Learning the Wireless Communications Business

A cellular network mobile phone system gets its name from dividing the service area into many small cells, each with a base station with (for example) a useful range on the order of a kilometer (mile).

This was a who you know play

In 2000, just a few weeks after being let go by Reltec, I got a call from my dear friend Howard "Howie" Hansell. Howie and I had been a great team back at Reltec before he left to work for ADC Telecommunications—a major hardware manufacturer based out of Eden Prairie, Minnesota.

Howie told me ADC was looking for a second sales manager. He was already handling the East Coast and wanted to know if I’d be interested in taking on the West Coast, because of my relationship with business decision makers. I jumped at the chance. He set up an interview at the headquarters with Paul, the VP of Sales, and the next thing I knew, I was on a plane to Minnesota. The interview went beautifully, and I was hired just a few days later.

At the time, the world was on the cusp of a massive digital explosion, and ADC was right at the center of it. On one side, cable TV companies were racing to transform themselves into high-speed internet giants. To bridge the gap between old-school infrastructure and the future, they relied on Analog-to-Digital Converters (ADCs)—the vital technology that translated raw, analog electrical signals into clean, high-speed digital data.

CUDA

For the average person at home, this technology was pure magic. It meant swapping out the frustrating, screeching agony of dial-up internet for lightning-fast, "always-on" broadband. It was the tech that finally allowed families to surf the web at blazing speeds while someone else watched digital TV, changing how people connected forever. Our flagship product line making this revolution possible for cable providers was the ADC Cuda—a robust line of Cable Modem Termination Systems (CMTS) that acted as the central brain delivering high-volume data over existing cable lines.

But cable companies weren't the only ones desperate for ADC’s technology; the major telephone companies were undergoing an equally massive evolution into the wireless world. As cell phones exploded in popularity, telecom giants faced a huge bottleneck: voice and data travel through the air as analog radio waves, but the massive telephone network backbones operate entirely on digital signals.

ADC provided the critical hardware for wireless cell towers and base stations. Every time a user made a mobile call or sent a primitive text message, ADC's technology instantly converted those airborne analog radio waves into digital data packets that could travel seamlessly across the globe. For the everyday cell phone user, this was a total game-changer. It meant crystal-clear voice quality, drastically fewer dropped calls, and the foundational bandwidth that allowed mobile phones to transition from bulky car accessories into the pocket-sized internet devices we rely on today.

How your smartphone gives you what you want.

The world’s connectivity needs are changing. Global mobile data traffic is expected to multiply by 5 before the end of 2024. Particularly in dense urban areas, the current 4G networks simply won’t be able to keep up.

The landscape of wireless communication has evolved dramatically since the days of heavy-duty hardware like the Cuda CMTS. Today's cellular network is a highly sophisticated, multi-layered ecosystem designed to handle everything from standard voice calls to massive internet data loads.

What you get!

"Every piece of heavy network iron we bolted into server racks twenty-five years ago was a stepping stone toward a future we could barely imagine. Today, that technological evolution has broken free of the server room to become the invisible lifeblood of our daily lives—powering the instant smartphone streaming, seamless smart-home automation, tap-and-go mobile banking, and immediate telehealth visits we now take for granted.

But the true shock of what’s next lies just over the horizon. The very same wireless evolution is preparing to deliver the next generation of human capability: autonomous vehicle networks that communicate instantly to erase traffic accidents, fully immersive holographic communication that makes a loved one thousands of miles away feel like they are sitting right in the room with you, and real-time AI assistants that manage our health, energy, and cities before we even think to ask."

The Big Picture

In the early days of telecommunications, hardware like the Cuda CMTS was about connecting computers to networks. Today, and looking into the future, this technology is about connecting humanity to possibility. It transitions us away from a world dictated by physical limitations, proximity, and isolation, into an era where human potential is limited only by our ideas—no matter where on Earth we happen to stand.

Mobilephone Evolution

That’s where a new G comes into play. With 5G commercial networks being switched on, the first use cases are enhanced mobile broadband, which will bring better experiences for smartphone users, and fixed wireless access, providing fiber speeds without fiber to homes.

Why is 5G a game changer?

The short answer to why 5G is a game changer: it will improve your network connection dramatically. You won’t have to deal with disruptions when sharing videos from crowded arenas, nor will high-quality videos on your newsfeed cause frustration from all the buffering. Instead, you’ll get a faster, more stable, more secure connection – along with new services and experiences, just around the corner. More efficient capabilities and vastly increased capacity means you’ll enjoy better performance than ever before.

5G is enabling a new wave of innovation.

It has the potential for changing the world, further powering the hottest trends in tech today: IoT (Internet of Things), AI (Artificial Intelligence) and AR (Augmented Reality) – among many more. AR, augmented reality alters one's ongoing perception of a real-world environment, whereas virtual reality completely replaces the user's real-world environment with a simulated one.

Why is 5G a game changer?

5G Technology improves the way we access various services

Frequency Determines Speed and Power

All radio waves travel at the speed of light, but not all waves react with the environment in the same way

or behave the same as other waves. It's the wavelength of a particular frequency used by a 5G tower

that directly impacts the speed and distance of its transmissions.

Higher Frequency

Faster speeds

Shorter distances

Lower Frequency

Slower speeds

Longer distances

This gets pretty technical, but I will attempt to keep it interesting. Since we all use this technology, it pays to know a little about it, I think.

The Infinite Evolution of the Cable Industry

"The true legacy of the cable industry isn’t measured by the miles of coaxial lines or fiber-optic glass we put in the ground, but by the walls of isolation we broke down along the way. We began with a single, fragile antenna on a rainy Seattle hilltop, built simply to pluck a lone, static-filled television signal out of the air and bring it to a handful of homes. From that lone spark of connectivity, we spent decades orchestrating an infrastructure revolution. We transformed that humble, single-purpose wire into a multi-lane digital superhighway—giving rise to the modern era of high-speed streaming, instant global video communication, smart-home automation, and virtual workplaces that the world now relies on every single day.

For the customer today, this evolution translates into pure, tangible freedom. It means the elimination of the old, rigid television schedule, replacing it with the power to stream any movie, show, or live event instantly in breathtaking 4K clarity on any device, anywhere in the home. It means a single, robust connection that effortlessly runs an entire household—allowing parents to work seamlessly via video conference, children to attend virtual classrooms, and smart security systems to protect the property simultaneously without a single second of lag. It has turned our homes from isolated structures into hyper-connected sanctuaries of entertainment, productivity, and peace of mind.

But our greatest transformation lies just ahead. The infrastructure we are engineering today is stepping out of the television set and into the very fabric of human capability. As we look to the future, this same network will deliver mind-boggling new features directly into the consumer's hands: fully immersive holographic interactions that collapse the distance between long-distance families, lightning-fast smart-city safety grids that communicate with our cars to eliminate traffic accidents, and real-time AI-driven services that predict and manage our home energy usage and health needs before we even have to ask. We didn't just change how the world watches; we fundamentally changed how humanity connects, works, and lives."

1998 — The Nine-Year Cut

Reliable Electric, the original company I had joined, was purchased and rebranded as Reltec. Fortunately, my pension plan traveled along with the new acquisition. Unfortunately, the corporate restructuring brought in a brand-new manager and a new Vice President who were determined to install "their own people" into key management positions.

The new leadership's vision for the future didn't include me, and it didn't include our dedicated internal sales force. In a sweep of corporate cost-cutting, they let us all go and replaced us with independent sales representatives. Missing out on that critical tenth year of service to fully vest or maximize my pension ended up costing me a significant amount of money when I finally retired years later.

Ultimately, their new vision backfired. Our long-term customers were incredibly unhappy with the sudden loss of their trusted account managers and the drop in personal service, costing Reltec a massive amount of business in the long run.