Arnie:
Appreciate your interest in helping out. I agree one's motives have to be pure when it comes to helping others.
I think we can jump start the networking-business-pod crowd in such a way that it will very quickly suck in the "Honey, bring home a loaf of bread" crowd.
I agree, as you say this is "a crack in the dam" type of thing. In addition to double billing, remember there are local access fees which Nextel is in the process of cornering - this the result of deregulation. Local RBOCs are making a fortune on these charges which reinforce roaming agreements, higher local fees etc. I would like to hear more details about how Nextel is progressing in this area.
Nextel's pooled billing feature is very attractive. As an networking service operator, depending on you manage your various plans, you can charge for excess minutes while attracting new clients with lower per minute charges for excess minutes.
Nextel needs to bring its billing system into the digital age. Its all paper bound right now. Creating an "open format" billing system woul attract more smaller value-added service vendors to the fold.
I am really excited about the power that mobile transactions and mobile money access will bring to digital wireless phones. I've been following the growth and development of Smart Cards. These are going to blow a hole through our standard processing transactional infrastructures nationwide. The banks want to control this technology, but they may really end up missing the boat - sort of like a an elephant trying to chase down a greased pig.
I am banking on Nextel and Motorola's research in Smart Cards. Motorola has one of the best Smart Card technology research programs in the country right now. Craig McCaw has to be all over this.
As for Nextel's future price, you can bet the Street will eventually evaluate its franchise just like an Internet play. At the end of this year Nextel should be coming out with a very sleek web-ready phone - complete with perhaps a Smart Card swipe (please don't miss this boat Craig...it will be huge) and other new features.
I am reading between the lines here, but what we have with Nextel is the eventual realization that its all digital secure national network - communicating in IP (Internet Protocol) - will be a powerful mobile extension of the internet - more frontline than PC's - powerfully transactional in nature, etc.
The wireless dispatch feature makes the whole thing tie together. In a mobile society the location of people on an instant need to know basis is crucial. In this new economy of ours, information is THE LIFEBLOOD of all businesses. All information is potentially strategic in nature for ALL businesses now have to for the first time actually get to know ALL end USERS.
I have this theory which underlies this strategic information revolution going on all over the world right now. The advent and success of the Internet and the massively growing Global Network that completments and supports it - all make, for the first time in world history, the individual KING.
The end game for all companies, all business is to get to know us all "as individuals" - not as objects to be tracked, measured, etc. Combined with the power of the Internet, Nextel's combined features embraces THE INDIVIDUAL more than any other mobile digital communication technology. People networking with people - as individuals, not as chained, channelled, managed bodies that HAVE to perform tasks.
The Internet combined with technologies such as Nextel's nationwide digital network will further leverage "the power of individual initiative and creativity" in the workplace. Its about networking information that adds value, enhances service, collapses development time, etc.
People, the street, the world has NO clue to the HUGE potential this technology has to effect change. Smart investors - no pun - can have a field day with Nextel in the $20's. Wall Street still isn't totally clued into the potential.
Thanks again Arnie and others. I will be back in touch with more to share.
Good Luck! |
