I attended an event at the Governor’s mansion this past Monday. Roughly 15 business leaders from Colorado’s software and telecom sector met with the Governor Bill Ritter as part of his preparation for an upcoming trip to Silicon Valley. The goal of the trip is to better understand how Colorado can enhance its reputation as a start-up community for software and telecom industries.
Though several telecom leaders were among those present, the lion share of the discussion centered around software. This was understandable, as the event organizers are software focused. Moreover, telecom post-bubble has lost much of its luster. This led me to write this post.
My first point is: telecom is and will continue to be a vital industry. Bandwidth will continue to grow 40-70% annually for as long as we can look into the future. Infrastructure needed to support this growth, and the higher layer applications, will be growth industries for many years to come.
My second point is that Colorado is a major telecommunications hub. The front range has a long history with telecom. CATV was basically born in Colorado. The satellite industry has long been big in the Tech Center. US West spawned many telecom start-ups. And Level 3 Communications‘ decision to locate in Colorado has extended the hub from Denver and its south suburbs to Boulder. This rich telecom tradition continues today. My guess is telecom will be a material net creator of jobs in Colorado for years to come (though the short term might be an exception, as Level 3 continues to get itself on track).
To illustrate how robust Colorado’s telecom industry is today, I will begin a list of the telecom companies that are in Colorado. I will include Internet/communications infrastructure applications, such as web hosting, MVaaS (managed video as a service), and colocation. My initial cut will be woefully incomplete, but I will count on readers to help me make the list more and more comprehensive.
For those of you who are part of this telecom community, please help me talk it up. It is our responsibility to improve the awareness of how important telecom is to the Colorado economy.
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The funny thing that most people may not realize is that software really IS telecommunications in both the past and future sense. It has only been in the historically brief offline period now coming to an end, that software came into its own as something different – the application layer. The languages, operating systems and principles used to create application layer software, to a huge extent, came into being within the telecom industry. As we continue to grow our bandwidth and mobility; and to spend more time wired in to the network than not, the application layer returns more and more to its roots as a component of telecommunications rather than a completely different discipline. To be sure, a software company may function much differently than a telecom company, but they both grow in the same garden and here in Colorado we have good soil.
The hardest part is being able to recuit local talent. I’d like to see the local state universities churning out more tech-savvy individuals, instead of me having to recruit from out of state. My company has offices in Silicon Valley and Cambridge because of our access to highly talented engineering, math, and computer science graduates, many of whom start as interns.