WASHINGTON-Policy makers this week will receive the last of nine bean-bag wireless phone toys designed to remind them “Competition, innovation and safety symbolizes the wireless industry,” according to a letter accompanying the toys.
The bean-bag phones were one ingredient of a recipe of repetition the Cellular Telecommunications Industry Association hopes will lead to a market place governed by competition, not regulatory mandates such as number portability.
A letter was included with each phone that repeated the theme: “The government directed competitive telecommunications. Wireless has delivered.”
The second ingredient was last week’s CTIA Lobby Day, where more than 100 CTIA representatives, including 16 chief executive officers, descended on Capitol Hill to personally deliver the message that “the wireless industry [is] delivering competition, innovation and safety.”
“The folks on the Hill were very responsive to the message of competition,” said CTIA President Thomas Wheeler.
The one-day lobbyists discussed issues such as expected measures to reform the Federal Communications Commission and implementing the digital wiretap act, Wheeler said.
Specifics of what should be included in FCC reform legislation were not discussed, Wheeler said. “Some members wanted to talk [about] FCC reform. We generally stayed away from specifics … far more important are the policy underpinnings,” he said.
On the issue of implementing the digital wiretap act, notwithstanding current negotiations between the Department of Justice and manufacturers to buy software and give it to carriers, the lobbyists urged Congress to extend the grandfather date.
The CALEA grandfather date requires government to reimburse telecom carriers for CALEA-related upgrades to equipment in place before Jan. 1, 1995. Any equipment in place that has not been significantly upgraded and that the government chooses not to pay to upgrade would be considered in compliance.
CTIA also celebrated the introduction of its universal 911 bill in the Senate.
The bill, introduced by Sen. Conrad Burns (R-Mont.) and John McCain (R-Ariz.), on Lobby Day designates 911 as the universal telephone number for emergencies, extends the wireline liability protections to the wireless industry and orders the FCC to help states plan and deploy emergency communications systems.
Similar legislation passed the House earlier this year after language regarding antenna siting was stripped from the bill. Taking the antenna-siting language out of the 911 bill was part of a compromise CTIA made with organizations representing local governments, Wheeler said. “Part of the process of the 911 bill was the representatives of cities and counties and CTIA [agreeing to] leave it as the status quo,” Wheeler said. For this reason, the lobbyists last week did not urge to change antenna-siting law, he said. The Telecommunications Act of 1996 contains language regarding how localities should treat antenna sitings.
