Global Tower Partners.
Crown Castle.
American Tower.
Names you probably don’t know. AT&T, Verizon, Sprint. Names you probably do.
Would you be surprised to find out that the list of names you know, the cellular companies, have been selling off their cellular towers to the companies whose names you don’t recognize? Those three names happen to be the top three tower companies in the United States.
At some point, you have to wonder if cellular companies have sold their own ability to do business. Outsourcing is not new. Originally, the concept was applied to non-essential services. Then it reached into services that were necessary to have done, but not necessarily done by the company. Now outsourcing has moved into essential services; as in, we can’t do business without this being done and we are wholly dependent on someone else doing it.
Information technology is an easy target for outsourcing. People get it. As an example, say Red Wing Shoes was in the business of making, I don’t know, shoes. Just for arguments sake. Wouldn’t it be reasonable for them to outsource their information technology to someone else? Say, someone who does IT. They, Red Wing, could then focus on shoes and the outsource vendor could focus on IT. Then let’s say they outsource maintenance on their shoe making machinery. I mean, they are (presumably) in the business of making shoes, not in the business of maintaining shoe-making machines. You hesitate, but then go along with the argument. Then Red Wing decides they are not actually in the business of making shoes, they are in the business of designing and selling shoes. The entire manufacturing process can then outsourced. I’m not saying it happened that way; Last time I was in Red Wing, Minnesota (home of, yep, Red Wing Shoes) there were still several buildings that say Red Wing on the side and appear to be fine places for the making of footwear.
What I am saying is that outsourcing to the core is what is happening with your cellular service. Cellular companies are trending towards not being in the business of providing the service, but rather in the business of marketing the service and, well, I’m sure they actually do something else but it escapes me at the moment.
The question is; how far can this be taken and still be considered a method of freeing up the company to focus on its core business?
