Pacific DataVision makes pitch for partners at EWA/USMSS Wireless Leadership Summit

Pacific DataVision (PDV) officials outlined its short-term and long-term plans to provide enhanced enterprise dispatch services while noting the company’s intention to solicit dealers and other industry partners during a presentation at the EWA/USMSS Wireless Leadership Summit last week in Denver.

PDV intends to offer private dispatch service featuring push-to-talk functionality via digital-radio technology beginning early next year, as well as ask the FCC for permission to create a 3×3 MHz swath to support broadband dispatch services in the long term, according to PDV Vice Chairman Morgan O’Brien. To make this happen, PDV hopes to partner with existing industry players, he said.

“We’re interested in the two-way business. The two-way business is our roots, and it essentially it is a local business—local knowledge and local customers,” O’Brien said during the presentation. “We’re a tiny national spectrum holder. The logical thing is for us to partner in local markets with those of you who are in the markets with those of you who have the sites, the techs, the sales.

“Whatever investment you’ve made in the local market is, to us, an obvious potential for some kind of a relationship where our spectrum position, your local presence and knowledge, and our joint commitment to try to make money and serve customers can come together.”

PDV President and CEO John Pescatore echoed this sentiment, stressing the notion that partnering with PDV can provide a way for LMR-based players to have a roadmap to broadband.

“I think that, when you’re looking at your business, you’re always looking at tomorrow and what you can do to diversify your revenue portfolio, your customers and the services you could be in,” Pescatore said during the presentation. “We’d like to believe that we’d become one of those other opportunities for you, that you’re willing to invest with us in developing this market.

“Yes, today there’s some opportunity. But, if you don’t see where the future’s going with us, you probably won’t want to work with us too much in the near term.”

One focus throughout the conference was the notion of consolidation in the radio industry, with many leaders nearing retirement age and seeking exit strategies. Pescatore said he believes partnering with PDV can help companies in this situation.

“Our feeling about exit strategy is that developing a strong, customer-focused, cash-flowing company that generates profits for both our partners and for us is the best strategy you can have—it will open up any number of exit strategies,” Pescatore said.

O’Brien agreed, noting that it is important that potential partners identify their long-term needs—whether it is an exit strategy or a business plan—when talking with PDV, so a relationship can be developed that is mutually beneficial.

“If we don’t have a shared understanding of each other’s end game, there’s no way we can structure a relationship now, because it’s so dependent on the end game,” O’Brien said. “Here’s our end game. What’s your end game?”

O’Brien and Pescatore said that PDV is open to a wide range of partnership, including sharing tower space and/or backhaul assets. In addition, because PDV has “a nationwide spectrum position and a regional amount of capital,” spectrum deals may make sense in certain markets where PDV can’t fund deployment, O’Brien said.

“There are places where we have spectrum but we can’t possibly go,” he said. “But you may be there, and you may need spectrum. Then, we can do a spectrum deal, and then you can essentially run the whole show. We’re open to that.”