The founder of Wi-LAN Inc. kicked things off for the Egyptian-born Canadians, but two more brothers are quietly building their own telecommunications empire

Three Egyptian brothers, each born in Cairo but now Canadian citizens, are playing an influential role in making Canada a contender in the highly competitive digital information industry.

One brother, Hatim Zaghloul of Calgary, has already built a reputation for sophisticated wireless technology and market savvy. In just one year as a publicly-traded company (TSE: WIN; TSE Tech. Index), Hatim turned Calgary-based Wi-LAN Inc. into a leading-edge enterprise with a market capitalization of more than $1 billion. In the past two years Wi-LAN has been one of the most actively traded and best supported Canadian high tech stocks ever.

Zaghloul and Dr. Michael Fattouche, also of Calgary, co-invented the patented high speed, wireless technology that has helped Wi-LAN's shares avoid much of the market skepticism that has adversely affected other high tech stocks. Zaghloul and Fattouche also co-invented the technology that led to another highly successful company, Cell-Loc Inc., going public in early 1998. Cell-Loc is marketing its patented wireless location technology and services in Latin and North American countries.

Now, two more Zaghloul brothers -Ashraf, 45, and Essam, 47, are intent on making their own high tech company just as much of a household name. They hope to build Markham, Ontario-based NTG International Inc. into a world-class provider of network infrastructure and enterprise-wide asset management software. Already, NTG Clarity has made its mark as one of only a couple of Canadian firms to outsource engineers to the new generation of telephone companies racing to design and build network infrastructures across the country.

Ashraf founded NTG Clarity seven years ago and the company was later financed by Essam and Hatim, as well as friends and relatives. The company's fortunes skyrocketed after the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) decided in 1998 to open local telephone service to competition. Today, NTG Clarity has a small army of over 125 hand-picked and specially trained telecom, IT and Internet employees working in the trenches for the Competitive Local Exchange Carriers (CLECs). Being first into the telco recruitment industry has paid huge dividends for NTG Clarity. Between 1997 and 1999, the company experienced a 300 percent gain in revenues and is poised to deliver net earnings before income taxes of $1.0 million, increasing to an estimated $10 million in 2004.

Finding subscribers was no problem for the new-generation telephone companies. Instead, their main challenge was recruiting enough professional engineers to design and build the infrastructure to serve the thousands of customers willing to make the switch to lower-cost, high-speed voice, data and Internet services.

Ashraf Zaghloul, a professional engineer with two decades' worth of information and communications work behind him - including several years in senior management of major private and public corporations - met the challenge head-on. He began a cross-Canada recruitment program for highly skilled communications engineers who could be outsourced to the new telecos. At the same time, NTG Clarity began to develop software products that would enable the telcos to track orders and invoice subscribers and to monitor the multitude of assets that made up their country-wide networks.

"It was a perfect fit for NTG Clarity," says Ashraf Zaghloul, from the company's head office in Markham, Ontario where a hundred or more terminals sit on used desks. It may be a low-cost model for business, but the engineering talent is all high-end. Ashraf has surrounded himself with a group of advisors from some of Canada's largest telecommunications and high tech companies. They include brother Hatim Zaghloul, who owns 7.5 percent of NTG Clarity; Ron Preston, senior vice president of network operations and technology for MetroNet; and Gary Oliver a former executive vice-president for AT&T and former president and chief operating officer of Rogers Telecom Inc., Canada's first competitive access provider. William Catalano, the chairman of NTG Clarity's advisory board, was also in senior management with Rogers, where he headed up the design and development of information systems, including the company's national network.

Early recognition of opportunities is typical of Ashraf, who is described by his brothers and his colleagues as a true visionary when it comes to the future of networks and the Internet. In a career that so far spans more than two decades, Ashraf has been instrumental in developing networks at a senior level, as well as mentoring other networking professionals. As director of Network Services for Rogers Communications Inc., he designed and implemented the company's national network and trained and motivated a number of key personnel who went on to start successful businesses of their own. Many of them have formed partnerships with NTG Clarity. Identifying a need to link network people across Canada, Ashraf founded the Network Technology User Group.

Well before the Internet was a household word, Ashraf established NTG Clarity to take advantage of what he expected would be an explosive market for Internet/Intranet technology. He began teaching courses, holding informational seminars and training sessions and setting up organizations on the Internet. Later, recognizing that the telecommunications industry and in particular the new telcos would soon face a woeful shortage of engineers, he set up a talent pool to fulfill the industry's engineering and IT needs.

Ashraf is well equipped to work with the CLECs. In the past, he was involved in all aspects of setting up a new telco, network design, circuit design, and provisioning network control centres. He also led major integration projects for companies such as MetroNet and E-Connect and developed processes and procedures for VOIP telephony for a major cable company. These projects, and Ashraf's past connections, have been leveraged into larger contracts with companies such as AT&T, Group Telecom, Rogers Communications Inc., Videotron Ltd., and C1 Communications.

According to his brothers, Ashraf's passion for teaching is an important part of NTG Clarity. "It's fundamental to developing the company's efficient, well trained and well motivated staff, and one of the reasons the company is growing at such an astounding pace," says Essam.

Now, Ashraf and Essam plan to take NTG Clarity public this fall, hoping to cash in on the demand for solid, high technology stocks that are backed by hard assets and capable of generating increasing profits. "We know there's some disenchantment with the high tech companies that are trading at a multiple of projected sales and still don't have actual products," says Essam Zaghloul, NTG Clarity's Chief Operating Officer. "However, NTG Clarity is a financially healthy company that is profitable and has marketable products." And NTG Clarity has had no trouble rounding up private funds to support the company's ongoing product development and acquisition plans. Last month alone, Essam rounded up some $4 million in private funds for the company.

To be successful as a public company, Ashraf and Essam say NTG Clarity will have to do two things: become serious about acquisitions and combine the company's consulting capability with software products aimed at the commercial market. "If you remain a consulting firm, you can grow in two ways: you either grow similar to the Andersons of the world and through acquisitions and internally-generated growth you eventually become a huge global consulting firm. Or you diversify by developing software products," says Essam. "We like the second approach because the world is currently witnessing the beginnings of what will be a huge market for products that make businesses more efficient. Ultimately, these products will allow both small and large companies to market and sell their products, then collect the revenues over the Internet."