One route to world domination: bypass the U.S.

Focusing on distant, emerging markets–rather than on companies based in the United States–may seem a challenging way to go about setting up an export business. But that is how C-Com Satellite Systems Inc. of Ottawa has grabbed the world’s attention.

The 14-year-old company, which has 35 employees, has developed a mobile satellite technology that allows people to stay connected during disasters, or during war, or in remote areas. Its system, called iNetVu, is a battery-powered, mobile antenna that connects with a communications satellite.  It facilitated cellphone communications in the aftermath of the earthquake and tsunami in Japan this winter. And a Pakistani news organization used iNetVu to broadcast from outside Osama bin Laden’s compound recently, says Leslie Klein, C-Com’s president and chief executive officer.

A truck in Pakistan sports an iNetVu dish from
C-Com Satellite Systems Inc. of Ottawa.

Mr. Klein came to Canada from his birthplace of Czechoslovakia after the Soviet Union invaded in 1968, and he studied electrical engineering at the University of Waterloo.

You have a great product, but how did you go about selling it?

Most Canadian companies attempt to work with U.S. companies, or sell to U.S. companies locally, because that’s the easiest thing to do. We’ve taken a different tack. We say if we can satisfy the Chinese, the Indians, the Pakistanis, the Russians, the Mexicans, the Japanese, who look at technology from a different perspective and are demanding in different ways than U.S. customers are, then we can easily sell to the U.S. Most of our business is outside of North America for this reason.

But why not start with the U.S.?

Many U.S. government agencies tend to buy from U.S. manufacturers. They are kind of xenophobic from that standpoint. First they will buy from local companies and then they will look around.

How did you penetrate foreign markets, for example in Asia?

We hired a Chinese person who had worked in Thailand in the satellite communications business. He worked from Canada and developed a market for us in Asia. In China we have a huge market share of this product. All of the disaster management agencies have been using the iNetVu. We have probably 500 of them in China. They have a domestic product, but it’s not even close to the capability and performance of what we have. It may be a little cheaper but we’re the preferred vendor, much like a BMW would be over a Chinese car.

What have you done to penetrate the U.S. market?

We developed a product that is much better and more reliable than anything available today in the United States. We worked with some of the big service providers. Halliburton [a worldwide oil-and-gas company based in the U.S.] has tested it for six or seven months. They thought it was great. They wanted us to do this and that to make it more tailor-made to their industry. And we did. Now other world companies are saying, “Well, if it’s good enough for these guys we should look at it.” The same thing happened in Malaysia, in Brazil. It’s a method of selling where, if one big boy likes it and uses it and it’s cost effective, then others will say, “Why would we reinvent the wheel if it’s working this well for another company?”

How did you set up a distribution network?

The key challenge is to find resellers who will adopt this technology and see a value-add. A reseller is an independent company that sells satellite connectivity. Normally a company like Telesat would have resellers in Canada who resell Telesat’s bandwidth for satellite connectivity. These can be small or large companies that provide solutions for customers’ specific applications. Most of the people we deal with provide satellite connectivity to oil and gas companies, mining and exploration companies.

How do you find those resellers?

We advertise around the world. We have a large presence on the Internet. We go to conferences like the one I just came back from in Aberdeen [on North Sea oil exploration]. Next month I’m going to Asia. The word spreads.

What gives your product its competitive advantage?

You can put this antenna on top of a vehicle where a ski rack would go. Inside the vehicle you could have a laptop and a router. You push a button and the antenna lifts itself and automatically locates the satellite in under three minutes, and delivers high-speed Internet. When you’re finished you push a button, the antenna goes down and you can drive away. Normally to set up a fixed satellite antenna requires a highly technically skilled person because you’re pointing 36,000 km up and you have to aim at the proper satellite and hit the proper frequencies and make sure that everything is working properly with the network operations centre. What C-Com has developed is the ability to do all of this by the press of a button.

Tell me about the role you played in the tsunami.

We received an urgent request to provide 100-plus units. We shipped them in three days. It enabled them to make cell calls. Imagine if something dramatic hit Toronto and you lost all of your cell power and couldn’t communicate with anyone, anywhere. People who were stranded in the middle of the tsunami were able to make calls to friends and relatives to tell them they were alive.

We have a large inventory. We were active in the Hurricane Katrina disaster, and we learned that most people are not prepared for disasters. And when disaster comes, the first thing that goes down is communication. Our antennas work from the battery of the vehicle. You don’t need an external power source. When there’s a disaster you lose power.

What are some other unique or unusual uses of your product?

We have buses equipped with this unit to deliver children’s educational classes in remote areas of the world. The teacher would provide them with a computer-aided education. The bus is like a classroom with multiple computers. We have mobile breast-cancer clinics. Police in South Africa use our systems to check licenses and all the things you would expect in downtown Toronto. We also have been successful selling satellite newsgathering products to smaller television stations around the world. One station in Pakistan has about 30 units for their reporters. The system is so easy to use. You can put it on a vehicle, send out a reporter with a camera that plugs into the unit, and you can stream video right from the studio to the vehicle for editing.