The revolution will be broadcast
The growth of peer-to-peer file sharing programs and the consolidation of the broadcast radio industry has caused a significant downturn in profitability for the major music labels.
As a result, entertainment companies have severely cut back on staff as well as artists under contract. These changes in the music industry have caused music labels to closely look at the way they do business, in particular the method of delivery of product to consumers. The recent success of Apple’s foray into online music distribution can certainly be seen as one potentially successful option, while many of us are concerned with the path chosen by others, Digital Rights Management.
In short, music labels are struggling with growing and adapting to the times.
There is a similar revolution (or evolution) in the land mobile industry. The increasing affordability of cellular, the growth of Nextel’s “Direct Connect,” and the advent of push-to-talk options from other carriers has dramatically changed the potential customer base for the land mobile dealer.
At the same time, users are looking for their communications systems to do more for them. Thus, it is an appropriate time to take a cue from Metrocall, which is working to provide a wider range of service options as a result of the downturn in paging, and look at opportunities that can leverage your core capabilities into new markets.
The following represents some options:
800/900 MHz
I had the honor of speaking at Motorola’s meeting prior to IWCE, and I queried the attendees as to how many of them had “interests” at 800 or 900 MHz. Surprisingly, few raised their hands. The point that I made to them is, if they have technicians on staff, they have an interest in these bands.
Specifically, regardless of whether the Federal Communications Commission adopts the Consensus Plan, or any of the other options presented, the FCC will most likely do something that will require changes in private radio operation.
As a result, there will most likely be a tremendous amount of work that will need to be done by public safety and private licensees to either re-tune, change radios, build additional sites, or whatever is decided. There aren’t enough in-house public safety engineers in the country to do all of this work quickly.
Thus, regardless of whether you have a license at 800 or 900 MHz, you certainly want to be bidding for the work that will go on. You shouldn’t confine your avenues to your local market, either. Think nationwide.
Wi-Fi and wireless ISPs
MRT has run some recent articles on this opportunity, so I won’t repeat it all here.
However, suffice it to say that this is the hot topic right now. And yes, maybe it’s tough to make a long-term business case for some of this to be a profitable business, but somebody’s going to be hired to build out hot spots for these new ventures. Why shouldn’t it be you?
Shared and leased spectrum
I’m certain that you’re already aware of the FCC’s Rules on partitioning and disaggregating spectrum, as well as the “Band Managers” at 700 (and now 220) MHz. The FCC has added some new opportunities in this area recently in its “Secondary Markets” proceeding, enabling licensees to more easily work with third parties (such as you) to enable spectrum to be put to use in a variety of formats (sounds like the old days of management agreements).
Also, check out the FCC’s recent ruling in the 4.9 GHz public safety proceeding, whereby the Commission will now permit public safety licensees in the band “…. to enter sharing arrangements with entities not eligible for their own licenses…”
The opportunities for new types of public safety/non-public safety partnerships are exciting. Commission staff people have told me that the commission is looking for ways to make this option available in a variety of bands.
150/450 MHz
As discussed in my column in last month’s edition, the FCC finally has come down on the side of having a mandatory narrow banding deadline for the “refarmed” channels. While those deadlines are not this year, licensees in the band are now starting to think about their options. This means that there is no time like the present to begin working with co-channel and adjacent channel licensees to clean up channels and implement more efficient centralized trunked systems.
I don’t mean to suggest that channel clean up will be quick and easy. Rather, a tremendous amount of legwork will need to be done.
However, now that the FCC has made its ruling, and the FCC’s work in its spectrum audit, it might be a little easier to deal with formerly recalcitrant licensees.
