Excerpts from an old (2013) interview below, just for a reminder of what we have, potential opportunity and outlook:
Next comes the new innovation of what do you do with the data? When you start to think about applications, they need a contiguous database for processing. Most of the countries in Europe have different formats for their geospatial data. France is different than Germany which is different than Italy. The challenge becomes, if you're doing a large-scale flood model, you need that contiguous database that doesn't care about whether you're in France or Germany because you need consistent data across the area of evaluation.
Today there's no one else that has a contiguous database for all of Western Europe. No one, not even the U.S. government, has it for the United States. Intermap does. So the database is a unique asset that is now being monetized through the development of software applications.
I've heard you talk about the cost savings your solutions can bring to customers.
Todd: In each industry it varies. But in industries that use surveying it can save large amounts of dollars. For instance, for a telco application to determine if two towers can see each other they survey two locations. They would typically deploy 4-5 people and evaluate if the two towers have a clear line of site. In today's labor rates, it takes about $1,100 to evaluate one link or two towers, two sets of people climbing to the top of each tower with a laser and sensor.
With our application it will take about 20 seconds to do the computation, and you never leave the office. That saves, maybe, $1,000. I mean, it's a huge savings for the companies that have to put together the backhaul network since they no longer have to send out crews to do the survey. A large city may have 60,000 to 70,000 towers to evaluate.
That's a $60 million-plus bill for a telco in order to get those measurements manually for each city?
Todd: We're charging a few pennies but otherwise it would cost them millions of dollars. You've got companies like Verizon, T-Mobile, Vodaphone, and DragonWave that need these networks.
What we are building is unique in the industry and is extremely powerful technology. My focus is on monetizing these incredible assets through customer wins. But to answer your question, do I anticipate that what we are creating will be the envy of a larger company that could seek to acquire us? I do. That would make a lot of sense for them, innovation is the key to all businesses.
