You couldn’t really say the big mobile-phone and paging mergers of 2004 had folks on the edge of their seats or challenged crackerjack government antitrust lawyers. The former at least was interesting for its policy and precedential import, not to mention the $41 billion price tag and market implications. The latter was, well, an afterthought-but really a telling anachronism.
The Federal Communications Commission, having expended considerable resources on the recently completed Cingular Wireless-AT&T Wireless merger, didn’t even put out a press release announcing approval of the Arch Wireless Inc.-Metrocall Holdings Inc. deal. Consent was buried in a Nov. 10 public notice. The Justice Department did a good job making its antitrust analysis of Arch-Metrocall look serious and thoughtful. On the other hand, no one even called to yell at me after I wrote incorrectly an rcrnews.com item with Metrocall as the No. 1 paging company and Arch as No. 2, rather than the other way around.
That the blockbuster $275 million survival union of Arch and Metrocall was a snoozer is not to demean the companies or federal officials who reviewed the deal. It’s something special that both firms are still around, that they survived enough to combine assets. It ranks right up there with the sensationally miraculous comebacks of Boston’s Red Sox and Rapid City’s Jonathan Adelstein.
But sarcasm doesn’t do it. I sincerely hope the new entity-USA Mobility Inc.-succeeds. It’s tough out there. Wireless times are changing-which, of course, is the point.
For those like myself who’ve been around a while and watched the decline of the paging industry in recent years, there is a tangible sense of melancholy. (Maybe it’s just me, having watched Democrat Fritz Hollings-the sharpest tongue in the Senate-give his farewell speech in that unforgettable, unmistakable booming South Carolinian drawl.)
It is not coincidence that paging’s demise played out during the same period as the rise of cellular, PCS, iDEN and other wireless technologies. Before the paging industry became the messaging industry it was the radio common carrier industry. RCCs were the pioneers of what we currently call the wireless industry. RCC leaders-ordinary people with extraordinary vision and daring-were a colorful and rambunctious lot. RCCs didn’t have (or need) publicists to tell them what to say.
RCC operators were easily seen and accessible on trade-show exhibit floors in the B.C. (Before Cellular) era. They worked hard and played harder. Some have gone to a better place, either passing on or becoming millionaires several times over. I loved the RCC crowd. The last of the Mohicans.
