Interview with David Marchant, CEO of PocketMail 3-11-2003

Bob: To what do you attribute PocketMail's popularity with people who travel, especially RVers?

David: In a nutshell, PocketMail is affordable, easy to use, e-mail convenience that works everywhere there is a phone.

For our RVing customers, PocketMail is much more than an e-mail tool or service. Its how they keep in touch with family and friends, and how they communicate with other RVers. In that way, it is central to their RV lifestyles.

Bob: How will the development of new wireless technologies like two-way wireless email affect PocketMail and how will PocketMail stay a step ahead of the competition?

David: The problem with all of the wireless technologies is coverage or rather lack of coverage. More than 70% of the U.S.A. remains without any form of wireless coverage, and none of the wireless networks have plans to significantly increase their coverage. They can't afford to.

For anyone that travels outside of major metropolitan areas, coverage is a major problem.

As anyone who has used PocketMail knows, you can almost always find a phone, even if it is just a payphone, to access your e-mail.

Bob: What changes can PocketMail users look forward to in the near future, both in hardware and software?

David: The great thing about our business is that through e-mail we can easily and quickly communicate with our customers. They are telling us what they want and we are responding to their requests.

In the last few months, we have introduced new anti-SPAM tools and measures, increased individual message size ten-fold, added a new Web-mail service (My.Pocket), and extended our customer service hours.

In the next few months, we will be further enhancing our anti-SPAM tools, providing more e-mail storage, introducing global roaming, and adding new features to our My.Pocket WebMail service . We will also be releasing new synchronization software to make it easier to back-up and restore data, and synchronize PocketMail with Microsoft products.

In relation to hardware, our latest PocketMail Composer software incorporates nearly a dozen new features of substance, and many other changes designed to make the Composer perform tasks faster.

Behind the scenes, we have also been upgrading equipment, improving monitoring, and adding redundancy to ensure that we provide ever more reliable service.

These all form part of an ongoing program to continually improve the PocketMail service and experience.

Bob: Do you anticipate eventually developing a combined cell phone/ Composer-like device so that PocketMail could be accessed without either a land line phone or from a separate cell phone?

David: If we wanted to take the current $99 PocketMail Composer and turn it into a $499 to $799 PDA cell-phone, sure we could. I am not sure we would want to though.

If you read most of the reviews for these type of products, what you will discover is that there is an inevitable trade-off between the phone and PDA. Battery life (typically just a few hours) is also another issue that most manufacturers prefer to hide in the small print.

As for e-mail, these wireless devices can, with some effort, be set up to receive it, but to compose and send it you have to be joking.

We know from our own traffic statistics that unlike most other mobile devices, the PocketMail Composer is a genuine compose, send and receive e-mail PDA, not a receive only device. In fact we have some customers that have even composed entire books on a PocketMail device!!!!

Bob: What do you see as the evolution of PocketMail and of the Composer as a tool for accessing the PocketMail Web site for RV travelers?

David: To date, we have barely scratched the surface in terms of utilizing the capability of PocketMail.

Even in the short term, I expect our customers to be able to use their PocketMail service to access information when they want and do useful things with it e.g. find a campsite and make a reservation.

Many of our customers have both a PocketMail and separate ISP account. I believe it inevitable that we will be offering a bundled ISP and PocketMail service offering before long. We ought to be able to offer this bundle for less than the regular AOL dial-up ISP only service.

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