Kerry firm Altobridge made a name for itself with technology that allowed for in-flight mobile phone use, but its real target are remote communities in the developing world, writes Karlin Lillington

MIKE FITZGERALD, the chief executive of Kerry wireless communications company Altobridge, laughs when told he has a lot to answer for from beleaguered air passengers who fear sitting next to the guy shouting "I'm on the plane!" into his mobile phone.

Thanks to technology developed by his company, airlines are now able to offer in-flight mobile access. The service is already in place in a handful of airlines including Emirates and Qantas. Ryanair is currently running trials as it seeks regulatory approval to operate a pre-term mobile service in Europe.

"The airlines say people are using it for e-mail and text messages, not calls," he says placatingly. "They are actually just keeping in touch with e-mails."

The announcement in April that Altobridge could offer a safe way of enabling mobile calls in the cabin brought the Tralee company much international media attention during what has been a very good year. Altobridge announced profits of €4.7 million for 2007 last week.

But Fitzgerald says the technology, which creates a local mobile network off a base station connected to a satellite link, and Altobridge's similar offerings for ship and emergency services networks, is not where the company's core focus is.

"There are maybe 50,000 ships in the world, and 20,000 planes. That's a limited market," he says. "If you're looking at selling licences, you need to set your eyes towards the crown jewels, which for us is the remote village."

He means it literally. Right now, Altobridge is eyeing the developing world, in which scattered small villages are the norm in countryside with no telecommunications networks. In these areas, mobiles have become the technology of choice, used creatively and communally to follow market prices for their goods, stay in touch with relatives, and gain limited internet access.

Fitzgerald has had first-hand experience of those potential markets. In the early 1990s, he worked in China for several years for Ericsson as it rolled out the first GSM service. "As they deployed the network, you could really see the importance they placed on connecting villages, which enabled them to be more productive."

There's now a $20 handset available for developing world markets, he says. Couple that with a base station connected to a core network through a satellite, microwave or traditional copper cable telecommunications link, and you have a cheap local call network.

"So we can actually take a very economic handset and give basic services of voice and some internet access for e-mails, and some data," he says.

Out of an initial foray into the Malaysian market to prove its technology was viable, Altobridge has begun to build a business around the remote village concept. Initially, Fitzgerald says, the company won contracts to provide services directly from governments, going up against the big telecommunications and wireless operators. "But we realised there is a different model," he says.

"Instead of competing with the large operators, we went to them and said, 'Let's bundle our cellular system with your dish'."

Now Altobridge targets the operators as their channel for sales, rather than the actual contract to provide the service to a community. "We looked at the vendors we'd beaten, and we went back and said we don't really want to fight you. We could partner instead and supply you with the software and you can supply the service."

The channel approach allows Altobridge to go after the vast market of all the operators indirectly, rather than one limited to the direct reach of their own 80-person company.

"But just signing that licensing deal isn't good enough. You need to make sure they sell your product," he says.

"And this is where Stanford came in," says Fitzgerald. He has spent the last year on the Enterprise Ireland course for entrepreneurs held in conjunction with Stanford University in California.

Direct access to well-known lecturers and company chief executives who come in to talk through case studies helped him work out an effective channel approach.

Altobridge has developed a web-based training module and training support for the operators, to make it easy for vendors to understand the product and what it does, and to motivate them to sell it.

Fitzgerald says that, although the remote village is the big target market, marine, aeronautical and emergency services products are a critical part of Altobridge.

The technology developed for those products - critical intellectual property for the company - is at the core of the remote village product too.

Continued RD to service those direct customers will, he feels, continue to keep the company ambitious and competitive.

And, somewhat ironically, its remote village technology is now garnering interest from telecommunications operators more familiar with developed world urban networks. Using a technology that allows for direct local mobile call connections through a subnetwork, rather than routing them through a distant exchange, frees up bandwidth and eases network demands for operators.

So the global is local, and vice versa.

Buoyed by a recent major partnership deal with old employer Ericsson, Fitzgerald says the company is eager to scale up and feels the channel approach will enable that. He also credits the company's board, chaired by ex-tánaiste Dick Spring, with the foresight to take current profits and plough them back into the company to enable these new directions - a gesture of faith, he says.

And if the company eventually is bought out? "Well, that could happen, but it's not what drives us," he says. "We want to scale."