The Inventor

Dave McKay: Kansas-bred technologist extraordinaire. Done it all after 35 years in wireless — except work for Motorola. Engineer, patent holder, entrepreneur, tinkerer and now chief technology officer at EMS Wireless. Plans to turn up the decibels.

If I had my druthers, I would be sitting at a bench somewhere trying to make something brand new. You know, listen to people's problems and build a solution for them. But the key is making sure more than one person has that problem.

Wireless is all I've ever done, it seems. I had my own company, CI Wireless, for about 18 months (starting in 1997). Before that I was at Ortel Corp., where I started their wireless group. Later, while at CI, I bought that group. I was also at Allen Telecom and GE, and came to EMS by way of Decibel Products. At Decibel, we were first to put fiber into the wireless cellular arena as a distribution system for RF. That led the way for how RF is distributed in buildings and long haul.

EMS's cross-pole design has made them a leader in the antenna industry. We still release electrical down-tilt antennas and variable control antennas, and we have new designs coming in the antenna realm. But our in-building repeater line has provided much of our growth during the last couple of years. You can set the repeater in the window, and it will enhance the coverage throughout the building. That could be a huge expansion opportunity for us.

I haven't had my job long enough to figure out exactly where we need to go. When I came here, EMS was purely a passive device company. Now we have electronic design software all the way across the board, including the antenna.

Carriers seem to focus on different things at different times, and not all of the same things at the same time. In the old days, they had plenty of money, so they put base stations everywhere. Now they have started moving those base stations to where they really need the capacity and putting repeaters in where they don't. Next year, we should have additional products and expansion to do to help them.

People say nothing can work without an antenna hooked to it. There's a lot of truth to that. It seems like a very fundamental piece of the business, but obviously it takes a lot of technology to keep it going. We need to expand our product portfolio, but we don't mind sitting behind the scenes.