GlobalTel News Release

SOUTH FLORIDA BUSINESS JOURNAL - June 20, 1997

Staying power: Five companies that kept their Top 10 rankings

By LISETTE HILTON     In the technology world, ancient history could mean something that happened just last week. That makes it all the more unusual when a technology company is able to sustain growth over a period of years. Here are five companies that made the South Florida Business Journal's Top 10 list two years in a row: GlobalTel
    "We've done everything the hard way," said Steve Williams of his success with GlobalTel, a division of InterActive Media Technologies Inc. "We've always been ahead of our time, and that's not a good place to be. And we have the right product in the wrong time."
    But Williams, the "idea man," president, CEO and co-founder of GlobalTel, struck it right when he came up with a way to save people money.
    Boca Raton-based GlobalTel provides low U.S. phone rates to people outside the country. They contract with GlobalTel to provide international switching technology, which exports a U.S. dial tone to a foreign country so that callers are billed at U.S. rates. Customers include Shell Oil, American Express, embassies, the World Bank and the United Nations.
    The company's strength is its marketing ability, Williams said. So far, it's paid off: $5 million in sales projected in 1997, up from $2 million last year.
    Williams plans to take GlobalTel public later this summer. Although GlobalTel has 250 shareholders and raised $1.5 million in five years, Williams said the public offering should bring in the capital needed to put switches overseas.
    "The market's huge," he said. "Only 3 percent of those who could benefit from the service use it."