DA: Joining us on the line now, is Essam Zaghloul, COO and President of NTG Clarity Networks Inc. Essam, good afternoon, thanks for chatting with us.

EZ: Good Afternoon Dave, thanks very much for inviting me.

DA: Tell us a little bit about NTG Clarity Networks.

EZ: We are 10 years old, Ashraf Zaghloul, my brother, founded NTG International in 1992. We've been a leader in delivering network, IT and infrastructure solutions to telco service providers and enterprise IT departments. What does this mean? Basically, we engineer, design and build large networks such as those for the phone companies, and we also build small networks for the business or enterprise. We have been on the CDNX, the Canadian Venture Exchange, since about a year ago, our symbol is NCI. We were named as the 4th fastest growing company in Alberta, on Alberta Ventures 30 Fastest Growing Companies. We have four main business units, Dave, the first is Telco solutions, the second is Enterprise solutions, the third is Wireless Network Services and we also have a training division.

DA: So when you look to deal with one of the telcos, when you talk about setting up their networks, wouldn't most of the telcos have their own in-house staff?

EZ: They do, but because their main core business is signing on clients, the back-end work, which is the engineering, design and so on, they are laborious, tedious, and require highly skilled individuals, that's what we provide is the back-end stuff. Companies that have used our services have been very, very successful because they can sign on their clients, when we get on with the day-to-day work puts their clients on stream much faster and more efficiently.

DA: I think back to two or three Christmas' ago, when there was much hoopla about buying and ordering online and in many cases over the Christmas rush, they had tons of customers but they didn't have that backend to support some of these major websites and major companies and organizations. It really hurt their businesses.

EZ: That is absolutely correct, Dave, and of course adding on these add-on values and services makes the companies more efficient, faster providing the services, has made them compete much better. That is one of the key things that we are trying to help partnering with our clients to make them more successful.

DA: Essam, how much of a challenge is it when you go in, be it an Enterprise solution, wireless network, telco solutions, how much of a challenge is it when you go in and say this is the system for what you need. But at the same time you have to leave it a little bit open ended so that it's scalable if they need to increase or ramp up, its easily done. Who knows what's going to come down the pipe next?

EZ: A lot of companies are very, very open minded, Dave, with regards to that. Companies want to be able to expand, they want to be able to scale and they want good honest opinion, so we provide all this and because we are not aligned with any vendor our opinions and our advice to them is really unbiased. They are very happy with that and have been very successful in partnering with us.

DA: So you have the luxury of going in and saying, okay, in this case, this is the direction you should go with your hardware, this is the manufacturer you should go from. Over here, lets do this and it gives you that freedom.

EZ: That's exactly it, and actually we have two sister companies, Wi-LAN and Cell-Loc that through my brother Hatim. So a lot of people when they are dealing with NTG, they always think that because they are brothers they are going to have to use Wi-LAN equipment. Absolutely not, we look at what's available, what the client needs and if the Wi-LAN equipment is the right thing for them then we recommend that, if other manufacturers, we recommend that as well.

DA: Talk a bit about the wireless; is it an increasing or growing part of the business?

EZ: We see that as the future Dave, if you look at third-world countries they are already in G3 and G4 network systems. The reason of course, is they haven't spent the billions of dollars in the infrastructure that we have in the West. This is where the future lays. You look at people wanting one device that can now do the internet, video conferencing, which could be utilized as a phone as well. So this is really the future and we have some countries like Japan that already have that and we are catching on very fast.

DA: Tell us a bit about the training aspect, you mentioned that as one of your four core areas as well.

EZ: Yes, we have training facilities all across Canada. We were very fortunate we were sub-contracted by a major telco contract, training contract with one of the main telco companies. That has given us quite a boost in expanding our services and facilities. We also do the usual Microsoft Certification and so on. So it is a mix of telco and other training courses.

DA: Where do you see the future for, in this industry, your niche or your company's niche?

EZ: Our niche is in providing end to end services, so with that we come in and provide an entire solution. We can take the company from end, i.e. the marketing side, down to the engineering, to implementation, provisioning and physically wiring a building. So it takes from one end to the other, which is quite unique. With telco deregulation, the industry is only 4-5 years young, and there is an acute shortage in the market of these skilled and required and acquired services.

DA: That can put them altogether.

EZ: Absolutely.

DA: Essam, thanks again for chatting with us, it's much appreciated. The website if people want to get more information is www.ntgclarity.com.

EZ: That's correct Dave, thanks very much, nice being here.

DA: Take care. Essam Zaghloul is the COO and President of NTG Clarity Networks Inc.