Before she launched into her rip-roaring rant and head-butted Cellular Telecommunications & Internet Association President Steve Largent after his “my-friend-on-the-far-left” comment at a hearing last week, Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) calmly asked the NFL Hall of Famer and former Oklahoma congressman a question whose answer is the starting point for a discussion about a matter perhaps more important than the wireless directory that created the fracas.
First, Boxer’s outburst was arguably worse than Largent’s tongue-in-cheek reference to privacy advocate Marc Rotenberg, seated to the CTIA chief’s left at the witness table. But the dressing down (shades of rookie training camp?) is nonetheless meaningful in symbolic and substantive terms. Indeed, the Boxer’s bombastic verbal blitz punctuated a terrible week for CTIA and for many mobile-phone carriers generally.
Back to the Boxer question. The liberal California Democrat asked Largent how long he’d been on the job. Time flies. Largent is a month away from his one-year anniversary at CTIA. He arrived on the scene at a time of tumult for wireless carriers. Local number portability was being shoved down industry’s throat. Nextel had already greased the skids for an 800 MHz public-safety interference solution. California regulators were well on their way to passing a bill of rights for telecom consumers. All as trial lawyers and local finance czars marched down the field, suing and taxing wireless carriers left and right.
So there was a lot on CTIA’s doorstep when Tom Wheeler, seated to the center left of his successor, handed over the reins to Largent. It was only fair to cut him slack.
But the honeymoon is over. Grumbling has begun. The boo birds are out. The Boxer-Largent episode was political prop, nothing more. Still, it cannot be good that industry’s top, most visible lobbyist was humiliated in his first Senate appearance. Worse was Largent’s failure to stop the pre-emptive wireless directory privacy bill from advancing.
Topping it all last week, the mobile-phone industry got rolled by broadcasters who managed to persuade the Senate Commerce Committee to let TV stations hang on-perhaps forever-to a big chunk of 700 MHz spectrum that had been destined for wireless carriers. After the panel vote, nary a peep from CTIA. Meantime, relocation fund legislation key to 3G deployment in the U.S. remains in limbo.
There’s something else, though: Verizon Wireless. The No. 1 mobile-phone carrier opposes the wireless directory. It was the first to jump on the LNP bandwagon. It is the only national carrier supporting state bans on driver use of handheld cell phones. It fought the Nextel 800 MHz plan more pugnaciously than any other wireless operator. All of which raises the question: Who is running the show for industry these days: Largent or Denny Strigl?
Here’s how one wireless lobbyist sizes up the New CTIA: kindler and gentler and weaker.
