LAS VEGAS-New technologies and trends are trickling down to impact the businesses of rural carriers, bringing with them a host of new opportunities and challenges. The common theme among sessions at the Rural Cellular Assocation annual convention in Las Vegas last week was how small carriers who serve the low-population areas of America can turn those changes to their advantage.
From Frank Tyneski, senior director of industrial design for Kyocera Wireless Corp., attendees heard about the modernists-with-hippie-hearts who make up various age demographics of phone buyers. People of different ages want different features in their phones, he said, but all of them appreciate good design and elements of surprise in their handsets.
Accessories, he added, also will have an increasing impact on how people personalize their wireless experience. Consultant Mark Landiak of Corporate Dynamics Inc. emphasized in a separate session on how small carriers can expand the types of devices in their stores to include things such as Bluetooth-controlled devices like boom boxes, or perhaps picture frames that display digital photos, and bundle products like photo printers with camera
phones in order to capitalize on the fact that more than ever, people rely on camera phones for pictures rather than digital cameras. However, he noted, the huge gap between the technology and employees’ knowledge of how to sell advanced products can hurt small companies-to the tune of an estimated $143,000 per year in lost sales opportunities, Landiak said.
Mobile TV soon for the masses
Paul Jacobs, CEO of Qualcomm Inc., regaled the crowd with the advances of mobile networks generally and Qualcomm’s MediaFLO USA Inc. mobile television service specifically. Opportunities in mobile are attracting different kinds of companies and new competitors to the space, he noted, and will result in a proliferation of devices. MediaFLO, he said, would eventually be able to offer targeted advertising and local content, and could stand as a sort of testing ground for content that isn’t popular enough for MediaFLO but could still end up running over cellular networks if it attracts a niche audience.
However, he noted, MediaFLO is concentrating on launching the top 100 markets-not rural areas-because the towers that enable the service are very expensive.
Legislative challenges
New technologies also have a legislative angle to them; for example, the government may require carriers to send emergency alerts via cellphone. The government already requires carriers to locate cellphone owners who dial 911.
Art Prest of Prest & Associates told RCA members during one session that rural carriers also may face new requirements from the Federal Communications Commission on the accuracy of E911, some of which could be nearly impossible to meet with either GSM or CDMA technology. He also said that carriers might have to choose whether to opt in to providing emergency alerts by late 2008.
Prest also said that the association is doing its best to make sure that rural carriers have a realistic shot at acquiring some of the eagerly awaited 700 MHz spectrum set to be auctioned later this year. RCA has been working to make sure that, instead of large spectrum blocks that rural carriers could neither afford nor would be interested in, at least one of the auction-bound spectrum is broken up into small areas of as many as 734 licenses, Prest said.
Zen of ice cream
But as Jerry Greenfield, co-founder of Ben & Jerry’s Homemade Holdings Inc., told the audience during a keynote presentation, success is possible for small companies, and businesses grow both economically and spiritually-much like people-when core values are at the center of the business. He recounted his early struggles at the company when it was-much like the carriers he addressed-a small, regional player that had problems with resources, equipment, funding and distribution, as well as competition from much larger and well-heeled corporations.
He also recalled the times when Ben & Jerry’s tapped into its local connections and customer base to overcome various challenges.
Specifically, Greenfield described the company’s campaign to get customers to protest distribution roadblocks erected by competitor Pillsbury and its Haagen-Dazs brand, as well as a Ben & Jerry’s initial public offering that was available only to residents of its home state of Vermont.
Even so, the self-described hippies had trouble reconciling their business activities with their desire to contribute to the community. Greenfield and Cohen sold Ben & Jerry’s to Unilever in 2000.
“Business has really become the most powerful force in our society,” Greenfield said, noting the religion and government used to hold that position. “Business is not evil,” he continued. “Business is pretty much neutral. . It’s without values, but it pretty much thinks just about itself without thinking about the larger society”-a key difference, he noted, than churches or government which had a built-in component of looking out for society’s greater good.
But, he went on, businesses are usually led by good people-there’s just a breakdown in the good that individuals do versus the good that a business does.
In trying to settle such issues, Ben & Jerry’s set up retail stores that are run by non-profits. The company also works to promote local causes; Greenfield cited a popular Ben & Jerry’s ice cream flavor that comes from a bakery in Yonkers, N.Y. The bakery works with people “out of the economic mainstream,” such as the homeless and people with substance abuse problems, and Ben & Jerry’s buys millions of dollars per year of brownies from the bakery.
“There’s a spiritual piece to business, just as there is in the lives of individuals,” Greenfield said. “As you help others, you are helped in return.” And then he paid it forward by having chocolate-covered Cherry Garcia bars passed out to the audience.
