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The Wireless Outpost Newsletter Issue #16 Vol. 3
Wednesday, October 24 2001
Another issue of the Wireless Outpost Newsletter. This newsletter
is for the soon to be educated cellular phone user community. If you know of
anyone else that may have an interest in our newsletter, make sure to forward
them a copy. Now we move forward at Mach II speed!
[Note: This newsletter is delivered Bi Weekly on Wednesday.]
OUR ISRAELI FRIENDS COME UP WITH ANOTHER NEW BATTERY
First they came out with the disposable zinc air battery. Then they come out with the wireless camera, and with a drum roll here is the next item manufactured in
Israel: the Paper Battery. We aren't just making this up either. No, it hasn't rolled out to market yet but it is expected to be available in the near future.
Paper Power is a company that specializes in microtechnology and that is how they were able to come up with a paper battery. Of course we won't be using paper batteries on cell phones anytime soon, but it could happen. For the time being we will have to settle with having them installed in greeting cards and other disposable items.
Prior to the paper battery, they made a battery that was only one half of a millimeter thick. The cool thing about the 0.5 MM battery is that it is very environmentally friendly. Enough so, that you could eat the casing and drink the fluids within it. At least the chemicals used are supposed to be non-toxic.
For cell phones, it is the battery source that prevents phones from getting smaller faster. The reason why the battery is a problem for cell phones is that they must use more power to pull a signal from the tower and transmit our voices. Until that barrier has been overcome, phones can only get so much smaller without poor performance.
I wouldn't mind an earbud cell phone that was voice activated. I might even consider sticking a wire up my nose to steal
electrochemical charges from my body to power it or something. It is better than that finger phone contraption we wrote about some time back, isn't it? If I had some of this paper, I would be sending plenty of it to the Taliban leaders and the cowardly terrorist they harbor with messages that would "shock" them.
Back to these batteries that they are making and hopefully one day can be implemented into cell phones. This company's specialty is in thin and flexible microelectronic solutions. As well as making batteries that are totally safe as in they cannot explode, shock, overheat, or cause burns. I am not a chemistry major so I don't know how they managed to do that although I knew it could be done. What surprised me is that someone actually figured out how to harvest the concept and make it a reality.
It looks like the race is on between Israel and Japan as to who can be the most innovative with micro and
nano technology. A race that I wouldn't be willing to bet on at these odds. This is further proof that the future of the wireless industry is going to be changing at an even faster speed than what many of us would have suspected. Probably "Taking Cellular to Mach II Speed"? (Had to throw that in there.)
To learn more about the company, just follow the yellow brick (blue link) road to:
www.powerpaper.com
WATCH OUT FOR FOUL MARKETING OF QWEST CELL PHONE OFFERS
This was pointed out to us by another online publication that focuses on the telecom industry in general. It is called The Digest at
www.thedigest.com if any of you are interested in checking them out. Should I dare to say that this publication is what we would call a "legitimate" journalistic venture. Their journalistic talent far exceeds anything we can offer so please don't compare us to them. We aren't even in their league. Anyhow, Qwest has a little trick up their sleeve you should know about so here is the scoop.
Qwest has hired a telemarketing firm to call up consumers and offer a deal on a cellular phone. What is being offered is a marketing strategy referred to as a "negative options contract". What this means is that you can try their service for free for a limited time. But here is where they get you. They will send you some information in the mail with some fine print that tells you that you must contact Qwest within a specific time or you are automatically committed to a one year contract with them for cellular phone service.
In this case you have 15 days to return the phone from the date of activation. So you would think the date of activation is when you call in to get the service up and running right. Wrong. Qwest defines the activation date as the day you receive the phone. Then when you call in to have the phone returned, you will more than likely be placed on hold for quite a while. In the article we read, one customer was on hold for an hour and a half.
So let's say that you finally get somebody on the phone to return the cell phone. How long will it take to get a refund? Another customer stated it took almost 3 months for the refund to show up. Add thousands of customers who have had their money held hostage and Qwest would have a nice fat interest-free loan.
Another problem that was reported was that when the phones arrive they don't have a return address listed on the boxes. Makes it fairly easy to confuse customers into thinking that they cannot do a return to sender since there isn't a return address available. The bottom line is that in this specific case with Qwest, they have used a multitude of strategies that would confuse customers into accepting the service.
Here is what is really pathetic. A 91-year-old woman tried to get Qwest on the phone so she could return her cellular phone. After an hour she gave up and is now stuck with a 1 year agreement for cellular phone service that she doesn't need. I hope that the telemarketer who sold her the phone is proud of his or her impressive sales skills. What am I saying? The idiot who sold the phone to this woman probably doesn't even care.
I am sure this woman is very happy that she now must deduct this expense from her social security check each month for an entire year. Good going Qwest! Robbing the elderly is a honorable way to do business. That just really cooks my bacon.
Nor is Qwest the only company that tries to pull these stunts either. This is a fairly common practice. Now I know indirectly that Qwest puts
a lot of pressure on their telemarketing vendors to perform. But give me a break, somebody should observe and employ at least some ethics.
Do you want to know what the solution is that is being offered to this problem? Voluntary compliance by wireless companies to ensure that contracts and information provided to consumers is clearly presented. Right, and I will hold my breath waiting for that to happen. If you or someone you know is a victim of this kind of garbage, contact your state PUC, the FCC, and/or the FTC.
ISLAMIC LAW ALLOWS DIVORCE TO TAKE PLACE BY CELLULAR PHONE
I have been to the United Arab Emirates and although interesting, it just wasn't for me. I can't even tell you how much trouble I got into violating this Islamic law and that law because I was ignorant of them. I was lucky enough to have some Muslims there who were willing to befriend an infidel such as myself. Even I was stymied as to why they would help me escape the religious police but I wasn't going to complain. As far as their other laws, I heard it was easy to divorce but I didn't know it was this easy.
A Muslim gentlemen in Dubai, UAE, had an argument with his wife. It must have been a doozy because he then sent her a (SMS) text message stating that he was divorcing her immediately. Later they decided to kiss and make up but the husband already claimed that they were divorced. So they sought counsel with a holy man to see if the divorce was valid or not.
The holy Muslim man claimed that the divorce was in fact valid by Islamic law. This man and wife were divorced in the matter of seconds and for the cost of a penny or two! If we had a law like that here, Liz Taylor would have saved thousands if not millions of dollars in attorney fees and court costs. Not that the cost would make much difference to this man because if he lives in the middle east and owns not one but two cell phones, then he has to be fairly wealthy compared to everyone else.
Shortly thereafter, Muslim religious leaders in Singapore and Malaysia also endorsed the interpretation of divorces being valid if the declaration was made via a SMS message on a cellular phone or other wireless device. Almost forgot, although the holy man said it was valid, he did allow the husband and wife to reverse the decree to live happily ever after (or so long as peace remained within the household).
NOKIA USING RACIAL SLUR IN TV COMMERCIAL TO PROMOTE CELL PHONES
I couldn't believe it. I was watching TV for once. Not something I do often as I am too busy scouring for news. A Nokia Cell Phone commercial comes on showing a guy picking at a guitar while a woman is moving stuff out. Turns out it was his girlfriend. Towards the end of the commercial, the woman finally takes the guitar. The man looks lost. Then his cell phone rings.
It plays the ringtone and the man starts bobbing to the music. At the end of the commercial, the guy stands up and flashes his faceplate for everyone to see. A name flashes on the LCD screen. The name was Uncle Kracker? Cracker is a derogatory racial epithet or slur if you will that is commonly used by racists against people of European and Caucasian decent.
If they thought that was supposed to be funny, I am not laughing. They might be based in Finland but I happen to know that they have a strong presence here in the US and how they let that slip through is amazing. If they were hoping to be politically correct, they have swung a little too far to the left on that one. I would say they shot themselves in the foot as I am sure I am not the only one to have noticed.
I just saw the commercial again not too long ago. Not a peep out of the media on it either. Based on that commercial, I would have to say that Nokia is now openly embracing racism. That should give their competitors some ammunition against Nokia for making that mistake.
Sure they will come back and state that it wasn't intended as a racial slur and what not. But if that was the case, then what was the purpose in choosing the word "cracker" as the name? There are millions of other names they could have chosen that would have been a little more in tune with their commercial. (No pun intended. OK, maybe a small one.)
So if you would like to boycott Nokia from now until eternity then here is what you can do. Purchase aftermarket accessory products rather than (OEM) original manufacturer equipment. Aftermarket batteries, car chargers, and leather cases. They are just as good as those with the Nokia logo on them. Of course, dealers of Nokia will always recommend that you buy original. They cost more and the dealer makes more money selling them.
They would get really mad if we let it slip how much the dealers actually pay for these OEM batteries too. You would probably get mad too. I am mad about it anyway because we can't get them for the price that OEM dealers get them for either. Better yet, I think we should make it a question on our IQ test!
SHORT TERM CLOSING OF EVC OFFICES & NEW WIRELESS PHONE ADVERTISER
We have to close down for a short time. We will re-open our office on or around November 10th. We are moving to an area just south of New York in New Jersey but it is an hour's drive south of NYC. You may be wondering why we would want to be near NYC. Well, the fact is that NYC is the international hub of the world and our name is EarthVision. We hope that we can facilitate more international contacts by being near a major hub.
Okay. So a few of our vendors are located in New Jersey and New York. This way we can drop in on our vendors to see what new items are coming onto the market and make them more readily available to you. It will also cut down our costs so we can offer you some lower prices where applicable. Besides, do you know how cheap it is to fly to Europe from NYC? Really, cheap. Like us, we are too cheap to pay for real estate in NYC.
Here is the ironic part. We are going to be only 2 hours south of another company that almost became a potential consulting client of ours. The really bizarre part is that William has recently signed on to assist an entirely different company on another long term project in the same vicinity which forced us to expedite our move. Though we do apologize for the inconvenience, it was just so much simpler to shut down for a couple of weeks and do a complete move rather than paying for two redundant locations over a long period of time.
In the midst of all of that is our fiscal year end so this is making things kind of crazy. Probably not the best time of year to make a move but we wanted to do it before winter set in firmly. Then William goes and gives away his Lincoln Towncar for $1 to a former employee today who didn't have a car to give him a hand up. The poor guy lived in an area of town that wasn't known for peace and quiet and he had to take the bus to work. But he made it to work everyday and on time. A more deserving guy couldn't have been given that car. He is lucky I didn't try to embarrass him with offering a goodbye kiss or something.
By the way, this newsletter will be sent by our Webmaster who is already on the east coast making sure we still have an operational site even though we won't be able to read or respond to your messages. We felt that it was our duty to ensure that you continued to have access to all the information that we made available to you.
We humbly ask for your forgiveness. I might even consider actually attending some journalism classes so I can provide you with some real work. I digress. The November newsletter is going to be late. We may be able to send only one issue for the month. I will try to get out two of them but I don't know if I will have a chance.
One more favor to ask of you. We just signed on Verizon Wireless as an advertiser. So go and buy something from them or sign up for their service so they will continue to advertise with us. Check the banners often as they are the automatically updating kind that will let you know what special promotions they may have available. You will find them plastered all over both websites.
I think Tracfone contacted us once about posting a banner on our site but they didn't want to pay for it. How many of you would allow somebody to stick a billboard on prime retail real estate that came with highly targeted traffic for free? Should they ask to advertise with us again, we might put up their banners provided they pay, of course, so that you can take advantage of their service. If not, you always have Verizon Wireless or whatever other carrier decides to advertise on our website!
Looks like they should have come back to us and set up shop because Verizon Wireless is about to pick up some of their prepaid business since we are going to put their banner on our prepaid cellular page too. I would bet that at least half of our traffic is from people looking for prepaid cellular service. A booming business that is going to grow quite a bit over the next couple of years.
INTERVIEW WITH ALEX GREEN OF NGAME (WAP PHONE APPLICATIONS)
Ngame is a company that creates and produces video games for WAP phones, websites, and digital TV. The founders spent 10 years in research before actually starting the company in 1997. We give them
a lot of credit for doing their homework first. They have done quite a bit in a short time which proves that this is a company of innovative and intelligent people. We were contacted by their Public Relations Agency which led to an interview with Alex Green, Vice President of Business Development for Ngame.
Mr. Green came to the US from England to create an American presence. Yes, he has the authentic English accent, too. The first thing we noticed was that their top software engineer's bio boasted of having extensive garbage collection experience. Another individual in the company had a degree in physics. So we asked about that and how people from such diverse backgrounds came together. Mr. Green's response made sense when he said that gamers come from all walks of life.
As a gaming company, we had to ask about the teenager market and where they fit into it. It seems to be where the major focus is today for the wireless market. So we asked what impact would they have as a company on the teen market using WAP phones. These guys really did their homework on this one. As a European company, they already have an established customer base of teenagers. Mr. Green's comment was that they expected that the next generation of cell phones using other platforms combined with prepaid services will help speed along the adoption of the teenager market to WAP cell phones.
We asked about their presence besides the US and Europe. Alex informed us that they were also live in Australia and they were looking to go live in Latin America, South Africa, and Korea. Now that is a pretty impressive growth plan. Breaking into Latin America and Asia is not easy. Plus it gives them a presence on just about every continent in the world. They are also the largest wireless game provider to many of the wireless operators in North America. At this point they may very well be the #1 wireless game publisher for games here in the US.
The one area where Ngame has an advantage over American startups is that they originated in Europe. We have said before that Europe is further advanced in wireless technology than the US. The challenge that all WAP developing companies face here in the US including Ngame is the low number of WAP phone users in North America. One of their solutions to this challenge was to create games based on major movies like Top Gun which will be coming out later this year. Alltel is currently promoting the wireless game Rat Race which was also based on a major movie.
Will this solution advance their cause of bringing users to WAP services? According to Mr. Green, currently 10% to 20% of active WAP service users play Ngame applications. That will probably increase as Ngame adds more games to their portfolio of available applications as well as the implementation of high speed networks by US carriers. Alex noted that these new systems will be substantially faster than those available in Europe. Making the score closer to 1 to 1 for America and Europe.
Our last question to Mr. Green was what they would like to see in the future of WAP services. His comment was that integrated billing would be nice and that we should see that in the next generation of WAP phones. He finished by stating that they would love to have more powerful wireless devices utilizing color screens on faster networks. From what we have heard and
seen, it looks like his wishes may just come true and soon.
The overall impression of Ngame that we have, based on what we read and from our interview with Mr. Green, was that Ngame is definitely a pioneer in the WAP industry. They have all the necessary ingredients to be a successful gaming company and they will be going places in the wireless industry. Should they ever go public even as a penny stock, I am going to buy as much stock as I can grab.
To see what games they have available, where they are going, and more about who they are, you can visit their website at
www.ngame.com for more information. If you are curious as to who are distributors of Ngame applications, click on the "distributor" link on the left hand side of the web page.
POLITICIANS MAY BE GOING TOO FAR WITH BIG BROTHER LEGISLATION
Miami, Florida, is the next city to have passed legislation to ban cell phones while driving. There are numerous local governments looking to pass similar legislation with 40 states having cellular phone ban legislation being introduced. It was only a matter of time before politicians started adding other activities that should be banned while driving.
We should see more attention on Big Brother driving restrictions next year. Oddly enough, some politicians have listed smoking and eating as possible restrictions while driving. Why don't we add changing the radio dial, using the windshield wipers, and turning on the AC or heater too. New Hampshire has already included an offense for eating behind the wheel if it is found to be a factor in an accident.
New Hampshire has also included the following in their legislation as being punishable if found to be a cause in an accident. Reading, eating, talking on a cell phone, viewing a computer or TV screen, and using a keyboard. At least they make it so that it is only a punishable offense if it is found to be a contributing factor to an accident. On the other hand, to determine it as a factor is entirely subjective, too.
Florida is the next state that is looking at passing statewide legislation to penalize inattentive driving. I don't want to think people are stupid enough to read while driving but I have seen it for myself. I have also seen people driving and talking on cell phones while trying to tap on a laptop's keyboard. I don't have a problem with people being penalized for being morons. But I think politicians are going a little too far with some of these other potential restrictions.
Oddly enough, smoking and the overeating of fat food are two major health issues being campaigned against in the healthcare industry. Coincidence that these should be added as potential restrictions? I think not. Lobbyists can be real pigs. They make six figure incomes to influence politicians to pass or kill different kinds of legislation that are of interest to their clients both on the state and federal levels. The voice of the people can be quietly set aside easily enough.
Be sure to hit the voting booths and speak your piece. United we stand against incompetent politicians that have nothing better to do with our taxpayer money than sit around dreaming up legislation so they can look busy. I think they need to pass legislation the requires politicians at the federal level to pay into Social Security.
They aren't going to do that so don't hold your breath. What they are going to do is introduce a flurry of legislation that some bonehead in Congress thought would impress the people. I don't know about the rest of you but I could live with legislation that puts fines on drivers using a cell phone if it is found to be a contributing factor to an accident. Much better than an outright ban.
UNSIGHTLY TOWERS COULD REDUCE WIRELESS EXPENSES FOR ALL
Tower companies have done their best to disguise towers to look like palm trees, flag poles, and many other items that wouldn't appear to be unsightly in a community. It is our community battles to keep these unsightly towers from view that is costing companies and the general public to pay more for wireless service.
Here is what I mean. Many wireless companies have sold off their tower assets to actual Tower management and infrastructure companies. In so doing, it opens a whole new possibility of collocation of different carriers on the same tower. Putting up and maintaining towers is a very costly overhead expense at 150K+ a pop per tower. That doesn't include the monthly rent paid to whomever owned the land where the tower was placed. To
provide our service, each carrier needs thousands of these towers all across the nation.
Now suppose that the carriers only had to have half this number of towers. Sure the savings would drop to their bottom line but it would also allow carriers to reduce the expense of airtime and provide additional discounts on cell phones. If we had four carriers slapping antennas on a tower creating a metal tree, the cost is a fraction of what it would have been to put up a whole new tower.
Not only would it help to lower costs, it would probably improve the service we
are provided with by reducing the number of dropped calls and busy signals that are prone to happen. The proof is in the pudding when you look at
www.deadcellphonezones.com
that we wrote about in our last newsletter. That website was born because of people having problems with the service. Those problems in turn were due to a lack of towers being available for service.
The worst part is that I beat up on carriers all the time for their coverage problems. What makes
this really bad is that I fully understand the reasons for their problems. My beef with carriers is that they move too slowly to address the problems with their coverage areas. If they are going to claim "nationwide" coverage then they should be sure that they actually offer nationwide service.
I plan on banging on them even more now that smart antennas are coming to market. These antennas allow the carrier to adjust their
antennas for the coverage area. In other words, they should be able to address the problems much quicker with reducing overload and minimizing or maximizing the area to be covered by a specific
antenna.
That won't solve the problem with coverage areas and service entirely but it is a starting point. The only other area where they can hope to gain ground is if the public should be more open to having towers in place. As far as Sprint PCS is concerned, who knows what they will be doing. They are banking on
affiliates' towers for quite a bit of their coverage space as well as keeping ownership in their tower network.
Sight or sound. That is the question. Although, some are still under the impression that the towers cause some kind of physical damage. If they did then I am in big trouble. I worked in an office that had a 150 foot pole tower located no more than 30 feet from my office. It was truly impressive to look at just because of
its sheer size. So who is going to step up for the benefit of all and earn that monthly revenue? It is time to make a decision.
I HAVE SEEN ENOUGH OF THE RADIATION CELL PHONE SHIELDS
We got a piece of Spam from Sar Shield Inc. who obviously harvested our email address from somewhere. So they have brought this one onto themselves. I went and checked out their website and couldn't help but laugh. The presentation is very selective as have been many others to put their anti-radiation product in the best light.
So they went with the common theme of adding in the fear factor to their presentation. I can't even say they did their homework either as the "statistics" and "facts" they are presenting are pretty much the same as those that everyone else who was trying to sell anti-radiation devices used. They did an OK job with the website design but I am not going to give them the benefit of a search engine boost by being linked on our website.
The first thing they quoted was 20/20's big hoopla. They made accurate statements for as much as they were stated. For example they say that the test conducted by 20/20 showed that phones exceed their radiation limit depending on how they were held. They failed to mention that these phones were obsolete models, that SAR values are worthless as the design of phones even in the days of old were regulated to such a point that the radio frequency "radiation" was so low that it couldn't even come close to having any harmful effects on the human body.
They go on further to say that some studies indicate that there is genetic damage to the blood, etc., etc. Again, they fail to mention that these tests were never validated. What I liked the best was that they actually campaigned against using a hands free kit as it only shifted where the supposed harmful radiation was to penetrate the body.
Here is the best part that had me howling. I thought I was going to tape my ribs and use up an entire roll of tissue paper to wipe the tears from my eyes. You cannot transfer this anti radiation device to another phone. You have to buy a new one for each phone at $19.99 plus shipping.
Because it has a self-adhesive backing I think was the reason for that claim. I thought somebody invented two way adhesive tape. You had to go through seventeen pages or so to get to the end of the ordering process so I can't say what the shipping price was. Probably some ridiculous amount that would have cost 40 cents by USPS but they marked up to $5 or $8 bucks.
I went to their retail partner page and surprise! Nobody was listed. I went back to the FAQ I think it was that listed all these different diseases that are supposedly linked to using a cell phone. Overall, I would have to say that the website presentation was as misleading as many of their predecessors. The other piece that they don't clarify is why did 20/20 have to go to Germany to test these phones instead of doing it right here in the US?
They even use a little misdirection in their Spam. The advertisement says, "tested using FCC standards". It also makes a quote from ABC with "mobile phones linked to cancer." Would that strike you as being misdirection using a snake oil sales strategy? They say that history repeats itself and it does with all the mistakes too. Didn't the sweepstakes publishers get busted for advertising campaigns like this one?
This one was a new one for us. We have been doing our Cell Phone Beauty Queens for nearly a year now. Suddenly we get this supposed photographer who appears to work for a company called Fashion Images challenging our displaying the images of our Beauty Queens. None of them were his, I might add. Where he came from or why, we can't be sure, but he was quite obnoxious to say the least.
He started demanding that we answer various questions. At first, we were polite and told him that his questions would violate the privacy policies that we had implemented for our website and the contest. So when he found that no answers would be forthcoming from his bullying tactics, he decided to attack us with insults.
He even had some of his buddies come to his rescue when they all found that
they might have dug themselves a fairly deep hole. Not a question anymore but a confirmed fact. One of them suggested that what we were doing was an illegitimate exercise to show solidarity with his buddy. Although he was careful in how he presented it. They weren't sure how or when we may have violated any copyright issues but it just had to be the case. All these legal experts on our company are coming out of the woodwork. It is absolutely amazing.
I believe it was the photographer dude that informed us that we were not even a legitimate journalist venture. I had no idea that a photographer would be a more credible expert in this field than I. So I implore our readers to please define for me what constitutes a legitimate journalism enterprise. I would sarcastically venture to guess that these guys must be pillars of success in their industry from what I read.
About the only way we could make some kind of sense out of this is that the photographer seemed concerned that we didn't approach the photographers directly for our BQ contest. I didn't know that the photographers had any relevance in who we
choose to be in our BQ contest. Maybe we should turn it over to all of these experts to handle for us. We obviously don't know anything about how to run a business or a journalistic venture either.
The other concern they had was on who was being compensated and for what. Again, a violation of our privacy policy but why did they care anyway. They didn't have any images featured on our website and it had no financial bearing on them whatsoever. What was the real motivation behind this
attack? Money? Ego? Both? I offered my speculation that some images may have been submitted that weren't selected to be featured on our website in addition which would support the Ego suspicion.
It was the only speculation that I could offer that would make sense out of the exchange. It is very possible that these people have subscribed to our newsletter using an anonymous email address just to see if we would do something like this. To their horror, they will now find out how we respond to being bullied.
We can only hope that they will take issue with this article and attempt to file a lawsuit against us. It would be to my delight to post all the details of the lawsuit for all of you to see. In the past it has always been us who initiated legal action and not the other way around. So it would be quite a novelty for us to have one.
I still have my lunch money and we are still getting submissions from potential Beauty Queens too.
COMMENTS FROM THE WATER COOLER - DID YOU NOTICE & PREPAID CELLULAR UPDATE
We appreciate all the positive comments and support from our subscribers. What I don't understand is how it is that when William sends it out with spelling and grammar errors that we get the most positive comments! He is supposed to make sure that the spelling is correct and grammar errors are fixed once he has finished editing. He forgot to do it and he didn't even have it formatted correctly.
I just wanted to make it very clear that it is all William's fault that our last issue of the newsletter went out with all the errors. The recent excuse was that it was a printing error. What?!? This is an online publication, it isn't printed! Nothing I can do about it now so I will just have to live with it. Now I am done with my blame shifting and finger pointing.
One more favor to ask of you. We just signed on Verizon Wireless as an advertiser. So go and buy something from them or sign up for their service so they will continue to advertise with us. Check the banners often as they are the automatically updating kind that will let you know what special promotions they may have available. You will find them plastered all over both websites.
I think Tracfone contacted us once about posting a banner on our site but they didn't want to pay for it. How many of you would allow somebody to stick a billboard on prime retail real estate that came with highly targeted traffic for free? Should they ask to advertise with us again, we might put up their banners provided they pay, of course, so that you can take advantage of their service. If not, you always have Verizon Wireless!
Looks like they should have come back to us and set up shop because Verizon Wireless is about to pick up some of their prepaid business since we are going to put their banner on our prepaid cellular page too. I would bet that at least half of our traffic is from people looking for prepaid cellular service. A booming business that is going to grow quite a bit over the next couple of years.
Oh Yeah. We won't be selling prepaid cellular phones anymore either so we will have to direct you to our advertisers for this service from this point on. That kind of eliminates most of the conflict of interest for our advertisers. Or in this case, advertiser. We will still sell the airtime to our existing customers but that is all we will be offering.
So you know, we will only accept advertisers involved in the telecom or wireless industry. If you know of a company who would like to advertise on our site, have them contact us with letting us know what service they would like to target and where they would like to be placed. We are going to offer advertising on a flat monthly rate so we don't have to fiddle with tracking and all that.
Nor are we going to rule out that we won't get back into selling prepaid cellular in the future. We may just go out and seek the necessary funding through a credit line or something and become a prepaid cellular provider with services and phones being branded under the EVC name. If we did, I can assure you that we would easily be able to compete with the incumbent competitors in the prepaid cellular industry today and those in the future.
We probably won't unless an incumbent or another company comes out and does something that makes us mad. If they do then they will find out how a little known company like EVC can come in and turn the prepaid cellular world upside down. We would be up on their competition radars in two years at the most. If we should change our minds and decide to go into the retail sector, you will be the first to know. The battle plan has already been designed and is waiting to be implemented.
Thanks to our industry network and our unlimited determination to secure competitive intelligence, we have the advantage. Some of the prepaid companies would be shocked if they knew how much we have learned about them. We probably know more about their companies than they do. We love America!
PLEASE TELL YOUR FRIENDS, FAMILY, AND ASSOCIATES ABOUT OUR NEWSLETTER. WE
APPRECIATE YOUR SUPPORT AND ASSISTANCE IN MAKING OUR NEWSLETTER A SUCCESS.
If you want your name to vanish from our list because our newsletter is just too
boring or someone else signed you up, let us know. We will reluctantly take you
off of our newsletter list. And we still reserve the right to make faces at you
when you aren't looking. If you want your name to vanish from our list because our newsletter is just too boring or someone else signed you up, let us know. We will reluctantly take you off of our newsletter list. And we still reserve the right to make faces at you when you aren't looking.
