Online Exclusive: A Simple Plan

The U.S. wireless industry seems driven by a constant need to top itself. In the early days when one company introduced a wireless standard, others clamored to claim a piece of the pie with their version of the same thing. Three major standards later, we’re still playing catch up.

Still, the market ended up exploding, subscriber growth soared and there seemed no end to profitability. Competition bred innovation and a multitude of companies committed to improving technology and strengthening the industry. Competition looked like it would remain the common denominator for success.

There’s no doubt that it has. But this same competitive drive inadvertently has hindered the mobile data industry. Take short message service. This is not a challenging data application. In fact, industry experts say SMS is the most simple of data services. It is an application that carriers can offer today without rolling out next generation service, which they can’t really afford to do anyway.

So why hasn’t SMS--which European operators claim is responsible for a huge portion of their data traffic--had the same success in the U.S.? Because this healthy force called competition, which has been responsible for so much good in wireless, is also contributing to the reason why our multi-standards-based networks have not been able to interoperate. It is the reason we keep hearing that the U.S. is so far behind.

The fact most major carriers have committed to inter-carrier technology to ensure SMS traffic will surge in the U.S. suggests that competition is alive and well. Going forward, perhaps competition will serve to spur the industry forward instead of contributing to why it has had to take a step back.