While Old Man Winter dumps mercilessly on everyone else, the sun shines brighter than ever these days on Irwin Jacobs. A big target for skeptics ever since taking the road less traveled instead the one the taken by the rest of the wireless herd, Jacobs is making believers of us all now with every new personal communications services system launch, equipment contract and court decision.
It gets better by the day. You can’t help but feel good for this man.
RCR’s Wireless Industry Person of the Year is watching his dream unfold-the commercialization of Code Division Multiple Access technology. This dream is beginning to play out in Frank Capra style. Not only has CDMA bucked the odds and made it into an industry that once embraced Time Division Multiple Access technology with fraternal fervor, it’s on the way to becoming the digital wireless standard of the future.
Obstacles, hurdles, whatever you want to call them, are still there. The technology could take years to refine, but such is the nature of these things. Nextel Communications Inc.’s enhanced specialized mobile radio technology stumbled early, but now appears to have recovered its footing. So too for CDMA.
Sprint Spectrum, NextWave, PCS PrimeCo, AirTouch Communications Inc., Bell Atlantic Nynex Mobile, 360 Communications Co. and GTE Mobilnet have jumped on the bandwagon. That’s nationwide coverage, which arguably makes CDMA the industry’s digital standard.
And it’s American made. Hooray! I’m not a Perot or Buchanan protectionist, having nothing against Swedish, Finnish or Japanese makers of wireless phones. But who doesn’t like rooting for the home team?
Kevin Kelley, Qualcomm’s vice president of external affairs in Washington, D.C., also is feeling good (he uses the word vindicated) about things-especially about our town’s federal appeals court ruling last week that overturned an FCC decision booting Qualcomm’s broadband PCS pioneer’s preference application a few years back.
Kelly shouldn’t get euphoric just yet. The court said the FCC failed to apply to the same faulty rule interpretation to Qualcomm as it did to pioneer’s preference winner Omnipoint, which could mean bad news for Omnipoint. But Qualcomm still made out better than other spurned pioneer’s preference applicants whose challenges were denied by the court.
Kelley says regardless of how the FCC treats the court remand, the marketplace has crowned the true wireless pioneer. I agree.
