Ensuring US Competitiveness Prompts Need to Revisit Wireless Business Strategies

"So much of our country is falling behind in our ability to produce high-value-added jobs," said Jim Hueser, business unit executive for IBM's Wireless Broadband Americas Group, at the 15th W2i Digital Cities Convention, in Washington, DC, this past December.

"I go back to the Midwest, where I grew up, where I worked in the factory as a kid, to put my way through school," Hueser said. "It's still a factory town. Factories are disappearing.... Without a doubt we're losing a lot of our smaller towns and cities. The jobs have dried up. I can't even say we're losing the manufacturing -- we've lost it."

Hueser evoked an urban myth of sorts. "In Long Beach, California, they say the sun sets at 3:00 in the afternoon because of all the stacked up cargo containers from the Pacific Rim. We've got nothing to ship back. Now, that's hyperbole; it's not true. We are exporting, and the dollar's value helps with that. But the bottom line is, we're not a manufacturing powerhouse anymore."

The challenge is twofold -- to transform the United States domestically, bridging the domestic digital divide -- and globally, ensuring it remains a competitive information society in the 21st century.

"The economy has changed, and we've got to look to things like research technology," Hueser said. "We have to realize that if we don't keep creating high-value jobs, this country will be in a world of hurt."

* See also W2i's: "Japan Eyes 10 Gigs by 2010 as United States Sweats 200 Kbps," based on the proceedings from the Convention.)
* Visit W2i's newly inaugurated Digital Inclusion Forum  to learn how W2i, IBM, Intel, Microsoft and OneCommunity are organizing to raise awareness about the digital divide in the United States.

Revisiting the Search for Solutions
The stakes have never been higher for local communities and regions exploring the broaband-wireless opportunity. At the same time, the path to viable implementation remains complex.

"Every community we work with spends so much of their time trying to figure out how to implement broadband in the community, and how to pay for it," Hueser added. "In my 25+ years at IBM, I've never spent so much time as I have in my last four or five years trying to build a business case, figuring out the ROI."

Midway through 2007, a cloud of press coverage of the U.S. local-government broadband-wireless market began to grow. Whether in BusinessWeek or on NPR, the stories often targeted the financial and political weaknesses associated with citywide wireless deployment models, especially when they centered on single-use public-access models. Often naming Philadelphia and San Francisco, the reports typically cited low demand and quoted dissatisfied network users complaining about their unsatisfactory customer experiences.

Last August, W2i observed that a "a long overdue realignment of core business strategies -- more inclusive, for example, of anchor tenancy and local-government business processes reengineering -- could not only reshape the industry in a positive way but could open up opportunities to a whole new set of actors, both on the technology-equipment side and on the service-provider side. Simultaneously, systems integrators and application vendors, who are more technology agnostic, will likely welcome a refined business-model landscape that is based on a balanced view of reality."

Applications and Risk Management
Identifying the