Isn’t it ironic that German and Japanese interests are planning to take significant stakes in U.S. wireless telephony-countries that were sworn enemies of the United States nearly 60 years ago this week, when Pearl Harbor was attacked, catapulting the United States into World War II?
While it has been said that war makes strange bedfellows, peace and prosperity surely do the same. The globalization of the world may not prevent another world war, but it most certainly would make choosing sides more complicated.
By and large, these cross-country investments knit our global community a little tighter, a little closer, making us all a little more interdependent.
Sure, there were some rumblings that the German government should not have a significant stake in VoiceStream Wireless Corp. And the U.S. government investigated whether there would be harm in allowing NTT to purchase Internet service provider Verio Inc. But eventually, the NTT-Verio sale was approved, and Sen. Ernest Hollings’ (D-S.C.) protest of a Deutsche Telekom investment in VoiceStream seems to have lost some of its luster, especially if the German government sells off more shares of DT.
I haven’t seen any major threats about NTT DoCoMo’s rumored plans to take as much as a 20-percent investment in AT&T Wireless Group.
These international investments will help ensure that the best technologies are deployed as third- and fourth- and even fifth-generation wireless technologies come to fruition. Why? Because companies competing on a global map will not be as influenced by where the technology was developed as by the technology itself.
The wireless industry has a history of pitting “American-made” CDMA technology against “European-born” GSM technology, for second- and third-generation standards.
Meanwhile, China is pushing its own technology for third-generation wireless services just so it doesn’t miss out on some of the billions that will be made investing in 3G infrastructure. Rarely do you hear that China’s TD-SCDMA technology will be better, only that it will be Chinese-made and bring royalties to China. (However, the technology was invented with Siemens, a German company.)
Other factors outside of technology-like time to market, ease of deployment, marketing hype, etc.-will continue to influence how wireless technologies are adopted. But the “home team” factor may lose some of its impact as the large wireless companies become less homogeneous.
