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The
legions of reporters and broadcast trucks along
Main Street in Virginia’s capital city late in
February weren’t there for a festival. They
cared not a hoot for the 60-day, 80-day, whatever,
General Assembly session up the hill. The media
came to Richmond for an appeals court hearing
between Virginia firm NTP and the Canada-based
company Research in Motion (RIM) that threatened
to shut down BlackBerry services for 3.2 million
people in the United States.
The
case was one of patent infringement, which
Virginia- based NTP alleged that RIM had engaged
in while making and running its popular wireless
email devices for years. Appeals court judge James
Spencer could have shut Blackberry down but he
didn’t.
Knowing
the judge had injunction in hand, however, made
RIM swallow hard and reach a $612 million
settlement with NTP a few days later to keep the
BlackBerrys working. RIM in return gets a license
to NTP’s patents going forward.
If
you’re not a BlackBerry user, it may be hard to
comprehend why a world without remote email access
and instantaneous communication might be a
deprivation. After all, what would anyone really
need to read about or respond to instantaneously?
The
first answers to those questions hearken back to
another technology, the telegraph, in another
century. Six weeks ago and after almost 155 years
of service, venerable Western Union sent its last
telegram. And it did so with the most cryptic of
announcements: "Effective January 27, 2006,
Western Union will discontinue all Telegram and
Commercial Messaging services. We regret any
inconvenience this may cause you, and we thank you
for your loyal patronage. If you have any
questions or concerns, please contact a customer
service representative."
Samuel
Morse had sent the first telegram back in 1844
from Washington, D.C. to Baltimore with the words,
"What hath God wrought." And Western
Union drew on the breakthrough and its Mississippi
Valley Printing Telegraph Company roots to make
communications something other than
transportation. By 1861 Western Union had
consolidated a coast-to-coast network: By 1866 it
had introduced the first stock ticker, which later
would make its Virginia debut at The Homestead
Resort in Bath County. Where better to keep up
with one’s investments?
The
technologies of the telegraph gave way first to
the telephone, then the radio, the television and
the Internet. No way that telegrams could compete
with ludicrously inexpensive cell phone minutes,
much less endless e-mail communications and text
messaging. Wisely Western Union long ago moved its
focus from telegrams to money transfers, now a $3
billion business.
There
is a continuing stream of technology breakthroughs
worth noting even closer to home. Pragmatics Inc.
of McLean is working on a $4 million task order
from the Justice Department to provide systems
engineering, design and development to help
federal law enforcement agencies electronically
book, identify and share data about people in
federal custody. Samuel Morse would be impressed.
Alexandria’s
The Ashlawn Group is using its proprietary fuel
cell technology as a post-launch power source for
the U.S. Army’s MOFA -- that’s multi-option
fuze artillery -- a non-traditional market for
alternate energy. A research agreement with Case
Western Reserve and production of tens of
thousands of fuel cells in an Ohio manufacturing
facility could mean economies of scale useful for
other applications.
And
the City of Manassas has launched a pilot project
with start-up Square Loop, a company that provides
location-based messaging that can warn residents
and motorists automatically via cell phones of
emergencies or impending natural disasters. Square
Loop, incidentally, is one of 12 promising
Virginia technology startups that has received
seed funding and technical assistance from the
Center for Innovative Technology.
Even
as it failed to seek common ground on funding
transportation, the pre-telegraph form of
communications, the Virginia General Assembly, to
its credit, did reach consensus before adjourning
March 11 on two critical policy responses related
to the convergence of technologies. New laws
effective July 1, 2006 will make it easier for
what once were telephone companies to compete with
cable television companies for franchises to
deliver video services to Virginia customers. And
the Assembly replaced the thicket of utility
franchise, local exchange, paging, inter-exchange,
relay and cable franchise fees plus local consumer
utility and local gross receipt taxes with a
simpler five percent sales tax on all
communications and video services.
Even
consumers of satellite television, voice-over-
Internet-protocol
and satellite radio who face the sales tax on
their services for the first time -- yes, the
House of Delegates and Virginia Senate already
have voted in 2006 to raise taxes -- will find
simplicity and savings as those other fees and
taxes disappear from phone, cable and other bills.
As
for House and Senate budget conferees who must
resume communications in time to deliver a budget
by a March 27 special session of their colleagues?
Remember that the judge made it clear to RIM an
injunction was coming unless it settled. Western
Union started laying the groundwork for its future
long before telegrams were gone for good STOP. And
be mindful that there are emerging every day
plenty of innovative ways of delivering services
old and new. Faster and more ambitious research,
development and commercialization tools for
innovative companies in Virginia might even anchor
Ashlawn’s next round of fuel cell breakthroughs
with Virginia universities and manufacturers.
--
March 20, 2006
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