
can offer service where they don't need a lot of capacity. The
combination of those three factors is what has driven the company to
this point. We've had tremendous success with those three value
propositions, and the best evidence of that is the five large operators
that have signed up to trial and test AirNet's equipment after a
thorough technical and business due diligence. These large operators
were clearly sold on the value proposition that only AirNet can offer,
and after the completion of these trials, can begin moving to
deployment.
Tickers included in this excerpt: ANCC
For more information call (212) 952 7433. The Wall Street Transcript does not endorse any of the comments made by interviewees, and does not make stock recommendations.