ACADEMIC PROGRAM ADVISOR
EDUCATION SPECIALIST

Dr. Mercer has been a telecommunications consultant since 1985, as the Principal of BroadView Telecommunications (2000-present), as Vice President and President of Hatfield Associates, Inc., and HAI Consulting, Inc. (1987-2000), and as Senior Executive, BDM Corporation (1985-1987). During 1973-85 he directed technical programs at Bell Labs, AT&T, and Bellcore on network architectures, standards, operations planning, and systems engineering for ISDN and other data services. Dr. Mercer provides strategic planning and analysis related to public and private telecommunications infrastructures, dealing with technologies, network architectures, and services. The work is currently focused on local exchange and long-distance competition for voice and broadband data networks. He has been extensively involved in a multi-year analysis of optimum architectures and associated costs for local and wide-area networks provided by incumbent telephone companies in the United States. He has been extensively involved in a multi-year analysis of optimum architectures and associated costs for local and wide-area networks provided by incumbent telephone companies in the United States. He has also conducted an extensive analysis of the network architecture and design for the nationwide private network of a trade organization.

Dr. Mercer was the consulting engineer on a Telecom/Telematique team hired in 2001 to evaluate and rank five equipment vendor proposals for a national Next Generation network in Brazil, a combination of fiber optic backbone and wireless last mile. The proposals, from Cisco, Siemens, Nortel, Ericsson and Alcatel were sophisticated, incorporated state of the art technology and were to be scaleable for future growth depending on a number of economic and regulatory criteria. The model report included a comparative matrix that integrated both a technological, economic and regulatory criteria to arrive at optimal solutions. The report was so authoritative that the equipment vendors requested copies to serve as a guideline for future evaluations.

Dr. Mercer also participated with T/TI on a USTDA telecom project in Poland in 1995 and telecom educational programs in Eastern Europe. He serves as an adjunct faculty member in the Interdisciplinary Telecommunications Program (ITP) at the University of Colorado, in which he teaches graduate-level telecommunications courses, chairs Master's thesis committees in the ITP, and is developing a post-graduate seminar on business, regulatory policy, and technology for executives.

Mercer conducts telecommunications policy analyses on interconnection, unbundling, resale, and universal service aspects of the 1996 Telecommunications Act. At Hatfield Associates, he was co-author of the well-known "Hatfield Report" and "Hatfield II Report" on the Open Network Architecture (ONA) concept, and of a report titled "The Enduring Local Bottleneck," which deals with the ability of alternative providers to enter the local exchange telecommunications business. At BDM, Mercer planned data communications networks for various defense agencies. Dr. Mercer has a B.S. Physics from Carnegie Institute of Technology (Carnegie-Mellon University) and Ph.D., Physics from Johns Hopkins University.

The following is a list of the courses Dr. Mercer developed and taught:

  • ATM Networking and Technology
  • Broadband Wide Area Networks
  • Broadband Applications
  • Computer Networks
  • Introductory Data Communications
  • Advanced Data Communications
  • Introduction to Internetworking and TCP/IP
  • TCP/IP Architecture and Protocol
  • Local Area Networking
  • Multi-Protocol Networking
  • Networking Trends and Directions
  • Network Management
  • T1/T3 Networking Principles
  • Telecommunications Basics
  • Telecommunications Industry Structure
  • Telecommunications Standards
  • Voice Telephony and Applications