Chapter 134 Insufficient Production Capacity
"We are indeed short of funds, Your Highness the Duke, but I need to ask, what do we need to do after accepting your investment?"
"Business is business, Colonel Coy. I know that the current management of Imperial Shield is not particularly formal. After my investment, I hope to refer to large military companies like Blackwater for standardized operations. "
Seeing that Melvin Coy nodded in agreement after hearing these words, he continued:
"I know that you hope to find a place for those young men who have retired from the army to express their ambitions. If this is the case, then the Imperial Shield needs to be standardized to be able to last for a long time."
"I can accept this, Your Highness the Duke. In fact, I have had this idea for a long time. It's just that at the beginning, I didn't have much experience in managing this kind of... company, and I still took a lot of detours at the beginning. of."
"Of course, my purpose of investing in Imperial Shield is not only to choose some people to increase my security, but also..."
Barron briefly introduced the "London Star" fraud case to Maiwen and said:
"I also hope that the right person from Imperial Shield can be selected as a field officer to investigate this case."
Initially, Barron was not prepared to make too much of a splash in Imperial Shield.
After all, he will examine the power he can control very carefully.
In fact, after investing in this military company, Barron will send personnel to help Maiwen manage the logistics organization, and transfer personnel from the intelligence team into the Imperial Shield in the name of investigating the "London Star". All of this, for The next step is to further investigate this military company.
Finally, after discussions, both parties agreed that Barron would inject 10 million pounds of capital into the "Imperial Shield" military company and obtain 45% of its shares.
These funds will be used to increase the equipment and personnel of "Imperial Shield" and expand its operations.
Currently, the main business of "Empire Shield" is in Africa. Barron reminded Maiwen that the United States will most likely use force against Iraq, and Britain will inevitably choose to side with the United States and participate in this attack.
Their goal must be to overthrow Saddam's regime. Therefore, after this battle, their regular army will not leave too many people there. They will definitely hire many private military companies to take on the task of security maintenance. This time will also be a very good development opportunity for "Imperial Shield".
With Barron's current connections, I can't say how big a share he will take, but it is no problem to help a private military company of the size of "Imperial Shield" and get a share of the broth.
…
"What is affecting the speed of promotion of our Freeview platform set-top boxes now is that the production of set-top boxes is seriously insufficient, and we have to wait for manufacturers to produce them."
Digital UK CEO Brad Price complained to Barron:
“In order to install Freeview’s set-top box as quickly as possible, many users who have made reservations choose to directly receive the set-top box and install it themselves instead of waiting for the installer to come and install it. This saves a lot of time, but the problem is that the output of our partners is limited. Therefore, the current supply of set-top boxes exceeds demand. As of now, the number of users connected to Freeview is less than 20,000..."
Currently, most British households use television products that are based on analog signals.
Freeview is a terrestrial digital TV platform. If TV users with analog signals want to watch it, they must use a corresponding decoder to convert the digital signal into an analog signal and be received by the TV. Therefore, a set-top box corresponding to the Freeview platform is needed.
Currently, Digital UK has a free set-top box policy for users. Users can make an appointment for installation - Digital UK's technicians will come to install the box at the agreed time.
The installation of the set-top box is actually very simple. After connecting the set-top box to the signal cable, connect it to the TV, select the corresponding signal source, and then you can watch the TV channels on the Freeview platform.
In addition, Digital UK technicians need to make an appointment and queue up to install it at their door. Therefore, many users who cannot wait go directly to the designated outlets of Digital UK, sign a free rental contract and pay the deposit, and then directly receive the set-top box and install it themselves - as long as According to the schematic diagram in the manual, basically the IQ can be installed in a fool-proof manner even if it is not really defective.
But here comes the problem again. Digital UK's set-top box manufacturer is a British manufacturer, and its production efficiency is really hard to describe.
So the current situation is that after connecting about 20,000 users, Digital UK no longer has its own platform set-top boxes in stock!
Every day, Digital UK receives countless calls from users asking when the products will arrive again, which seriously affects the promotion progress of the Freeview platform.
Since all the BBC channels have been connected to the Freeview platform, under Barron's approval, Digital UK signed a one-year free access agreement with ITV in order to provide users with more program choices on the Freeview platform. Contract - During this year, Digital UK will not charge any fees for ITV's channels to be connected to the Freeview platform.
Naturally, TV stations hope to have as many viewers as possible, and ITV itself has access to its own TV channels on the previous ITV Digital channel. Therefore, after Digital UK provided one-year free access to the Freeview platform, ITV's channels have also joined the Freeview platform.
In this case, among the three major TV stations in the UK, in addition to BSkyB, the other two BBC and ITV can watch clearer digital TV channels on the Freeview platform, so users' enthusiasm for the Freeview platform has been ignited.
What’s more, their set-top boxes can still be rented for free!
There is still a mystery here, because when each user "rents" a set-top box on the Freeview platform for free, although the rent is free, a set-top box deposit of 400 pounds is required.
Don’t think that the deposit of 400 pounds for a set-top box is very high. You need to know that users need to pay 35 pounds per month to subscribe to Sky Sports, which is 420 pounds a year - and this is only the cost of a sports channel under BSkyB...
The deposit for the set-top box on the Freeview platform is not as high as the annual fee for Sky Sports. It is only a one-time deposit and will be refundable at the end.
On the Freeview platform, free channels owned by the BBC and ITV can be watched more clearly, which makes users respond positively.
Therefore, when 20,000 households are now connected to the Freeview platform, the deposit collected by Digital UK is as high as 8 million pounds...
If 10 million users are connected, they can collect 4 billion pounds just for the deposit!
Although it is called a deposit, it has been able to provide Digital UK with a large amount of development funds in the early stages.
You know, the British pound continues to depreciate relative to the U.S. dollar. Let's put it this way, if such a deposit is exchanged for U.S. dollars and left like this, Digital UK can make a lot of money, not to mention it as development funds. What about the growth in market value in the future?
"Have you not tried to find other cooperative manufacturers to manufacture set-top boxes?"
"We are looking for it, but you have to know that not only do the set-top boxes offered by other manufacturers cost more, but the best manufacturer has signed an exclusive agreement with BSkyB Digital. We still need time."
Hearing Brad Placid's words, Barron sighed. It seems that competition from BSkyB is everywhere.
Compared with the new company Digital UK, BSkyB is naturally more trusted by those manufacturers.
