I've been reading The Innovator's Solution, and have a few thoughts on one of the side comments in the book (on p147-8). I'll write more on the book's central thesis and how it relates to telecom another time.
They examine the a priori approach of agreeing an industry standard (GSM) versus the market approach adopted in the USA. The argument put forward is that the reason wireless adoption in Europe is higher than the USA is little to do with this industry standard per se. Instead, the substitute produce (wireline telecom) is cheap in the USA, and the Europeans mandated caller party pays, making people more willing to hand out their phone number.
I would suggest there are deeper reasons to let the market decide. As a European living in the Midwest, you are sensitive to some major differences in the physical structure of the nation. The USA is big. Really big. When I flew home from Denver a few weeks ago across Kansas, you see endless scattered small communities. Not a big city in sight, despite crossing a distance in Europe that would have taken you within striking range of 5 or 6 conurbations. Population density is an order of magnitude lower than western Europe.
Buildings here are different. Most houses seem to be made from something barely more durable than cardboard. Everything is disposable (and when a tornado comes through town, everything is thoroughly disposed of). Notwithstanding the foreign perception of the USA as all being the Manhattan skyline and the Sears Tower, there are relatively few skyscrapers in most habitated parts of the USA. Land is cheap, everything sprawls into infinity.
The consequence is that the physical attributes of the radio system really matter. Coverage matters. Building penetration matters. Non line-of-site matters. GSM may be better or worse than CDMA, analog, etc. -- but that's for each market to decide. Rural areas are still often served by spectrum and power hungry analog cellular. That's not a problem, because the cows and corn fields aren't gagging to reuse that spectrum for anything else.
And for you end-to-end absolutists, remember that IP is just an abstraction. Vertical market integration of service and network happens for a reason. You need to be able to explain not just why a modular approach to the industry is beneficial, but also why buying connectivity separately from transport won't lose you some essential features that the IP abstraction hides away.
Posted by Martin Geddes at 12:13 PMTrackBack URL for this entry:
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