Mark C. Smith and the opportunity hiding in the telephone

The telephone salesman had an explanation for the size of his modem. It was better, he told Mark Smith, because it contained more resistors and capacitors. Smith was an engineer. This was an unfortunate choice of sales pitch.

He had called the local telephone company to learn about the equipment. What he heard instead sounded like an invitation to enter the business. Years later, recalling the encounter, he said: “I figured that this might be a good business opportunity.” A potential customer had become a potential competitor, apparently before the salesman finished explaining the advantages.

Smith would co-found Universal Data Systems, then Adtran. The second company made equipment that helped telephone networks carry digital information. Its work happened largely behind the scenes, where connections either function or give somebody an exceptionally irritating afternoon. Smith’s career rewards a look at that less conspicuous territory: the useful thing somebody else has overlooked.

A handshake with a follow-up question

Born in Birmingham on September 10, 1940, Smith was the son of two teachers. At Woodlawn High School, science provided a route to a meeting with Wernher von Braun. Winning a science fair brought the young Smith a handshake with the rocket scientist. He used the occasion to ask for a summer job.

It was a practical addition to the usual congratulations. A handshake ends quickly; a job can occupy the summer. Smith went on to work in the space program at Cape Canaveral and Huntsville while studying electrical engineering at Georgia Tech. He graduated with honors in 1962 and made his professional life in Huntsville.

Huntsville offered him proximity to engineers, ambitious projects and people starting companies. His early employment included the business remembered in his career accounts as SCI. The technical experience mattered. So did exposure to the business of turning engineering work into something a customer would buy.

His eventual move into telecommunications was a choice about what kind of company to build. A product could be manufactured and sold repeatedly. For an engineer accustomed to demanding projects, that possibility gave the business a different shape: development work could have a life beyond the next assignment.

A modem company without the fanfare

Universal Data Systems emerged from work begun in 1969; Smith placed its operating start in the summer of 1970. Alabama’s first data communications company began on a scale that would have made the phrase “corporate campus” seem extravagant. Its early development took place at his home.

Smith and his partner assembled $30,000 to get started. They built Bell 202-compatible modems, equipment designed to work in an established communications environment. Compatibility was central to the proposition. Customers already had systems and expectations. A newcomer had to give them a reason to trust a different supplier.

The early years were difficult. UDS sold much of its equipment to other companies, which put their own names on it. There is a certain freedom in that arrangement, and a certain indignity: the product gets invited into the customer’s business while its maker’s name waits outside.

A 2,400-bits-per-second modem became an important seller. Motorola eventually bought UDS, and Smith stayed with the business before leaving in 1985. He had acquired experience on both sides of a company’s growth: establishing a small manufacturer and running it within a much larger organization. The next venture would again concern the telephone network, but a different opening was developing.

The customers left by a breakup

AT&T’s breakup changed the map of American telecommunications. Seven regional Bell companies and more than 1,300 independent telephone companies represented a market for network equipment. These businesses still needed to connect customers, carry traffic and improve service. The institutional arrangements had changed; the work remained.

Smith co-founded Adtran in 1985 with colleagues including Lonnie McMillian. Operations began in January 1986. Those dates describe two separate steps, the formation of a company and the beginning of its working life. Smith took the roles of chairman, chief executive and president.

The initial operation had seven employees and occupied a 9,000-square-foot building. Those dimensions are worth holding in mind when considering the public company that followed. At the beginning, the organization was small enough that every hire and every sale could materially alter its prospects.

Adtran’s opportunity concerned the transition to digital telecommunications. Telephone companies had existing networks, and equipment suppliers had to help them do more with those networks. A useful product needed to fit the world the customer actually operated, including its installed infrastructure and the expense of changing it.

By 1993, Adtran was supplying HDSL equipment that helped carry high-speed T1 services over existing copper wiring. The importance of the phrase “existing copper” is easy to miss. Reusing installed infrastructure gave the technology a practical economic purpose. A network upgrade becomes a more approachable proposition when the answer does not begin with replacing everything.

Seven people become a public company

Adtran went public in 1994. That year also brought the announcement of a $50 million facility expansion. The company had moved beyond the question of whether a small group could find customers. It now had to support growth, sustain product development and meet the expectations attached to publicly traded shares.

Smith remained president until November 1995, when Howard Thrailkill took that position. He continued as chairman and chief executive. The division of roles is a useful reminder that building the company involved other experienced managers, engineers and colleagues, as well as the founder whose name appears in its history.

Recognition followed. The Birmingham News named Smith CEO of the Year in 2000. Adtran itself entered the Alabama Engineering Hall of Fame in 2001. Awards can flatten a working life into a procession of ceremonies; here, the underlying activity was years of making products that telephone companies could put to use.

In 2005, Smith retired as chief executive, with Tom Stanton succeeding him. He remained chairman until his death on March 27, 2007. Adtran reported $513.2 million in sales for 2005. That is company revenue, measured for the full calendar year, rather than a personal fortune or a number attributable to one individual’s work.

The students had real work to do

One of Smith’s convictions concerned the route into engineering. He had benefited from working while in college, and Adtran established a co-op program early in its history. Students could put classroom learning into practice, with assignments that asked them to develop further rather than merely watch experienced employees work.

A 2006 account described roughly 30 students joining the program each semester. Over the preceding five years, 57 percent of the company’s new hire offers had gone to former Adtran co-op students. Smith treated the program as central to the business. Education had a place inside the company, where its results could be seen in the people doing the work.

“The co-op program is truly the lifeblood of our company.”

Mark C. Smith

The program makes a fitting companion to the science fair story. A summer job had helped a young student enter Huntsville’s engineering world. Years later, the company he helped build offered students their own way in. There was a practical continuity between receiving an opportunity and creating one.

Careful words, room for other people

Smith’s manner was quieter than the scale of the business might suggest. Business author Keith McFarland, who interviewed him, described a speaker who chose his language carefully, with an engineer’s pattern of speech. It is an appealing detail in an industry that can produce a generous supply of announcements.

His connections extended beyond Adtran. He served on Digium’s board and mentored its founder, Mark Spencer. At Digium’s new headquarters in 2008, the boardroom carried Smith’s name. That is a different kind of business monument: a room where other people would continue making decisions.

His civic involvement included the Huntsville Symphony Orchestra, Randolph School, Burritt Museum and the Huntsville Botanical Garden. He also served educational organizations and led the Greater Huntsville Foundation. The range suggests a working understanding of a city as somewhere people need more than employment.

At home, there were other enthusiasms. Smith enjoyed fishing and boating. His boat, High Tide II, made trips up the Tennessee River for the Alabama-Tennessee football game. An engineer can appreciate a reliable connection and still choose a wonderfully leisurely way of getting to the destination.

The music carries on

Music belonged to the family’s life across generations. Smith was a musician as well as an engineer, and his son Clay later described that creativity as something that balanced his father’s personal and professional life. The arts were part of the person, as well as a destination for philanthropy.

In 2022, Linda Smith, Clay and Clay’s wife Cameron committed $20 million to the University of Alabama’s performing arts project in Mark’s memory. The Smith Family Center for the Performing Arts followed that gift. The university celebrated its groundbreaking in October 2023, with family members there to mark the occasion.

That later gift belongs to the family members who made it. Its connection to Smith lies in the interests and example they chose to honor. His name also lives in Huntsville’s Mark C. Smith Concert Hall, a place where the evening’s concern is what happens onstage.

The career began with a young person asking for a job and grew through equipment designed to make connections useful. The life around it included students, musicians, colleagues and a river journey to a football game. Together, those details leave a fuller picture than the executive titles alone: someone who could attend closely to a circuit and still make time for the music.