Will the Phoenix rise?
At this point it would alsmost be like the Phoenix Rising from the Ashes, huh!
One step forward, 2 steps back.
I just did a little more research on LinkedIn to read the credentials of the people invloved with this company, desperately looking for something reassuring. Sometimes I'm surprised. I just found the CPA responsible for publishing the Quarterly and full year reports, maybe this is old information for some of you that have been here for a long time.
Mabel Lage is the current Controller and she is at the Miami address that is sometimes listed on Google on Brickell Ave. Says she has been with the company for 8 years.
And look at the credentials of the current Engineering Program Manager, Tushar Shah! 7 years at Qualcomm, 17 months at Websense, 15 years at Intel. Surely people like him and Naresh Soni and Tim Axness as well as others would not list a company under their experiences if it could smudge their reputations or resumes. Or would they?
I'm repeating something I posted earlier:
IR is a service and is not associated with 5Barz. It sounds to me like IR gets information from pretty much the same sources as we do and the bottom line is that it sounds to me like we know about as much as IR does, if you're reading all the PR that you can find. Is Alan Stamper getting any info from Mabel Lage? Yes, he should join this forum!
I have confirmed with Kaynes in writing that they have an alliance and, 'they are looking forward to the growth this will bring them', speaking strictly about the ROVR. I'm sure they confirmed the order for the 5 million units before agreeing to the alliance. I have also tried to contact Renee Brotherton at Flextronics since he is the VP of Corporate Communications and was the contact given in a 2014 release directly from Flex. He still holds that position according to LinkedIn - but I did not get a reply. Maybe he cannot give that information.
I believe that the Network Extender is still the primary focus and that the ROVR is just a means to an end. 5Barz still needs Flextronics. But 5Bars cannot yet guarantee Flextronics the production run quantities necessary for Flextronics to tool up for the manufacturing, especially since the whole Latin America initiative had to be put on the backburner. That was clearly explained in a MarketWatch PR update. Flextronics are not going to make 50 this week and a hundred next week and so on. They want a steady flow of X-thousands units (Network Extenders) per month for a number of years. Flex is like FoxConn, they do massive production runs.
The ROVR is a secondary device requested by the Telco or by Vodafone for additional end user (customer) support. Just like AT&T with the Uverse router, it's the same thing. But basically the market is already flooded with WiFi routers.
However, a unique differentiating feature of the ROVR is the Dual Backhaul capability. One wired ISP connection and one wireless ISP connection for seamless failover. That means that the optional wireless failover backhaul depends on a good cellular connection, meaning if the customer requests that feature then it requires the Network Extender.
With the alliance and help from Kaynes, Bland stressed in the PR that this will enable them to achieve huge ROI's during the initial stages and so my thinking is that this capital will go directly back into the Network Extender. And if they can achieve critical mass with the network extender and meet the requirements of Flextronics then we're all in business. Albeit that the ROVR alone, with an initial order of 5 million units should be a good start but IMHO, I don't think it's a unique sustainable business. They need enough orders for the foreseeable future (5 years so far for the ROVR), especially the Net Extender, to be able to guarantee the manufacturers a steady production flow. The Net Extender is still the unique technology offering and ultimately the missing link for the cellular Telcos to improve the dropped call problems.
So all this is certainly not something that you are going to achieve quickly or easily. 20 years ago it might have been a lot easier when everyone was eager and hungry but with the sophisticated business models that huge companies have today especially in the Tech Sector you need to be pretty big just to get started. I'm sure this is where the experience and guidance of Amelio and Conner come into critical play. They have that 20 years of industry growth experience and know how it all works. But they need to get to critical mass.
What is particularly discouraging is that most of the good news is already 2 years old and one has to wonder how long Vodafone and AirTel are going to wait for product for an initiative they launched 2 years ago? Both ROVR and Network Extender.
