 |
Paul
Cassel |
I
began in the business side of radio and messaging in 1973 when I and
several partners formed Two-Way Communications in Waterloo, Ontario.
At that time solid state mobile radios had just come on the scene and conventional two-way was booming. While I did have a technical background, I successfully focused my efforts on sales and marketing of GE products - at the rapid expense of Motorola. By the early 80s we had grown the business to become the largest volume GE dealer in Canada.
Two-Way moved into Cellular and Paging in 1985 and I moved over to head up DataMax our new paging business. Starting with a Glenayre 3550 terminal and 4 simulcast transmitters we took on the major paging players and rapidly gained market share. We were very early adopters of Alpha and successfully gained over 90% of the area Real Estate market due mainly to our Alpha Input software for the Tandy Model 102. Working with a good friend Vern Norman, Vern and I developed what we called DataPage. It was this user friendly input device that helped us break into the Real Estate market. By 1989 we had expanded our service area to 10,000 square miles with 20+ transmitter sites and were serving over 2,000 customers.
Our rate of growth was averaging 50% a year and our churn was never more than 1.5% so in 1990 we were being wooed by several carriers who were buying their growth through acquisitions. A deal was struck with Bell Mobility in December of 1990 and DataMax was merged with Bell in early 1991.
I moved with the company and managed South Western Ontario for 2 years at which time I was asked to move to head office in Toronto as Director of Business Development. During this period I successfully sold management on implementing FLEX on one of our Regional 900 channels as well as implement an Internet Paging Gateway. This was a hard sell as in 1995 management was not sold that this "internet thing" was the wave of the future. When I brought them a no CapEx proposal (revenue sharing) we proceeded.
Left Bell in 1996 and along with 3 partners formed Yrless Internet Corporation. We were successful in winning development contracts for PCS and Paging Internet Gateways for Bell and Telus as well as ORBCOMM the Low Earth Orbit Satellite provider. Our scalable YMG-2000 gateway - written totally in Java - drew the interest of carriers as it was not O/S dependant. It could operate under UNIX, LINUX, NT probably even a MAC :-)
One of the Bell service providers was 724 Solutions who where looking to replace their wireless financial services gateway. The business and Intellectual Property was sold to 724 Solutions in 2000.
Currently I now enjoy more time for ham radio while still consulting for firms in the wireless messaging and two-way land mobile business.
CONTACT Info:
Paul Cassel
Cassel & Associates
1083 Notre Dame Dr
Petersburg, Ontario
N0B 2H0(519) 634-5139
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