LAS VEGAS-With company names based more on family names or regions of the country instead of original creations brewed up by marketing experts, members of the Rural Cellular Association last week held their Ninth Annual Convention and Exhibition in the city of excess, Las Vegas.
After a roaring keynote address by renowned college basketball analyst Dick Vitale, most of the participants launched into the show’s general sessions concerning next-generation services, customer service strategies, the financial impact of business alliances and wireless safety issues.
The next-generation services session drew a standing-room only crowd that seemed interested in introducing advanced services onto their networks, but still questioned current time lines and technologies.
“[Third-generation] is no longer tomorrow,” said Lucent Technologies Inc.’s Ray Sojka. “It is here today.”
Sojka, who moderated the panel on 3G services titled, “Roadmap to 3G,” noted that while the wireless evolution is indeed here, he compared its current state to the “Pong” phase of video game development.
The panel spent considerable time reinforcing the notion that 3G services were not just the concern of the larger wireless carriers.
“I believe that 3G represents an opportunity for rural carriers to thrive. You can lead the way for 3G services,” Sojka said.
To prove his point, Sojka noted that rural operator Midwest Wireless was the first U.S. operator to introduce short message service, a market that has led the revolution for next-generation services in Europe.
Another potential target market for rural carriers is to enable broadband connections for customers outside of the normal range for such services. While many broadband and digital subscriber line providers have suffered from slow uptake of their services, rural operators are privy to a large customer base being ignored by conventional operators.
“The slow uptake of DSL-type services is not because people don’t want them,” said Hesham ElHamahmy, senior manager of mobile Internet infrastructure for Lucent. “The slow uptake is because people in rural areas cannot get the service. I think the demand is there, but it cannot be deployed fast enough yet.”
Another benefit touted for rural operators surrounded location-based services. Next-generation networks are expected to ease the implementation of these services, and with rural operators’ ability to truly understand their customers’ habits, carriers were urged to take advantage of the additional revenues possible from location-based technology.
“It’s a huge opportunity to differentiate yourself from the larger operators,” explained Lee Forland, vice president of wireless Internet market development for Nortel Networks.
The session’s panelists also noted 3G services would allow rural operators to increase their networks’ voice capacity in most cases without the need for additional spectrum, which is expected to become more difficult and expensive to acquire.
While additional spectrum may become cost prohibitive for some of the rural carriers to acquire in the future, most in attendance recognized the increasing value of their own spectrum holdings. And, while they said they would be foolish not to listen to offers from larger operators to purchase their holdings, most said they are in the industry for the long haul and not just to make a quick buck.
And what better setting to discuss monetary savings than Sin City itself.
