Small US Operators Form Trade Purchasing Body

Twenty-eight independent mobile operators and commercial mobile license owners in the USA have established a new company, NextGen Mobile, to help promote the existence of small and rural wireless companies throughout the country. The company grew out of a year-long dialog between existing mobile operators and winners of Advanced Wireless Services (AWS) and 700 MHz licenses in recent FCC auctions.

All members of NextGen Mobile operate, or anticipate operating, networks based on the GSM family of technologies, including UMTS and eventually LTE.

"Forming NextGen Mobile was a no-brainer," says E. Kelly Bond, Chairperson and Chief Executive Officer of NextGen Mobile. "Once we realized that each and every one of our companies was separately facing the exact same market pressures, only in different geographic markets, it became clear that we can work together on a myriad of projects to help nurture the development and survivability of small and rural mobile networks. In this era of unprecedented consolidation within the wireless sector, small operators, especially those in sparsely populated markets, need to be resourceful in not just cutting costs, but also attracting and retaining customers. NextGen Mobile is the perfect vehicle to help mobile operators remain competitive while at the same time remaining independent and true to their local subscriber bases."

NextGen Mobile plans to work on a variety of initiatives that would otherwise be duplicated by each of the companyÃ's members had they not banded together. An important goal for the new company is to decrease the operational costs associated with deploying and maintaining a next generation, high-speed wireless network.

"Our strength comes in numbers," remarked Craig Freeman, Vice-Chair and Secretary of NextGen Mobile. "Each member company brings to the table valuable expertise by way of their employees and their executive leadership teams. By pooling together our human resources to tackle such disparate issues as RF optimization, billing, customer care, roaming and network operations, we as a company can save a tremendous amount of capital that would have otherwise been earmarked for routine operational expenses by each stand-alone operator. Now, with NextGen Mobile, we can defray those same operational costs across the entire group."

One of NextGen MobileÃ's key projects in its first year of operation is the procurement of 3G phones as they are released into the marketplace.

Bob Martin, NextGen MobileÃ's Chief Financial Officer and Treasurer, is excited about the impact NextGen MobileÃ's combined scale and volume can have on small and rural carrierÃ's prospects of offering the newest and most sought after mobile devices as soon as they hit the streets. "A huge obstacle for any mobile operator who is not one of the Ã'Big 5Ã' carriers is procurement of the latest, must-have handsets. By aggregating our orders, NextGen Mobile hopes to entice device manufacturers to develop and deliver the next 'it' handset or data card to those customers shut-out in the past. This is an unprecedented opportunity, not just for small operators, but more importantly, for our valuable customers."

Posted to the site on 30th September 2008