Telecommunications

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Introduction: Some General Thoughts on Sources and Methodology

The page below documents the substance of my research, but I thought it might be helpful to start with some reflections on methodology.

In general, my research went from technology, to business/economics, to law, only reaching the specific questions we're interested in after a few weeks of background orientation. I found access to an engineering library to be essential for the first phase, in order to get a general sense of what the building blocks of networks are and what the broad areas of recent innovation have been.

As I began to look at the business and economics, I found B-school cases to provide invaluable general context, though they play a little too fast and loose with the details to be helpful with specifics. Through other work I also happened to have access to some pretty great analyst overviews as well as opportunities to have direct conversations with some of the leading analysts who research the field for institutional investors, and if you can get those they can be pure gold. Reading the annual reports of some of the large actors also proved surprisingly helpful.

Once I had a general sense of the players on the field, I moved onto the specifics of the legal models and dynamics of IP. I suspect that the Carnegie Melon and PACE studies will be touchstones for all our research areas, as they were for me. I also found articles in practitioners' legal periodicals (as distinguished form traditional law reviews) to be helpful. My sense is that these articles provide a useful insider's impressionistic perspective of industry dynamics that can be lacking from traditional law review articles. There was a lot of other secondary academic empirical research, but I honestly haven't find that much beyond the Carnegie Mellon and PACE studies that I found particularly helpful.

Various previously published case studies and news articles about specific companies and transactions provided the examples that filled out the legal section of the overview. I found these to be very helpful, but I also tried to be very cautious about drawing too many conclusions from just a few high profile examples, which I think is an easy trap.

Field Definition

Basic Definition

"The word 'telecommunications,' a twentieth century amalgam of Greek and Latin roots, literally means the art of conveying information 'from a distance.' . . . Today, although precise definitions differ, 'telecommunications' is broadly defined as the transmission of information by means of electromagnetic signals: over copper wires, coaxial cable, fiber-optic strands, or the airwaves." (Neuchterlein & Weiser 2007, at 1-2)

Taxonomy of Telecommunications Industries

Focus Market Segments

  • Wireline
  • Cable
  • Commercial Wireless (Cell Phone)
  • Unlicensed Wireless Data (esp. 802.11)
  • Internet-Based Communications Platforms

Deprioritized Market Segments

  • Satellite MVPD
  • Broadcast TV
  • Broadcast Radio
  • Satellite Radio
  • Other Wireless (public safety radios, dispatch radios, maritime communication, cordless phones, etc.)

Excluded From Field Definition

  • Pure Content, including:
    • Television, or Radio Programmers (Other than Broadcast Networks, which are in a vertically integrated distribution-and-content businesses)
    • Online Content Platforms (vs. Communications Platforms) (e.g. Hulu, iTunes, Netflix). We also place user-generated content platforms like YouTube and Wikipedia in this category, although arguably they have a communications dimension.

Overview of the Field

Analysis of the field based on Field Research Methodology, but compacted and rearranged somewhat. I've also provided a reference page providing a Research Methodology Index for Telecommunications which maps specifically from the questions in the research methodology to the narrative below.

(Note that the sections below are abandoned, as I've now moved my work on this summary to an offline document, to be posted to the Google Group shortly.)

  1. Introduction to Telecommunications Industries
  2. Value Chain in Telecommunications
  3. Economics of Intellectual Property in Telecommunications

Case Studies

Possible Ways to Organize Case Studies

Network Components

  • Fiber
  • Legacy Last Mile/Last 100 Feet (DOCSIS/DSL/MoCa?)
  • Wireless Last Mile/Last 100 Feet (3G/4G/802.11)
  • Services (Operator Provided Content & Managed Services / Internet "Over-the-Top" Services)

Layers

  • Physical Layer
  • Network Logical Layer
    • Data Link Layers
    • IP Layer
  • Service/Application/Content Layer

Candidates for Case Studies

2G CDMA/Qualcomm (Wireless Last Mile ; Logical Layer)

The most oft-told story of aggressive patent use. Lots of supporting material should make this one easy to write, and recent developments make it timely and fresh if combined with 3G story

GSM (Wireless Last Mile ; Logical Layer)

  • Rudi Bekkers Bart Verspagen, Jan Smits, Intellectual Property Rights and Standardization: The Case of GSM, 26 Telecom. Pol. 171 (2002).
  • Rudi Bekkers et al., Intellectual Property Rights, Strategic Technology Agreements and Market Structure: The Case of GSM (Sept. 2000), at http://www-edocs.unimaas.nl/files/mer00030.pdf
  • Rudi Bekkers & Isabelle Liotard, European Standards for Mobile Communications: The Tense Relationship Between Standards and Intellectual Property Rights, 21 Eur. Intell. Prop. Rev. 110 (1999), available at http://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/docs/00/35/11/98/PDF/EIPR-1999.pdf.

3G

Perhaps whould be combined with 2G CDMA story

Erbium Doped Fiber Amplifier (EDFA) (Fiber ; Physical Layer)

A good physical layer example, showing a significant role for university research.

  • Philippe C. Becker, N. Anders Olsson & Jay R. Simpson, Erbium-Doped Fiber Amplifiers: Fundamentals and Technology, 1999.

Texas Instruments/ Discrete Multitone (DMT) (Legacy Last Mile ; Logical Layer)

Stanford prof. patents technologies, starts spinoff, sells for exorbitant profit to TI, which proceeds to make lots of money through very aggressive licensing strategy on critical broadband technology. A nice example in the wired space, but similar to Qualcomm in the strongly proprietary strategy it illustrates?

Others

  • SONET optical standard? - Fiber ; Logical Layer
  • Some discrete component of DOCSIS standard (perhaps security protocols?) - Legacy Last Mile ; Logical Layer
  • Some part of 802.11 standard - Wireless Last 100 Feet ; Logical Layer (802.11 discussions ongoing, interesting, with patent issue forced in 2005 by WWiSE group)
  • Internet Protocol - All Network Components ; Logical Layer (well known story, hugely important, illustrates public sector importance)
  • Google Voice vs. New Alcatel-Lucent Voice Product - Service & Application Layer (direct competition between in-network and over-the-top services)
  • WebEx Cisco Acquisition - Service & Application Layer (over the top provider gets bought by tradition in-network equipment provider)
  • Some open source Internet-based telecom Project? - Service & Application Layer

Interviews

My current intention is to do interviews after I have written the narrative. Possible candidates for interviews:

  • John Liebovitz, Telecom entrepreneur (Frontline wireless, among other ventures) [done]
  • Paul De Sa, McKinsey Telecommunications
  • Stagg Newman, former FCC, Bell Labs
  • Tom Eisenmann, HBS
  • Terry Huval, Director of Lafayette, LA Utility Systems‘ FTTH project
  • Rudi Bekkers, http://home.tm.tue.nl/rbekkers/

Bibliography

Jonathan E. Neuchterlein and Philip J. Weiser, Digital Crossroads: American Telecommunicaions Policy in the Internet Age, 2007.

Main Page

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