Their words were cautious yet wise, and at times peppered with remorse, but as Cingular Wireless Chief Executive Officer Stephen Carter and Verizon Wireless President and CEO Dennis Strigl addressed attendees at the wireless keynote session at SuperComm last week in Atlanta, it became clear both wanted the wireless industry to put a lid on the hype and get back to basics.
“We don’t see the road to 3G as a racetrack,” said Carter. ” In the long run, what will be important is who is the first with the applications people want.”
A steady deployment pace, coupled with tangible applications that run on user-friendly devices seems simple enough, but the industry has strayed, and according to Strigl, is increasingly ignoring the one service that has consistently generated revenue-voice.
“Everyone wants to leapfrog to wireless data, but at the same time, they don’t want to think about the basics themselves,” Strigl said.
Proclaiming “voice is king, not data,” Strigl said incremental voice usage will continue to generate the majority of revenue for carriers. Carter speculated that it might be two or three more years before Cingular starts to see a significant portion of its revenue come from data services.
Reading between the lines, it seems “getting back to basics” in wireless is really about getting back to the bottom line, and focusing on the money-making tools of today, rather than investing too much on the earning potential of a future application or service. Everyone, from carriers to vendors, is desperate to cut their losses and start recovering from the stock market debacle of the past year.
Carter said the industry also has been tripped up by unfulfilled promises, particularly in the case of WAP, which had unrealistic expectations placed upon it from the beginning. If we can learn anything from this, Carter said, it is imperative that carriers deliver on what is promised.
Carter and Strigl also de-emphasized the importance of third-generation technology in and of itself. Both recognized that everyone, eventually, will have the same or similar technology, but things like the quality of the network, simple pricing plans and responsive customer service is what will lure new customers or keep current customers from churning.
As for the precarious state of the telecommunications industry, the consensus was the sky is not falling.
“The wireless industry is very healthy, with strong, underlying fundamentals,” Strigl said.
Although the buzz around the show floor was attendance had decreased from the more than 53,000 that attended last year’s SuperComm, the Georgia World Congress Center teemed with people, and companies including Marconi plc, Cisco Systems Inc. and Nortel Networks Corp. spared little expense on their gigantic booths.
Even companies such as Ericsson Inc. and Adaptive Broadband Corp., both of which have cut notably large amounts of staff in recent months, had a large presence. Broadband wireless vendors, which logically should be the most frugal these days given that industry’s recent troubles, made the strongest showing among wireless companies. Many were touting equipment for use in international markets.
