Wireless Infrastructure is a Great Industry to Work In

By Tom Leddo
Vice President

While attending the 2015 CTIA Super Mobility show in Las Vegas, I was once again reminded how great it is to work in the wireless infrastructure industry. While the CTIA show itself is more oriented toward wireless as a whole and includes a lot of things not related to network infrastructure, the accompanying events like the Tower and Small Cell Summit and the annual Raymond James Breakfast Roundtable are great places to huddle with industry colleagues to listen and learn about the latest developments in the infrastructure segment of wireless.

While the first half of 2015 may have been a bit slow and forced us all to closely manage our cash flow as we wait for the operators to rollout the next phase of their network development, there will be another phase, and another one after that.

While eating breakfast at the Raymond James Roundtable titled Chaos, Convergence and Capacity I was reminded that this really is a great industry.   The following simplifies and summarizes my own spin on their event.

Chaos

Despite the recent volatility in the stock market, the refugee issues in Europe, the turmoil in the Middle East, uncertainty in the Chinese economy and what may be the most realigning election year since 1968, everyone has a phone and everyone continues to pay their phone bill each month. Said another way, the wireless industry does not endure economic cycles in the same way as other industries.

Convergence

Telecom convergence – the combination of voice, data and video on our smart phones make this a very exciting place to work.

Let’s give ourselves some credit here. None of the cool things we now do on our phones will work without a sound network. And that network would not exist without good site acquisition, A&E, design, construction, EFI, and maintenance. We contribute to some cool stuff.

Capacity

If everyone is going to continue to pay their phone bill each month despite turns in the economy and our phones are becoming the ultimate do-it-all device then a lot more capacity will be needed on the networks. That means there will continue to be spending on network development. There will be more upgrades and ongoing maintenance on existing network infrastructure.

This means more work for us all, even if we have to live project-to-project.

Conclusion

While the infrastructure segment of wireless may be beholden to the operator’s deployment schedules, the truth is that network upgrades will continue. As Ric Prentiss noted during the Raymond James session, carriers operate in a “keep-up or fall-behind” marketplace and this will continue to drive capital expenditure despite overarching economic conditions.

As far as we can see, we have lots of ongoing work to do and we’re always looking for great people to join the Md7 family.

September 17, 2015
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