President Clinton’s electoral landslide victory over Bob Dole was anticlimactic for sure. “Building the bridge to the 21st century”-the Clinton-Gore campaign mantra-could be just as boring. It’s what lies on the other side of the bridge that beckons great expectations.
The telecommunications industry thinks it knows.
British Telecom is online to buy MCI Communications Corp., the No. 2 long distance telecom carrier. Odds are, after pot shots from AT&T, Sprint and others are over, the deal will be approved by the feds.
Tom Wheeler, president of CTIA, was in Europe last week to talk about cosmic wireless issues with his counterparts. There are no longer islands, Wheeler says. Roaming, fraud, billing, technology and other issues-like the airwaves that carry wireless signals-transcend national borders.
Indeed, regulators from around the world recognized this by recently agreeing to allow roaming of mobile satellite pocket phones.
In sunny Scottsdale, Ariz., where the National Wireless Resellers Association met last week, it was apparent resale is catching the fancy of the telecommunications industry.
Wireless is more than a revolution of ideas and technology. Behind the scenes, in the trenches, it is a movement of blood, sweat and tears that is responsible for one of America’s great success stories. There will be scares and failures along the way. Such is the nature of progress.
Still, folks worry that if NextWave’s IPO fails, Wall Street money will dry up for small- and mid-sized PCS players. High anxiety also accompanies the anticipation of CDMA commercial rollout. One top PCS executive candidly admitted the industry is a crap shoot. Perhaps, but all business is a bit of a gamble.
Yet, as Wheeler said, no industry-not even wireless-is an island.
The events of governments and peoples will impact the wireless industry in the next century. The ever-expanding U.S. economy is as resilient as it is fragile and can be brought to its knees by destabilization abroad or a constitutional crisis at home.
Did the ’96 presidential campaign paper over the real issues of today and tomorrow, like the survival of Medicare and Social Security? Is Wall Street’s bull just that, bearing little reflection of stagnant wages, sluggish growth, rotting inner cities and growing cynicism of the political system?
If Clinton continues to rely on “the little things” in his second term and fails to get his arms around the big things, few-including wireless-will make it across the bridge to the 21st century.
