Edgewater Wireless Systems Inc. (TSXV: YFI) CEO Andrew Skafel explains why he believes his company is revolutionizing the WiFi infrastructure market with its patented WiFi 3 access points and how this technology is superior to that of its competitors. He also describes the size of the market in which Edgewater operates and outlines why 2014 is a real catalyst year for his company.
Video Transcript:
Mark Thorburn: Edgewater Wireless’ next generation WiFi3 technology solves key issues related to interference, quality, and capacity. The user’s experience with traditional WiFi access points. With the exponential growth of WiFi around the world, these issues are increasing dramatically. WiFi3 technology enables users to access three channel points on a singular wireless access point, resulting in faster downloads and vastly improved quality compared to traditional WiFi, which only uses one channel per radio. We asked Edgewater CEO Andrew Skafel to tell us more about this exciting tech play.
Andrew Skafel: My name is Andrew Skafel, and I’m the CEO of Edgewater Wireless. We trade on the TSX Venture exchange as Y.F.I. At Edgewater Wireless, we’re revolutionizing the WiFi infrastructure market with our patented WiFi3 access points. We’re really geared towards carrier market, high density WiFi applications.
Mark Thorburn: In what way is your technology better than that of similar companies operating in your space?
Andrew Skafel: There are a number of WiFi companies out there. Really, what they’ve done is taken that tired, old, single channel WiFi technology, put some bandages around that and put that out as a carrier access plan. According to our CTO, that’s great technology for you home. At Edgewater Wireless, what we’ve done is something that’s really dramatically different. We’ve developed, from the ground up, a proprietary, standard compliance chip set specifically for the access point market. It’s a true high performance chip set delivering multiple channels per radio.
It’s a traditional WiFi technology. Because of the nature of the WiFi protocol, it’s a lot like delivering a single gravel lane road. Where if I’m in my minivan and you’re in your Porsche and you’re behind me, you can really go only as fast as I go. Traditional WiFi works in a very similar fashion. Now, what we’ve done at Edgewater Wireless, which is really dramatically different, is we deliver multiple channels per radio, or the equivalent of a multi-lane highway. Slow lane for my minivan, medium lane for your Porsche, and a faster lane for the Ferrari. The bottom line is we’re delivering up to 50 times greater aggregate throughput than traditional WiFi.
Mark Thorburn: What’s the size of the market you operate in and who do you normally sell to?
Andrew Skafel: Since the adventive data hungry devices like the iPad, the iPhone, mobile operators have been struggling to deal with the deluge of data traffic created on their 3G and 4G networks. WiFi offers an ideal method for them to offload the traffic from the expensive frequency on to the low cost WiFi networks. Folks like AT&T, Verizon, major carriers are really struggling to deal with this problem. Globally, that’s a 27.2 billion-dollar market opportunity.
Mark Thorburn: Can you elaborate on the concept of multi-channel WiFi and its importance?
Andrew Skafel: Edgewater’s patented multi-channel WiFi solution, or what we call WiFi3, delivers multiple channels per radio. That’s simultaneous transmitting and receiving of data. This is a patented technology. We’ve got over 20 patents wrapped up in the product and we’re the only folks that can deliver multiple channels using standard compliant WiFi. That means no changing of the end device. Your same laptop, your same Smartphone work with our technology and get that added performance that’s not available from traditional WiFi products.
Mark Thorburn: What do your shareholders have to look forward to for the remainder of 2014?
Andrew Skafel: 2014 is a real catalyst year for us. We’ve recently restructured a management team bringing in Duane Anderson as the CTO. With his deep military technology expertise, he’s a real asset to the team. On the product side, we’ve really been working at strengthening the value proposition of WiFI3 specifically for those high-density carrier applications. On the commercial front, there’s a number of positive activities we hope to update you in the upcoming months.
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