amiga-news.de - Interview with Greg Wible of MeterNet

20.Jan.2001
Christoph Dietz

Interview with Greg Wible of MeterNet
Christoph Dietz had an interesting interview with Greg Wible, the founder and CEO of MeterNet Corp.. MeterNet is the company that delivers, amongst others, the 'SimpleBox'

Greg Wible

Amiga-News: Where are you born?

Greg Wible: I was born in Medina, Ohio - a small town in between Cleveland and Akron, Ohio. I graduated from University of Cincinnati and moved to Southern California in 1980. BTW, I understand that one primary ancestor Frederick Wible (aka "Weibel") sailed from his home in Rhine Province through Rotterdam in 1751 to relocate and start a new life in Western Pennsylvania in the US... so my family roots can be traced back to your country, Germany.

Amiga-News: How old are you?

Greg Wible: 43...but most days I feel about 28!

Amiga-News: When and where was MeterNet founded?

Greg Wible: Founded in May, 1996 with registered office in Reno, Nevada and sales office in Long Beach, California (near Los Angeles). More company info found at http://meternet.com/mtabout2.htm.

Amiga-News: Your position at MeterNet?

Greg Wible: Founder and President.

Amiga-News: How many employees are working for MeterNet and in which department the most?

Greg Wible: A total worldwide team of 12, evenly divided in sales/admin & development. We also use contract programmers from US and abroad.

Amiga-News: This seems not to be much. How large is the army of contract programmers?

Greg Wible: We are a small company. at any time we use from 0 to 6 contract programmers.

Amiga-News: Is MeterNet a public company?

Greg Wible: Currently private, although in the last two weeks we have received an offer sheet from a public company to acquire MeterNet. If/when this acquisition happens, we will make official news release.

Amiga-News: Can you tell us about investors?

Greg Wible: These are private citizens.

Amiga-News: You just introduced the "SimpleBox wb7500" with "EnReachTV2". What is this EnReachTV2?

Greg Wible: We use the SimpleBox brand throughout our product line covering both entry level and mid-class devices: wb6400, wb7500 and wb8600. Specs for the entire line are found at http://info.simplebox.com. Our MeterNet "mid-class' SimpleBox wb8600 series will be powered by AmigaDE on an x86 platform designed for broadband connection. Our 'entry level' SimpleBox wb6400 series have been shipping since 1999. Its a basic browser device using analog modem on a PA-RISC processor platform from Winbond and a tailored browser SDK from Access in Japan. We are extending our entry level category with the new wb7500 series which is powered by a tailored version of the TV2 browser from Enreach running on a Luxsonor RISC platform with soft modem. Enreach is a Chinese company that has long experience in VCD and is also working hard to promote PVR technology for their next generation TV4. But we are using their proven TV2 solution for the 'entry level' segment. We have no current plans for PVR or other 'bleeding edge' features.

Amiga-News: Do you focus an using AmigaDE in the next future for the SimpleBox?

Greg Wible: Absolutely! Initially in the wb8600 series, plus on a new Internet Radio device slated to be released in late 2001. Bill, Randy, Fleecy, Dean and the entire Amiga team are very long term alliance partners that are crucial for the continued growth of MeterNet. We anticipate mutual success utilizing AmigaDE in our SimpleBox devices.

Amiga-News: When can we expect the SimpleBox with AmigaDE to hit the market and what is the business plan for the SimpleBox?

Greg Wible: Our overall plan is to always offer a series of devices to our US vertical and export markets. We hope to begin shipments of wb8616 in US market by late February, but this depends our DSL partners and on the v1.0 software being ready. In the US we will ship the wb8616 bundled with DSL service as part of the offering. However, our current DSL partner just announced a major reorganization and have pushed back our timeline. We are still studying the best bundle and channel strategy to market in Germany, Europe and other export markets. When we do we ship, all wb8600 series will ship with online update capability, so as the AmigaDE solution continues its development progress we will offer the ability to upgrade to latest version.

Amiga-News: So the consumer only can get the SimpleBox in a bundle with provider? Or can the Set-top box be available without a provider chosen to connect through a self chosen one to the internet?

Greg Wible: In US, it will only be bundled with one provider and user cannot change (like a mobile telephone). As mentioned, we are still studying best strategy for outside US.

Amiga-News: Do you know about the existing Amiga community?

Greg Wible: We continue to learn more and more about the worldwide Amiga community, which is really quite amazing and unique.

Amiga-News: Why do you think the Amiga community is amazing and unique?

Greg Wible: Active/durable/committed/some borderline raging fanatics... and much larger than we ever imagined--especially in Germany & Europe.

Amiga-News: Do you need the Amiga community? If yes, which part of the community is important?

Greg Wible: We recognize that a portion, but not all, of the Amiga user community will be interested in our wb8600 series bundled with broadband service. But we are also targeting other market segments who, while possibly familiar with the Amiga brand and long history, are not active Amiga users. Long term, we expect to offer external hard drive / CD-ROM drive via USB for wb8616 that will come preloaded with some of the rich Amiga content including apps and games. We hope this will appeal to more of the Amiga community, both users and developers.

Amiga-News: Your "last words" to our readers?

Greg Wible: Keep the faith...but never forget the only thing permanent is change.

Amiga-News: Greg, thank you for this interview!

Contact Information MeterNet Corp.

MeterNet Registered Office
100 West Grove Street #360
Reno, Nevada 89509
email: MeterNet Corp.

Long Beach
Telephone: (562) 989-8976
Fax: (562) 424-4964
Reception: 3633 Long Beach Blvd. Suite #207
Correspondence: 4450 California Place PMB#344
Long Beach, CA 90807
email: sales@meternet.com

WWW: MeterNet

[News message: 20. Jan. 2001, 05:53] [Comments: 0]
[Send via e-mail] [Print version] [ASCII version]

< Next message

Prior message >