EasyCall approves stock option plan

EasyCall Communications Philippines Inc. (ECPI) approved a stock option plan during its recent stockholder's meeting at Richmonde Hotel. The shareholders have allocated up to 10 percent of its outstanding capital stock to be given to selected employees and staff based on performance and is in line with the best practices of progressive multinational companies listed in Nasqad.

EasyCall likewise announced the rollout of a robust and high quality Internet network in the third quarter of 2000, targeted for the month of July, focused on access, data center and applications hosting infrastructure. It has issued orders for routers, hub switches, servers and network software from quality vendors such as Cisco Systems and Sun Systems.

EasyCall will initially target the consumer and corporate access market, with the intention of offering network infrastructure services in both e-commerce segments of business to consumer (b2c) and business to business (b2b).

The company will also upgrade and expand its current call center business to integrate customer relationship management services affiliated to its online services to be launched. The call center has expanded into direct ordering services, as evidenced in contracts with three food chain outlets, Wendy's Kenny Rogers and Shakey's and an American based company, for its existing call center customers.

The company uses its own call center and mapping software for automatic forwarding of orders to food chain outlets nearest to the customer. When expanded, Internet applications will be built in to allow, for example, web based orders through the EasyCall call center.

In the meantime, EasyCall will continue to improve and widen its current paging/messaging operations to provide value to its customers. It will launch this month a cheaper mobile e-mail messaging service, which allows subscribers to receive e-mails through their pager and to send e-mails without a computer by calling its e-mail center 636-4000.

The system will also have the capability of receiving numeric messages. EasyCall is likewise developing and will soon offer global roaming capability for its paging subscribers, which will allow subscribers to read from anywhere in the world their messages by going into EasyCall's web site. It will soon provide voice mail and fax to e-mail services with paging alert for its subscribers.

In line with this expansion, EasyCall shareholders approved a 25- percent stock dividend payable to stockholders of record as of April 24, 2000. According to Modesto N. Cervantes, this will allow EasyCall to conserve its cash, which can be best utilized for its expansion program. The company realized a net income of P50 million for the nine months ended March 31, 2000.