-We had to start with those appalling ads," says Berry, whose first task was a make-over of Froggy's advertising campaign. -We are going to give the frog a bit of class, we've turned him blue, given him a bow tie and tidied him up a bit."
However, the changes will be more than just cosmetic, and while both Paterson and Berry are new comers to the ISP game, they plan to leverage combined business experience in different sectors to significantly expand Froggy's operations.
In fact if they manage to pull it off, thousands of Internet users in NSW and Victoria may find themselves unwittingly using a Froggy service.
Founder of Sydney's DCM night club, with extensive experience in the dance-club scene, Berry's last project had him developing the outbiz Web portal for the gay community.
-Based on my experience with outbiz, we will be looking for opportunities to roll out rebranded services to community-based ISPs," Berry said. -Different community groups can still target their members with a community-specific connection and Web portal, but they won't have to worry about the infrastructure, because we can put it together and manage it for them."
Berry and Paterson plan to target the hundreds of small, community-based ISPs initially designed to provide affordable Internet access to a specific community group. According to Paterson many of these are operating on a shoe-string budget or at a loss, and are dependent on volunteers.
-We are looking at a way to take the operations out of their hands and provide them with a reliable service they can resell into their community, including access to our call-centre resources," Paterson explains. -The service will be totally rebranded, so their users won't notice a thing, except in some cases where the connectivity will improved."
At this stage the pair plan to target an amorphous group of sporting, ethnic and religious groups.
Paterson also points out that the current orientation of Froggy clients is already primarily community-focussed, with the bulk of its clientele based within a 10 km radius of the company's Liverpool offices.
-The first thing we decided was to keep the call centre operating in Liverpool. Nothing has been spared on the infrastructure, and there is ample room to grow our client base," says Paterson.
Although the new management is planning an overhaul of management practices, and is currently conducting employee assessment and training, Paterson expects changes to be minimal.
-The call centre is all state of the art, the billing system is sound, and the staff are committed. All the company really needs is a bit of direction and an overhaul of management practices," Paterson said.
While at this stage the new operators plan to stay focussed on the dial-up market, Paterson is not ruling out moving into the provision of DSL links in the future.
-We are looking at a range of options to grow our client base, including offering high speed connections, but we have yet to settle on what kind of service it will be," Paterson said.
I just alowed Froggy in for the second time. The first time I had some trouble with it.
But I'm still worried about security (of passwords etc.) Do I have any reason to be now??
Thank you.
Mikael Roen