<h1>Faster Mexican Connections</h1> <h2>by Dr. Mark White<br> Partner, White & Associates</h2> <h4>25 January 1997</h4><p> <p> “With an increasing array of low-interference technologies available, the FCC should not give exclusive rights to anyone. Instead, it should impose a heavy burden of proof on any service providers with blind or high-powered systems that maintain that they cannot operate without an exclusive license, that want to build on the beach and keep everyone else out of the surf. ... The wireless systems of the future will offer bandwidth on demand and send their packets wherever there is room.” So says George Gilder in his conclusions to “Auctioning the Airways,” published by Forbes ASAP and available at various sites on the Internet, including Tellabs Wireless.

Substitute SCT and COFETEL for the FCC, and you have an even more apt argument for Mexico. It’s more apt because Mexico lets everyone have equal access to the beach, while the US lets owners build walls on the beach to keep out uninvited guests. If Mexico can transfer its traditional legal attitude towards ocean access to the new ocean of electromagnetic spectrum, this better model would instantly give Mexico a major competitive advantage in the economic globalization process. The year 2000 would see Mexicans everywhere accessing an incomparable telecommunications infrastructure -- if Gilder is right about just how fast advancing technologies can expand access the spectrum ocean.

Mexicans could listen, speak, and learn better with each other and the rest of the world than the people in any other nation. With half of all Mexicans now under 21 years old, and more Mexicans than American younger than 14, a world-class telecommunications infrastructure by 2000 would create a Mexican population that finds telecomputing just as natural as talking on the phone by 2010. Anticipating your clients needs will be tremendously important with the world’s accelerating technological changes, and telecommunications are fundamental both to understanding what changes constitute improvements and to knowing the best practices that you can creatively leverage into valuable innovations.

Current technologies coming from manufacturers such as Tellabs , ArrayComm, and Qualcomm make the world’s best telecommunications infrastructure economical, but installing it in Mexico by the year 2000 will take something that Mexico is quite unaccustomed to providing: permission to do whatever law and regulations don’t prohibit. Telecommunications technology is changing at a revolutionary pace that makes the changes in the computer industry look leisurely. Asking Mexico’s telecommunications functionaries to plan out a complex future using nothing more deductions from general principles really is too much to expect of any planners, no matter how good.

Rather, a world-class telecommunications infrastructure would emerge better through evolutionary experience with new technologies in a competitive environment. By setting apart several gigahertz of frequencies in a medium range (say between 10 gigahertz and 30 gigahertz) for any and all comers using the low-interference technologies emerging today, SCT and COFETEL could set up the conditions for a very rapid rollout of fixed-wireless next generation cellular telephones throughout Mexico at very economical rates.

Foreign and domestic capital would rush in to take advantage of the opportunity even without government subsidies, and the government should subsidize the process to bring Internet not just to every school in Mexico, but to every student right down to kindergarten. Rapid advances in computer technologies will give the fixed-wireless and portable telephones of 2000 more power than today’s personal computers, and provide Mexicans with virtually universal access to the World Wide Web. Digital cameras in all these units would let Mexicans not only talk about their studies (and products), but show them on their own webpages.

Like the English, who have totally deregulated local telephony, Mexico’s government could simply let customers choose the winners and losers in the marketplace -- even to the extent of giving students vouchers for Personal Digital Assistants instead of picking a single national standard. This would be quite a departure from Mexico’s history, which has traditionally seen bureaucrats choose the winners, and punish any upstarts who might trouble the chosen few. Humanity’s future, though, is also turning out to be quite a departure from its past, so if Mexicans want to have the world’s best infrastructure, now might be just the time to change the decision-making process to one that lays out a few fundamental prohibitions, and then steps back and lets evolution take its course.

Readers with questions or comments for Dr. White can call 011(525)595-6045, fax 011(525)683-5874, or email white@profmexis.sar.net

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