Chapter 134 Insufficient Production Capacity

"We are indeed short of funds, Your Highness, but I need to ask, after accepting your investment, what do we need to do?"

"Business is business, Colonel Coy. I know that the current management of Empire Shield is not particularly formal. After I invest, I hope that it can refer to large military companies like Blackwater and conduct formal operations."

Seeing that McVin Coy nodded in agreement after hearing these words, he continued,

"I know you hope to find a place for those retired young men to realize their ambitions. If this is the case, then the Imperial Shield needs to be standardized in order to last long."

"I can accept this, Your Highness. 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 took a lot of detours in the beginning."

"Of course, the purpose of my investment in Empire Shield, in addition to hoping to select some people to increase my security, is also..."

Barron briefly introduced the "London Star" fraud case to Mai Wen and said,

"I also hope to select the right person from Imperial Shield to serve as a field officer to investigate this case."

At the beginning, Barron was not prepared to make too much of a splash in Shield of the Empire.

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 McVin manage the logistics agency, and in the name of investigating the "London Star", he will transfer personnel from the intelligence team to the Imperial Shield. All of this is for the purpose of further investigating this military company.

Finally, after negotiations, both parties agreed that Barron would inject 10 million pounds into the Imperial Shield military company and obtain 45% of its shares.

The funds will be used to increase Empire Shield's equipment and personnel and expand its business.

Currently, the main business of "Imperial Shield" is in Africa. Baron reminded McEwen that the United States is likely to use force against Iraq, and Britain will inevitably choose to stand on the side of the United States and participate in this attack.

Their goal must be to overthrow Saddam's regime. Therefore, after this war, their regular army will not leave too many people there. They will definitely hire many private military companies to undertake security maintenance tasks. At that time, it will also be a very good development opportunity for "Shield of the Empire".

With Barron's current network of contacts, it's hard to say how big a share he can get, but it should be no problem for him to help a private military company of the size of "Empire Shield" to get a share of the profits.

…

"What is affecting the promotion of our Freeview platform set-top boxes is the serious shortage of set-top boxes. We have to wait for manufacturers to produce them."

Brad Price, CEO of Digital UK, complained to Barron's:

"In order to install Freeview's set-top boxes as quickly as possible, many users who have made appointments choose to directly receive the set-top boxes and install them themselves, rather than waiting for the installers to come to their homes to install them. This saves a lot of time, but the problem is that our partners' production is limited, so the set-top boxes are now in short supply. Up to now, there are less than 20,000 users connected to Freeview..."

Currently, the television products used by most British households are based on analog signals.

Freeview is a terrestrial digital television platform. If users of analog TVs want to watch it, they must use a corresponding decoder to convert the digital signal into an analog signal so that it can be received by the TV. Therefore, a set-top box corresponding to the Freeview platform is required.

Digital UK currently has a policy of providing set-top boxes to users free of charge. Users can make an appointment for installation - Digital UK's technicians will come to install them at the agreed time.

The installation of the set-top box is actually very simple. Just connect the set-top box to the signal cable, connect it to the TV, select the corresponding signal source, and then you can watch TV channels on the Freeview platform.

In addition, Digital UK's technicians need to make an appointment and queue up for on-site installation. Therefore, many users who can't wait go directly to Digital UK's designated outlets, sign a free rental contract, pay a deposit, and then pick up the set-top box and install it themselves. As long as you follow the diagram in the manual, basically anyone with a low IQ can perform the fool-proof installation.

But the problem arises again. The set-top box manufacturer of Digital UK is a local British manufacturer, and the other party's production efficiency is really hard to describe.

So the current situation is that after connecting to about 20,000 users, Digital UK has no stock of its own platform set-top boxes!

Every day Digital UK receives countless calls from users asking when the equipment will arrive again, which seriously affects the promotion progress of the Freeview platform.

Since all channels except the BBC have been connected to the Freeview platform, under Barron's decision, Digital UK signed a one-year free access contract with ITV in order to give users more program choices on the Freeview platform. During this year, Digital UK will not charge any fees for the connection of ITV's channels to the Freeview platform.

Naturally, TV stations want as many viewers as possible, and ITV already had its own TV channels on the previous ITV Digital channel. So after Digital UK provided a year of free access to the Freeview platform, ITV's channels were also added to the Freeview platform.

In this way, among the three major TV stations in the UK, except 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 be rented for free!

There is a mystery here, because when each user "rents" a set-top box on the Freeview platform for free, although the rent is free, they need to pay a deposit of 400 pounds for the set-top box.

Don't think that a deposit of 400 pounds for a set-top box is high. You should know that users need to pay 35 pounds per month to subscribe to Sky Sports, which is 420 pounds a year - this is just the cost of a sports channel under BSkyB...

The deposit for a Freeview set-top box is not as high as the annual fee for Sky Sports. This is just a one-time deposit and can be refunded in the end.

On the Freeview platform, users can watch free channels from BBC and ITV, and the content is clearer, which has attracted positive responses from users.

Therefore, when 20,000 households are connected to the Freeview platform, Digital UK will collect a deposit of up to 8 million pounds...

If 10 million users are connected, they can collect 4 billion pounds in deposits alone!

Although it is called a deposit, it can provide Digital UK with a large amount of development funds in the early stage.

You know, the British pound continues to depreciate against the US dollar. Let's put it this way, if such a deposit is converted into US dollars and left alone, Digital UK can make a lot of money, not to mention the increase in market value after it is used as development capital.

"Have you not tried to find other partners to manufacture set-top boxes?"

"We are looking, but you have to know that not only are the set-top boxes offered by other manufacturers more expensive, but the best manufacturers have already signed an exclusive agreement with BSkyB Digital. We still need time."

After hearing what Brad Priest said, Barron sighed. It seemed that BSkyB's competition was everywhere.

Compared with the new company Digital UK, BSkyB is naturally more trusted by manufacturers.