Spectrum of Greed

America’s wireless economy demonstrates the best and the worst in the American business landscape. True, we have some of the best communications infrastructure in the world. A base that served us very well in the twentieth century. And yes, I did mean the twentieth century.

As we move forward in the twenty-first century, we are seeing a growing requirement for always on, immediately recoverable communications systems. The advent of high availability systems and their distribution into business and everyday life is driving these new requirements. Perhaps the most relevant example is our financial industry, where online processing and ATM’s require communications networks to be available in order to provide even a basic level of operation.

The technology for secure wireless solutions that offer up to 99.999% uptime is available and ready to deploy today, but we do not have the opportunity to serve these critical needs in this country. The technology for rapid communications recovery from natural and man-made disasters that cripple local economies is also available and ready to deploy, but we can’t bring it to market.

Why? Because a very few entrenched mega-companies control most of the available wireless spectrum creating a very significant barrier to entry. Not only do they get to regulate who and how they are competed against, they have a primary interest in protecting existing investments in their landline infrastructure by limiting the wireless offerings available to their customers.

That old standard T-1 doesn’t fare so well in comparison to a wireless connection that can offer greater bandwidth, much higher QOS, and much faster recoverability at a lower price. The T-1 is the life’s blood of the American communications giants and they don’t want to lose that revenue stream.

Even if the wireless spectrum were available, the view of the majority of the investor community is that these entrenched companies will do just about anything to stifle this new level of competition. A wireless operation is capital intensive and requires a fairly significant investment to roll-out. Generally, this can’t be done without equity investment from a very reluctant investor pool.

Our wireless offerings in the United States tend to be very cookie cutter and designed solely to maximize the profits of the mega-company. Sure you can get wireless broadband service, but not in the shape and size that truly fits the growing requirements of global economic competition and this new world of protecting against economic terrorism.

Our economic competitors overseas have had access to sophisticated wireless technology for several years. Again why?  Because there were no existing communications infrastructure to protect.

So in this case, greed truly does stifle opportunity.