We all have to learn to think outside of the box

Why don’t radio manufacturers build a mobile “platform” that has a plug-in option board that repeats out to a UHF or VHF portable? That would solve 90% of our customers’ needs and keep them from going away.

If you make it to IWCE in Las Vegas this year, you’ll see hundreds of manufacturers, distributors and service providers hawking their wares. They’ll be showing off lots of new products and technologies; and they’ll be shaking hands, passing out literature and talking ’til they drop.

I’ve been going to IWCE since its inception, and I have made most of the 25 annual shows. IWCE provides an important and useful function for our industry. But in retrospect, I really haven’t seen too many really new and really innovative things over the years because nobody spends much time thinking outside the box.

Let me elaborate.

I imagine just about all of you who own and operate radio systems have had this experience: One of your customers (that has been using fleet-dispatch, mobile two-way radios for years) tells you that it is going with that “Next” company. After all, its service is a radio, a phone and a pager, and it has text messaging … you name it.

Because you don’t offer anything like that, the decision has been made: “Turn us off at the end of the month.”

A year goes by, and you happen to be out making a call in the area of your old customer, so you drop by to say hello. Lo and behold, they’re not using “Next” anymore.

“Nope. Too expensive, too much trouble, limited to one-to-one, company’s too hard to deal with….” (You know the drill.)

So you ask, “What are you using?”

“Why, we decided to go with cellular,” they reply. “We needed the portability and the wide area of operation.”

“But,” you exclaim, “it’s expensive, you still don’t have any type of dispatch, and it’s dial-up, one-to-one too.”

“Yeah,” they reply, “We kind of hate that, but it sure is convenient for our workers to have the communications with them, not stuck in their vehicles.”

Box? What box?

This little story has two elements that I want to expand on to show you why we need to start thinking outside the box.

• Portability — We all know the problems that the average two-way system has with portables, compared to the coverage expectations of a cellphone. But our typical customer is someone who drives to a location and then gets out to do his job. Typically, he’s less than a few hundred feet from his vehicle.

  So why don’t radio manufacturers build a mobile “platform” that has a plug-in option board that repeats out to a UHF or VHF portable? That would solve 90% of our customers’ needs and keep them from going away. I’m not talking about a $1,000-plus vehicular repeater. That’s way too expensive. I mean a $250 option that talks to a $250 portable.

  Sure, the whole package (mobile, option board and portable) might cost $1,000, but a little creative financing can get that down to $199 down and $49 per month, including air time. (Wow, what does that sound like?)

  Those plug-ins could also include things like GPS receiver modules and digital voice recorders.

• Wide coverage area — Several manufacturers came to me during the past year asking if we were interested in looking at TETRA because of its networking capabilities. Problem is, we have mature, loaded systems, and we can’t afford to turn everyone off while we change technologies.

TETRA overlay

Finally, I asked one of them, “Why don’t you make a TETRA overlay that will allow both my current technology and TETRA to work on the same RF backbone? Then you could sell dual-mode radios, and I wouldn’t lose anyone.”

Speaking of portables … how about a VHF, UHF or 900MHz trunked portable, with a widescreen display and a POCSAG or Flex option, that would work as a two-way radio and as an alpha pager on a local paging system that the two-way dealer could be a reseller for or own?

Well, I could go on, but space here doesn’t allow me to go into other examples of outside-the-box thinking. But I’m starting to do it. Of course, I think if we’re going to survive, we’ve all got to start doing it.

Let me know what you think.

Danchik is president of CommNet Communications, Dallas, and chairman of Small Business in Telecommunications. His email address is [email protected].

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