Martin Cooper

Posted: 01/2001

Martin Cooper:
Cell Phone 'Father' Squeezes Spectrum
By Bruce Christian

Martin Cooper

The entire telecommunications industry will be restructured within the next couple of years, the father of the cellular phone says. And if you still do business the old-fashioned way, you will be left in the wake of wireless turbulence.

As a witness to how the major long-haul carriers now scramble to provide wireless, Martin Cooper, chairman, CEO and co-founder of ArrayComm Inc. (www.arraycomm.com), says the industry is moving away from technological divisions and more into the area of perceived service.

"The divisions we made in the past, like local, long distance, analog or digital are disappearing, if they haven't disappeared already," says Cooper. "There is hardly analog left anywhere. It is now voice as data, and there are different kinds of data."

Because of this, Cooper says wireless--and especially his newest endeavor at ArrayComm--is an opportunity that will revolutionize telecom today and tomorrow, just as his cell phone began changing calling habits in the 1970s.

Cooper adds that carriers, resellers and independent agents can claim a stake in this future, if they are concerned about personal communications services.

"And they certainly will have to be concerned, because eventually all services will be wireless," says Cooper. "I'm not just speaking about voice. I'm speaking of all data. When the Internet grows up, most Internet services are going to be wireless."

But first, wireless must mature, he says.

"Everybody I know has been on a cell phone call and will say, 'Let's finish this call on a real phone.' There is no fundamental reason wireless can't be as good as wireline," Cooper insists.

So the man who is credited for creating the cell phone in 1973 while working for Motorola Inc. (www.motorola.com) and who lives by the principle that "There is no lack of spectrum, only a lack of spectral efficiency" has a new technology that he believes will once again shake up telecom dramatically.

Many people might be satisfied with one gigantic accomplishment in a lifetime. Cooper was not.