Chad, come back!!!

As I began preparing my South Korea business report for AEDC, I had a realization that the future economic development of Arkansas - at least in the short term - might lie precariously in the middle of this Alltel-Verizon merger. Though the details of the buy-out are not yet fully known nor will they be for some months to come, this was a hostile takeover and an Arkansas business was the target. The reality of the merger dawned on me as I was investigating potential foreign investment into the e-business, logisitics, and telecommunication industry: Arkansas might experience some unpleasantness as a result of it all.

Alltel was a Little Rock company, and it quietly owned most of the telecommunications infrastructure (towers, cables, networks, etc) in the country. That is the way Alltel made all of it's money; all of the other telecommunications companies - ATT, Verizon, T-Mobile, etc - had to use Alltel's hardware to develop their networks. In a very real sense, Alltel held the lynchpin to the success of the entire industry. Thus, Arkansas - as Alltel's home - was privy to this success. In addition, Arkansas also saw a major logistics and e-business player rise in the form of the Axciom which does major business within the international economic and corporate world. With these two corporations, Arkansas had the ability to cultivate the industry and attract related businesses and manufacturers.

My current project is Korea. The ROK is home to some heavy hitters in the telecom industry; Samsung comes to mind. If Verizon decides to pull its Alltel operations out of Arkansas, it could greatly impact that state's presence in this industry. Nevermind that thousands of people work there. Nevermind the void that it could leave in Little Rock. The ability to attract major economic investment to the state is, in the long term, perhaps more important. If Verizon maintains a major operation here in LR, who knows what investments might call Arkansas home?!

Now, this is not some Doomsday announcement, nor is anyone really worried about it all...except for Alltel's employees and their spouses. Arkansas is doing just fine and will continue to do so. It did make me realize, though, that some big shifts are taking place right here at home. When a big piece of the puzzle leaves town, someone else has to fill the void. I guess that filling the void is part of my job at AEDC. I'm wrapping up Korea, and I have found some interesting crossroads between our two worlds that merit further investigation. I wish I could offer more recommendations than I will. However, one can not recommend industry expansion when the industry itself is hanging by a thread.