Birds Do It...
Liz Sachs - Partner, Lucas Nace Gutierrez & Sachs and Regulatory Counsel, EWA
Sprintel/Nextint. If it’s good enough for them, why not for AMTA and ITA.
Mergers are all the rage in the telecommunications business these days. Wireless, wireline, media and cable companies are falling over one another, in some cases literally stepping on one another, trying to woo prospective mates. Some do it because they see a gap in their business that they need to plug. Some do it to broaden their business portfolios by expanding into entirely new areas. Some do it because their junior high insecurities kick in and they don’t want to be the only one left without a partner.
And what are the qualities that make a potential partner appealing. Well, that can vary depending on the motivation for pairing up. But just as in our personal lives, it helps if the parties have common values, goals and practices. The AOL/Time Warner experience should be a cautionary note for those who adhere to the “opposites attract” theory in a work environment. It can be difficult to combine entities with highly compatible business personalities. A merger of organizations with dramatically different cultures more often than not proves disastrous.
Actually, the ideal partner is the right combination of compatible and complementary. It should be similar enough to make the merger comfortable, but with enough different areas of expertise to make it valuable. A partnership in which one party knows Italian wines and the other can replace carburetors is more useful than one in which both are gardening experts.
Well, without disclosing which believes itself to be the oenophile and which the mechanic, AMTA and ITA recently concluded that their objectives, membership interests and styles are sufficiently similar to make a merger workable, but dissimilar enough to take advantage of the whole being greater than the sum of its parts. The new Enterprise Wireless Alliance (EWA) has an umbrella big enough to accommodate the interests of the business enterprise users, service providers, radio dealers, technology manufacturers and technical/financial/legal support organizations that populate the wireless industry.
Both organizations have been part of the wireless landscape for many years. Both have represented the interests of large and small companies with investments in the two way radio business. While ITA traditionally represented the private user of systems and AMTA the service provider, there always has been some overlap of constituencies. And that distinction between provider and subscriber has become increasingly less useful as a paradigm for defining organizational allegiance as the wireless world continues to transform itself at warp speed.
It is no secret that a core of the smallest radio users has migrated to the large commercial systems operated by Nextel and other cellular carriers. Those users traditionally were ITA’s constituents as well as customers on systems operated by AMTA members. As their numbers have diminished, the focus of both organizations has shifted. AMTA’s members increasingly have broadened their capabilities well beyond offering traditional dispatch service. They have become experts in a variety of wireless communications systems, everything from security alarms to RFID to Wi-Fi and beyond, and provide a primarily local presence for those seeking business wireless solutions. At the same time, ITA’s membership has shifted toward the larger enterprise user whose appetite for wireless options and expertise continues to increase exponentially. Communications is a tool for these companies, not their primary business. They spend too much time trying even to identify, much less evaluate, the various wireless alternatives that might – or might not – meet their needs. By bringing these communities together under a single roof, the EWA intends to provide a vehicle within which they may share information concerning wireless communications solutions and related business, technical regulatory developments and perhaps find mutually advantageous business arrangements. It hopes to replace the traditional “silos” of interest with a more open forum for educational, advocacy and, yes, even commercial opportunities.
Of course, expanding a mission and membership creates the possibility of internal conflict, particularly on regulatory matters. The EWA has a safety valve should that occur: individual constituencies are able to create Market Councils to pursue independent regulatory objectives that the organization as a whole cannot support. While it vital that the option is available, the EWA intends to work hard to develop consensus positions within the organization. Knowing that the best FCC decisions generally are those supported by the industry as a whole, the EWA, like ITA and AMTA before it, intends to play an active role in helping the wireless community develop positive regulatory policies through both internal debate and external collaboration.
Change is not always welcome or easy. AMTA and ITA each had a dedicated staff, a fully committed Board of Directors and an engaged membership. While they have been allies more often than opponents over the years, they have done battle from time to time when dictated by the interests of their members and usually over spectrum. But timing is everything in this world. Their merger to form the EWA comes at a point when the future of wireless opportunities rests less on the allocation of frequencies and more on an understanding of current and developing technologies that will shape not only the wireless industry but all industries in the decades to come. That is the opportunity the EWA intends to make available to all of its members in the challenging times ahead. |
