Industry Leaders Meet to Discuss Our Wireless Future

As a wholesale-only wireless network operator, LightSquared is on the frontlines of the effort to provide the necessary capacity to meet the growing demand for wireless Internet access everywhere. Devices are evolving to offer more features, apps are exploding in popularity and consumer habits are generating more traffic than ever before.

Earlier this month, I was honored to be a keynote speaker at the 2011 Open Mobile Summit in San Francisco. I joined leaders of other wireless companies, device manufacturers, application developers and online influencers to discuss the future of mobile technology in America and how we, as an industry, can address the current supply vs. demand issue. An audio recording and PDF of my presentation slides are now available online.

If we look at the histories of other industries, we generally see that as a market matures, consumer choices increase. When American automobile manufacturing began, Henry Ford produced just one model of car in one color. Today there are dozens – thousands if you count the many combinations of paint color, upholstery, and built-to-order options.

There is a similar evolution happening in mobile. At first, mobile devices were phones that looked quite similar and did only one thing. Now, there are flip phones, candy bars, and slabs. Many don’t have keys! These devices now use wireless spectrum to email, text, share photos, stream video and provide real-time data through specialty apps. Further, more and more of the hardware that use mobile technology aren’t phones at all. Tablets, emergency equipment in cars, and numerous embedded solutions all compete with the wireless phone calls our mobile network was originally built to support.

The development of new mobile devices and applications will continue. Demands on our wireless network will increase as more Americans become more wired (or unwired, as it were), carrying additional data-hungry devices – and expecting them to work wherever they are.

LightSquared is uniquely positioned to address these issues. Our wholesale 4G-LTE network will provide the additional capacity needed to keep up with the growing demand for mobile data. We’re democratizing wireless access and allowing new types of companies to enter the wireless market – we’ve already announced partnerships with Best Buy, VOIP providers, financial services companies and numerous wire-line companies – creating competition, promoting innovation and ultimately lowering prices.