- I thought You Said you Want a Revolution

[Carl Ford]

Note on March 18th, 2008 at Spring VON Reed Hundt, Former FCC Chair will be speaking.

Last week, Frontline wireless shut its doors and ended its effort for a revolution in the 700 MHz auction. When Amol Shah spoke at Fall VON we a 700 MHz evangelist speaking on behalf of a new network strategy for wireless. The strategy was for the spectrum to be wholesaled enabling device manufacturers to interconnect their devices on a network that was not trying to compete with them with the consumer.

To me the strategy had merit. First of all MVNO’s have been hard to watch as a business model. The more apt term would have been ISNO (indentured servant network offering). As in there “is no” way I am the one that is profiting from all this effort. So based on that experience a service that clearly wanted to let the retailed devices have a platform makes a lot of sense.

In fact, Apple’s iPhone was sort of a proof of concept since they redefined the MVNO relationship and showed that at the retail level the consumer’s power was self-evident. And the fact that so much discussion about hacked phones enabling choice, in my mind, made an enabling network logical.

So why did the money dry up for Frontline? The capital strength of a Google? The recent willingness of carriers to adopt more Apple like business models? The lack of device manufacturers committed to the same vision?

It could just be ego. If you have read Seth Godin’s “The Dip” you know that being number 1 is far more profitable than being number 2. Given the desire to enable others’ may have sounded like good altruism, but lousy business.

But that does not mean it was wrong. And it does not mean that in the end it won’t prevail. In the end there is only the Internet, imho, Frontline Wireless was trying to bring the wireless Internet to the end user faster. And that would be a revolution.