McGuire’s Law

Last week I had the chance to chat with Steve Trundle, founder and CEO of Alarm.com.

Here’s the description of Alarm.com from their website:

Alarm.com was founded in 2000, and since then, has been dedicated to the pursuit of convenience and control for home and business security systems using wireless, web and mobile technology. We set out to build a platform based on wireless technology that provides solid security. In 2003 we were the first company to launch a secure, all-digital wireless alarm system with novel features like always-on activity reporting and a web-based control panel.

Alarm.com’s proven technology platform enables consumers to monitor everything that happens in their homes or businesses, not just alarms; they can keep track of activity on entry doors, windows, liquor and medicine cabinets, safes, drawers, and more. Unlike traditional security systems, Alarm.com does not require a phone line or broadband connection; Alarm.com services work wirelessly through a secure GSM network to maintain a dedicated connection that will continue to work for 24+ hours after a power failure. Alarm.com also offers Video Monitoring, emPower™ home automation, Crash & Smash Protection and mobile apps that let consumers enjoy anytime, anywhere access to their property. With Alarm.com, home and business owners can be in 2 places @ once. Simple, flexible and powerful, Alarm.com is designed to fit your lifestyle.

I became an Alarm.com customer 4 years ago when we moved into a new home. Since we’d cut the cord on AT&T, I was thrilled when our local alarm company proposed a sophisticated wireless solution. Not only would it be safe from getting the line cut, but we also wouldn’t have to wait for the alarm system to finish dialing before calling the monitoring center to explain we’d accidentally tripped the alarm (as we had too often had to do with our previous systems) - and it demonstrated the power of mobility!

Steve shared that a similar experience led to him starting the company. When they had a system installed in his home, he asked the contractor why a burglar wouldn’t just cut the telephone line. The answer he heard wasn’t convincing. Steve was CTO for MicroStrategy at the time and he also immediately began considering all the possibilities for the data that could flow over an always-available wireless connection to the home.

I asked Steve if wireless had redefined the alarm industry and he said it definitely has. Especially these days, folks just assume that wireless connectivity will be built in. As consumers adopt smartphones, they simply expect there to be an app to control every aspect of their lives.

A year ago, we were awakened in the middle of the night by an alarm telling us of flooding in the basement. Being able to respond quickly enabled us to save many precious possessions and minimize our loss. Now, imagine getting that same type of alert even when you’re out and about, during the workday or when running errands around town.

Thanks for listening. After talking to Steve, it was clear to me that Alarm.com’s experience is yet another great example of how mobility is changing how each of us interact with our world and changing the rules of competition across industries, and I wanted to share it with you.

Yesterday I attended Sprint’s annual Patent Luncheon. This is my favorite lunch event of the year!

In 2010, Sprint was awarded 357 patents. At this luncheon, all the individuals across the company who either received a patent in 2010 or submitted an application for one during the year, are recognized and honored.

What I love about this event isn’t the food (although it’s always good). What I love is that it’s a rare opportunity in the spotlight for the folks behind the Sprint innovation that has made this company great for more than 100 years. The folks walking up on stage and getting their photo taken with the company’s top executives (4 members of Dan Hesse’s senior team were at the event) spend most of their days being brilliant in hidden labs and obscure cubicles across the Sprint campus.

Throughout the year, as I have meeting after meeting in Sprint’s boardrooms, or in high level partnership meetings, these aren’t the folks I see. But when Sprint wins awards for innovation in systems, devices (and here), networks, or even customer service, it’s often the innovation coming from this group of folks that’s behind it.

Go Sprint! Power up!

A couple of days have passed now since AT&T’s industry-changing announcement.

Sprint’s official position is clear:

The combination of AT&T and T-Mobile USA, if approved by the Department of Justice (DOJ) and Federal Communications Commission (FCC), would alter dramatically the structure of the communications industry.

AT&T and Verizon are already by far the largest wireless providers. A combined AT&T and T-Mobile would be almost three times the size of Sprint, the third largest wireless competitor. If approved, the merger would result in a wireless industry dominated overwhelmingly by two vertically-integrated companies that control almost 80 percent of the U.S. wireless post-paid market, as well as the availability and price of key inputs such as backhaul and access needed by other wireless companies to compete.

The DOJ and the FCC must decide if this transaction is in the best interest of consumers and the U.S. economy overall, and determine if innovation and robust competition would be impacted adversely and by this dramatic change in the structure of the industry.

I won’t comment further, but I’m curious what others think. Feel free to leave your comments.

Today is the five year anniversary of my first post on this blog!

Wow!

A lot has changed in five years.

The industry has gone through a major transformation! (e.g. Five years ago Apple and Google weren’t active in mobile.)

My job has changed significantly. (In 2006 I was director of strategy in one of Sprint’s divisions, today I’m vice president of strategy for the corporation. Five years ago, Sprint and Nextel had just merged and the merger still looked brilliant. )

Life has also gotten busier outside of work.

When I started blogging, my goal was to use the blog to share my opinions on the industry. Early in my blogging career, I set the goal of posting a new piece every weekday. These days, I’m doing well if I post one opinion piece in a month and some weeks I struggle to post anything at all. More than anything, this blog has become a way to interact with customers to help improve their experience with Sprint.

To be honest, I feel stressed out by the pressure to keep this blog current. I think it’s time for a change - time to destress.

I will continue to look for opportunities to help customers and I will continue to look for opportunities to share my opinions on the industry. But I’m calling time-out on my posts of lists covering industry news. I think y’all have better sources for that information anyway.

Over the next few weeks (months?) I hope to revisit some of the major themes that I’ve covered over the past five years.

Stay tuned!

Big Bell Dogma is the innovation stifling mindset, most often seen in large market-dominating companies, where the big company protects the status quo, tries to control what happens in the ecosystem, and believes they can perform tasks better than others in the ecosystem who specialize in that function. Big Bell Dogma hurts consumers, hurts the ecosystem, and slows market growth, but sometimes results in higher profits for the big companies. Here are recent examples:

• Verizon to throttle data speeds for heaviest users
• T-Mobile, AT&T deadlock on 3G data roaming deal
• Will Verizon’s public-safety partnership with Motorola keep competitors from getting D-block spectrum?

Converging products into a cellphone is one way that mobility is getting built into every product, but it’s not the only way. Every month, I’ll focus on devices that are integrating the power of mobility into products themselves in ways that create new value for the customer. Power up!

• Billboards
• Glaciers
• Bee Hives

Research is good. Free highlights from expensive research reports are great. Here are some recent headlines:

• Mobile Music Revenues to Reach $5.5 Billion by 2015 - but Piracy Threatens
• Femtocell Deployments More Than Double in 12 Months with Strong Growth Beyond the Home
• Wireless Local Area Network Chipset Market to Double in 2011 Courtesy of Wi-Fi
• Machine-to-Machine Connections to reach 2.1 Billion Devices by 2020
• Global Data Revenues to Reach $500 Billion by 2015
• One Billion People to Have Access to WiMAX Networks by Year-End
• Industry to Ship 5.5 Million LTE Smartphones by End of 2011
• Global Mobile Transaction Value Will Near $1 Trillion by 2014
• Global HSPA Mobile Broadband Connections Have Surpassed 400 Million
• NAND Flash Consumption in Tablets to Rise Nearly 400 Percent in 2011
• Worldwide Mobile Device Sales to End Users Reached 1.6 Billion Units in 2010
• Mobile Data Bandwidth Jumped by 73% in Second Half of 2010
• Zero to a Billion; 802.11ac-Enabled Device Shipments to Soar by 2015
• Active Users of Mobile Money Services to Exceed 200 Million Worldwide by 2013

Standard disclaimer: don’t take from my selections, ordering, headlines, etc. any indications of the interests or plans of my employer (if you do, you’ll undoubtedly be disappointed when they don’t play out.)

• The Future of Cheap Androids Begins Now
• Lets Understand Phones: Market is Shifting from Dumbphones to Smartphones
• What does a Nokisoft smartphone look like before it is born?
• Tablets are threat to Smartphones and Netbooks, analyzes Frost and Sullivan
• With 24% Share of Smartphones, Android Will Outshine “Nokisoft”
• Smartphones Top US Consumer Electronics Purchase Plans for 2011
• The “Cool Factor” No Longer Driving Handset Sales - Form and Function Winning
• Kyocera Shows Off Dual-Screen Android Smartphone
• Apple retakes World’s Biggest Computer Maker Crown after 3 decades - with power of iPhone, iPad and Touch
• Smartphone Bloodbath 2010: Now Final Numbers Q4 and Full Year 2010 - and each rival awarded their final grades
• Nokia Autopsy on MeeGo - One last look back, Before we look forward on the New Nokia
• Noki-Soft Windfall - who wins most when Micro-Kia hand away lucrative smartphone empire bigger than Blackberry, bigger than iPhone

Standard disclaimer: don’t take from my selections, ordering, headlines, etc. any indications of the interests or plans of my employer (if you do, you’ll undoubtedly be disappointed when they don’t play out.)

• Its Not 4G, Its Faux G
• Are operators misleading consumers by claiming HSPA+ is 4G?
• NTT DoCoMo, China Mobile, KT form partnership, every other carrier in the world should probably be concerned
• Threats to the Telco Business Model
• How will operators differentiate themselves in 2011?
• N. American operators may be unprofitable by 2013
• Mobile data: finding ‘Quick fixes’ for revenue growth
• Mobility in 2011 – The Network & Operators
• Network Operators are Key to the Smartphone Ecosystem
• Mobile operators should fear the threat from Facebook
• New business models based on mobile data are needed to drive growth worldwide
• Operators Want Higher Smartphone Revenues, But Need to Educate Customers on Using Advanced Features
• Subsidised Phones for the Poor Could Generate $3.7 Billion in Income

This morning, Darrin asked about a new port-in credit available for customers coming to Sprint from other carriers. I wasn’t familiar with the offer, so I checked it out and asked his specific question of our marketing folks.

It looks like a sweet deal. (Especially combined with Everything Plus.)

If you’ve been thinking about giving Sprint a try, now might be the perfect time! If you’ve had a bad experience with us in the past, we are a changed company, as Vocalabs and J.D. Power can attest.

Welcome to Sprint!