Wireless trade association CTIA announced today that current president and CEO Steve Largent would be leaving the group at the end of next year when his current contract expires. The CTIA board will immediately begin searching for a new leader.
Largent noted in a statement that he was looking forward to spending more time with his family.
Largent, a former republican senator from Oklahoma, took over leadership at CTIA in 2003 following the departure of Tom Wheeler, a democrat who went on to the private sector and a stint in President Obama’s early days in the White House. Wheeler earlier this year was nominated to head up the Federal Communications Commission, a move that is being held up by republican members of Congress.
In addition to his senatorial career, Largent served as the vice-chairman of the Energy and Air Quality Subcommittee and also served on the Telecommunications Subcommittee, the Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee and the Environment and Hazardous Materials Subcommittee. Prior to his life in politics, Largent was a wide receiver with the Seattle Seahawks for 14 years, having been inducted into the National Football League hall of fame in 1995.
CTIA earlier this year announced plans to consolidate the two trade shows per year it had been conducting for more than a decade into one event beginning in 2014. That show is scheduled to overlap with one of the Competitive Carriers Association’s two trade show events in Las Vegas.
“Overall, I think Steve did a very solid job presiding over CTIA the past ten years,” said Jeff Silva, senior policy director of telecommunications, media and technology at Medley Global Advisors. “The wireless industry made significant strides during his tenure, both business- and policy-wise. His understated style may have tended to obscure the totality of his contributions. In recent years, the challenge of achieving industry consensus on major issues of the day has become more difficult as a result of policy differences among leading wireless operators understandably pursuing their own interests in an evolving LTE market necessarily dependent on spectrum, scale and capital.”
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