We live in a wireless world, but it”™s become overloaded with cell phones and laptops, so much so that companies that provide the wireless service are having difficulty handling the demand, according to Richard Hitt Jr., president and CEO of Elmsford-based Hypres Inc., which started in 1983 as a spin-off from IBM.
Technology that can make cell towers work more effectively, efficiently and deliver better service are out there, Hitt told members of the Palisades Institute last week. But many of the national companies currently providing service ”“ T-Mobile, AT&T, Verizon and others ”“ need to find ways to delivery better service without creating a need for more cell towers.
What they need, Hitt said, is a way to go smaller, stronger and savvier and deliver better service using towers that exist now ”“ particularly since more and more municipalities are fighting them “out of fear.”
“It is happening right now in Danbury where a building owner was putting a cell tower in a chimney on one of his buildings. The condo owners got wind of it, and now he”™s in court. They aren”™t sure if it”™s a health concern, but they are fearful,” he said.
“The next generation of telecommunications has arrived, but companies ready to provide it can”™t handle the overload,” Hitt told members of the Palisades Institute, Dominican College”™s think tank, at their Sept. 29 breakfast at the Rockland Country Club.
Passing around a super conductor chip to the audience ”“ half the size of a dime ”“ Hitt said the technology to deliver better service on smaller scale is available, but the reluctance of companies to embrace anything outside their own circle of scientists can be “disruptive and make them uncomfortable. So does any technological advance that does not come out of their own laboratory.”
Hypres”™ goal, as it is for many others who have grown from IBM”™s massive departure from the region and reinvented themselves in the private sector, is to get the corporate giants to embrace the new companies IBM spawned.
Although Hypres has worked with the U.S. Department of Defense, getting global companies to look at the work that smaller super conductor companies such as his is difficult. “The super conductor is part of the architecture of the generation of supercomputers ”“ not the ones being used in your office, but those that are running entire networks.”
Hitt said the physics department at Stony Brook University in Long Island leads the world in super conductor advancement and technology, joined by Rochester and Yale; most of the money New York state has infused into the Tech Valley initiative has gone to Albany”™s College of Nanoscale Science and its Nanotech Complex, as well as to Saratoga County, where the Luther Forest Technology Campus is being built and just welcomed its first tenant, Global Foundries.
“Every innovation that ”˜disrupts”™ the status quo is going to be viewed as a potential problem,” said Hitt, “just as the E-book has been ”˜disruptive”™ to the publishing industry. Whenever someone comes out with something innovative,” said Hitt, “it will be viewed as a potential problem, not a complement, particularly if the investment is going to cost several billion dollars. That can make it extremely difficult to justify to shareholders.”
In the end, however, these mega companies must come up with ways to improve technology, handle more data on the information superhighway and deliver quality service faster than the speed of light ”“ or as fast as fingers can fly across the keyboard or tap on an icon. They also need to deliver products in smaller, compact packages. “Many businesses, like ours, have built a better mousetrap, but it”™s a challenge to get others to embrace it until they realize there is no other choice,” Hitt said.
While Hypres works with companies around the region and in the Hudson Valley ”“ Airgas East in New Windsor and Westchester Valve & Fitting Co. in Hopewell Junction ”“ for products used in its self-contained microelectronics fabrication facility, Hitt said it will remain in its Elmsford location for the time being.
“We did look at space in East Fishkill a few years ago, but right now, we”™re going to stay put,” said Hitt of his 35-employee company. The goal was not one of location, but for New York”™s super conductor industry to enlighten national and international companies of the potential that exists in the state, considered a leader in the global super conductor industry.
