In the spring of 1992, a national billboard company asked me to
investigate the technology of a small, startup company. This company
had developed a prototype of a system to monitor the lighting on
billboards and report the status to a central office using a
wireless network. I was curious. Why would a billboard need such a
system? I learned that billboard customers pay a premium for
lighting, and they get very irritated when they drive past one of
their advertisements and see the light has burned out. Who could
blame them? Many billboards are located in remote areas and it is
impractical to send people out frequently to inspect the lights.
Thus, the wireless network would have been a cost-effective solution
to a real problem in the billboard business.
My client asked me to assess the startup company's claims and
estimate how much it would cost them if they simply did the job
themselves from concept through production. They really wanted to
know how much they should pay for the technology and how much it
would cost them to implement the system after they bought it.
On the other hand, the startup company was concerned about
revealing too much of their proprietary information and wanted an
outside party, like me, who they felt they could trust as an
intermediary in the technical part of the negotiations. My client
agreed to allow them to see the technical description part of my
final report before I delivered it.
I spent two days with the startup company. They showed me
everything they had done and took me to their central antenna site.
The demonstrated their feasibility prototype, and showed me their
hardware and software. They allowed me to take some of their
prototype equipment to my lab where I analyzed the components in
order to create a cost estimate for manufacturing the products. I
spoke with the FCC concerning frequency allocation, and wrote my
final report in which I detailed the startup company's technology,
my assessment of the amount of work required to implement their
system and its cost, the licensing and other administrative aspects
of maintaining a national billboard network, and a discussion of the
operational requirements for the system. The startup company signed
off on the technical portion of my report, and I submitted it to my
client.
I spoke with my contact at the client company later and learned
they were happy they had the assessment done. In fact, they had not
realized the amount of work that would be required to implement and
administer the system, and had decided not to pursue the purchase of
the technology.
