Telepresence Options publisher Howard Lichtman recently interviewed Bob Briggs, President and COO of PangeAir, a start up with a publicly available telepresence systems in New York's famed Waldorf=Astoria(R) among other locations.  The company is seeking investment to launch a global network of publicly available telepresence systems that would be located in fine hotels and premier multi-tenant office buildings.



Howard:  Hi, this is Howard Lichtman with Telepresence Options 2008. Today we are in Dayton, Ohio where I'm sitting down with Bob Briggs the president and COO of PangeAir, a publicly available telepresence provider.

Bob:  Glad to be here Howard, good to see you.

Howard:  Good to see you too. Did I get that right, you call yourself a publicly available telepresence provider?

Bob:  Yeah you got it right, absolutely. We're a kind of public access rentable location, so as telepresence becomes more prolific what we see is that the industry is going to need a place for all of those rooms to connect to the rest of the staff that don't have rooms.  So ideally there will be a PangeAir location in every city at every city block that you can call up and make a reservation and spend your time when you need to and leave when you're done and don't have to have the capital cost of buying the equipment.

Howard:  Now I know you guys have some publicly available locations that are out there right now, in the Waldorf, Astoria and Indiana, and raising money to launch an international network.

Bob:  More Robust network.  We are a start up company, and so we are going through the pains of a start-up company, which has to do with capital raising and infrastructure and those kind of things, and we have learned in the last year in order to start up this business we're going to have to seed the infield with location. So originally we were going to be a franchise business, where you bought and started your own location and PangeAir put in the equipment in and we do the advertising like any other franchise.  

But what we find out is, like probably the phone and the cell phone, "who had the first phone?" I don't know, but until there is enough of a robust network, you're not going to get a lot of franchises to get in, so PangeAir is in the throes of raising the capital so that we can seed the infield with locations in key cities, and therefore have demo sites and therefore show the model works and that people will actually rent it and that the revenue is there and then expand from there.

Howard:  I know you have some initial locations, what do you get, who can you connect to, what does it cost?  Tell us a little about the service right now?

Bob:  We are using Polycom RPX rooms in our locations today, we have three locations, we have my office in Indianapolis, south of Indianapolis called Greenwood Indiana, we have an RPX, in the Waldorf=Astoria(R). A room, and we also have a room in downtown Dayton which is available to rent.

Now just because we have only three locations doesn't mean you can't connect anywhere you want to. It's connections are compatible with all standard based video conferencing, so there is more then a million end points for you to connect to. The beauty of it is it is telepresence and it has the capability to be high end and high quality.  

So if you want to rent one of our rooms I suggest you go to the PangeAir website, P-A-N-G-E-A-I-R .com and give us a call and make a reservation. What we are charging today is $300 an hour for the room and that is kind of an introductory rate to get people familiar. I think it's in the ballpark of what other providers video conferencing are charging.  But the experience is totally different, because it's telepresence versus video conferencing.  So if you give us a call we can set up any of those three locations for you.

Howard:  Now you are raising money for an extended network around the world how many do you envision in the initial, what's the growth?

Bob:  What we are going to do is what is called a staggered launch, we are going to launch two additional cities first quarter of next year, Chicago, and London and therefore we are going to have London, Chicago, and New York which seems to be a logical city-pair for lack of a better term, if you are in the airline business that makes sense.  If we can get some of those people who have that regular traffic between those points to start to use these systems, it gets more visibility and awareness and then word or mouth, it will then carry on.  As the staggered launch goes on we will continue to work to raise money so that we can put in 20 to 25 cities in the United States and in key international locations.  

Howard:  Ok, now I know that each additional site in a publicly available telepresence network grows the number of city-pairs that you can connect to geometrically not exponentially, but geometrically so you can satisfy additional city-pairs, what do you think is the magic number?

Bob:  In my mind I've always talked about, well my background is the travel industry and when you look at travel you look at the top 50 cities in the United States, is the key to me.  If I can get locations in the top 50 cities then I think you have a robust network and just the United States but key international cities in those top 50 cities where you can get a robust network where you have a lot of traffic.  And that will drive...

My background is car rental and the car rental industry you don't own every city, you have franchises in smaller cities. Why?  Because they are local, they have a local network and they are better at running the business in the small cities then you ever could be.  So the idea is, is to own the big cities and franchise the rest.

Howard:  Same model for PangeAir?

Bob: Yes same model for PangeAir.

Howard:  What does the franchisee have to understand about the business model and being able to participate?

Bob:  I think the key thing to understand this is a service industry I mean a lot of people look at it on how much the hardware costs you know what's this what's that.  But I think that at the end of the day it's just like car rental and everything else all of that hardware is just a means to an end to provide service to a customer.  So what you have to be able to do is to provide great service, a quality experience that wants them to come back.  

The biggest hurdle I think this whole industry has not only PangeAir but the industry is to get over that "I already know what video conferencing is and it sucks!"  At the end of the day that means they haven't been into a new telepresence room. It took me forever to want to see this because my video conferencing experience was so bad.  But once you go in you say "oh my gosh this is the way it's supposed to be."  

And so, from a PangeAir perspective or another telepresence room provider perspective if you walk in the meeting is on you don't have to screw with the camera and adjust the sound, if I don't have to do anything but have my meeting, cause these aren't technical people these are business people, they want to go in have their meeting and leave, and if we can provide that we are going to win.

Howard:  Anything else that I forgot to ask you?

Bob:  No nothing that I can think of, I appreciate your taking the time and letting me take part in your research.  

Howard:  Well thank you for participating.