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 Photo by John Keith
Maurice Tosé & TCS deliver in a wireless world
By Donna De Marco
Originally published March 2008
Maurice B. Tosé sleeps well at night.
The founder of Annapolis-based TeleCommunication Systems Inc. (TCS) knows his firm's technology saves millions of people's lives.
The mission-critical wireless communications provider splits its workload between the federal government, public safety and commercial wireless carriers — from providing highly secure connections for military on the battlefield to pinpointing where a stranded wireless 911 caller is located.
The 500-person firm, with 145 employees in Annapolis, is hoping to change the face of wireless creating cutting edge solutions that are competing neck and neck with the big boys from Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman Corp. to Lucent and Nokia.
“We dance with elephants,” said Tosé, who is chairman, president and CEO of the minority-owned firm.
“And it's not to get stepped on or squished by those elephants, but it's convincing the large telecom carrier customer — as well as the large government customers — that we are capable of continuing to do bigger, more technically-challenging products and services.”
 Maurice B. Tosé founded Annapolis-based TeleCommunication Systems Inc. with his wife Teri in 1987. Photo by John Keith.
“It's been our best year ever,” said Tosé.
The company, which went public in 2000, reported $144 million in revenue in 2007 — a 15 percent increase from $124.9 million in 2006.
“This is a small company with its hands in a lot of different areas,” said Scott Sutherland, managing director at Los Angeles-based Wedbush Morgan Securities, who covers the company. “Clearly, there's a lot of value in the parts.”
The war on terror has been one of the most significant parts to the business as it helped TCS create a whole family of products under the SwiftLink brand, which allow for rapid deployment of communication using wireless, satellite and terrestrial networks.
 TeleCommunication Systems Inc.’s teleport in Manassas, Va. supports the company's end-to-end solution needed for today's mission-critical communications. Photo courtesy of TCS.
But the company isn't all about government forces and terror-fighting operations.
Years ago, Tosé predicted that the cell phone would replace the now archaic pager as the primary source of instant communication. He was right.
And now text messaging has exploded, with TCS — which provides text-messaging software to U.S. wireless carriers — at the height of that explosion.
Last year, TCS technology delivered 80 billion text messages — more than double 2006's volume, Tosé said. That's about 25 to 30 percent of the more than 300 billion U.S. text messages delivered last year, according to CTIA, an international wireless association.
 TCS routes and delivers over 110,000 wireless and VoIP E911 calls per day across the United States through its Network Operations Center in Seattle. Photo courtesy of TCS.
TCS has already received $12 million in orders for message software and related systems from leading carriers for delivery in the first half of this year — that compares to an average of about $4 million per quarter in 2007.
Another TCS segment taking off is the company's location information solutions for 911 wireless and Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) callers.
TCS provides location information of Enhanced 911 — or E911 — calls for over 100 million U.S. subscribers of more than 50 wireless and VoIP carriers. It handles over 110,000 E-911 calls a day.
All of the company's technology is closely guarded. To date, TCS has 56 patents, with another 190 patent applications pending.
Tosé takes pride in those patents and protects them. In May, the company was awarded $10 million from Sybase 365, which infringed on a TCS patent that enables wireless subscribers to send messages to subscribers in other wireless carrier networks by simply entering the recipient's phone number.
 TCS' SwiftLink line of products and services provides secure, deployable communications for government agencies. Photo courtesy of TCS.
Tosé's pride may come from his stint in the U.S. Navy, where he served eight years of active duty, which included teaching at the U.S. Naval Academy.
While he enjoyed the military, he knew the corporate world is where he belonged and would often sit in the classroom and dream of starting his own business.
“The seed was planted, even as a midshipman,” said Tosé, who is currently a commander in the U.S. Navy Reserves.
 Prior to TCS, Tosé was the director of Department of Defense programs for Silver Spring-based Techmatics Inc., where he was responsible for the marketing and management of systems integration contracts for the federal agency.
In 1987, he and his wife, Teri, co-founded TCS, initially as a military contractor for software development and network projects. It wasn't so easy, despite his expertise and connections in the industry.
“We ran up credit cards, exhausted all the dollars we had in the bank, and borrowed from family and friends that believed that we could do it,” Tosé said.
Tosé spent his time raising necessary funds and convincing potential customers that he could get the job done.
“Similarly, those two things continue across the life cycle of a company,” he added. “You go through periods where you have to raise additional cash, be it you've won an additional contract and you need cash flow to service it and it's continuing to convince customers that you can do the next bigger job.”
Tosé has done plenty of convincing.
TCS started with a small contract from the city of Annapolis and grew from there.
In 1990, the company won a contract with the U.S. Special Operations Command in Tampa, Fla. This first big win handling local area networks put TCS on the map, Tosé said.
“Satisfying very demanding customers that had security requirements began our leg into the special operations community,” he said.
In 2006, the U.S. Army awarded a five-year $5 billion worldwide satellite systems contract to six vendors including TCS.
“It's opened up a lot of opportunities and customers we didn't have access to before,” he said.
Moving forward, Tosé is showing no signs of slowing down as the company goes after more contracts in 2008.
“We go back to our foundation — convincing demanding customers that you can perform the service and produce the product that they need,” Tosé said. “That's what we do today, day in and day out.” > |
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