Wireless pioneer James Dwyer dies at 73

James Dwyer Jr., a pioneer in the wireless industry, has died at the age of 73. Described as a visionary and serial entrepreneur, Dwyer played an instrumental role in the growth and rise of the cellular telecommunications industry worldwide.
Dwyer died Friday evening at his home in Fort Myers, Fla., after a prolonged illness. He was born Dec. 31, 1936, in New York City and is survived by his wife, Nancy, 12 children and 15 grandchildren.
A lawyer and salesman, Dwyer launched some of the earliest cellular systems in top U.S. markets. When he launched American Cellular Telephone Corp. in Indianapolis on Feb. 3, 1984, it was the third cellular system in the country and the first built for commercial service.
Dwyer lobbied the Federal Communications Commission and convinced the government agency to allow independent paging operators and radio common carriers to build public cellular networks that could compete with the monopoly wireline telephone company.
“The entire wireless industry is saddened by the loss of Jim Dwyer,” Denni Strigl, retired President and COO of Verizon Communications, said in a prepared statement. “I can’t think of an individual with a higher degree of integrity. Jim was a genuine, down-to-earth individual who kept growing businesses, and one of his strongest contributions was the honesty he brought to the business world. The people who worked for him and with him loved the man.”
According to a Interop Technologies, where he served as chairman, Dwyer was a founding member of wireless industry trade association CTIA, served on the organization’s board from 1984 to 2000 and led the association through the Congressional revision of the Telecommunications Act of 1996. He received the CTIA President’s Award in 2000 for outstanding contributions to the industry.
“When we first discussed the notion of creating CTIA at a lunch with executives from several of the Regional Bell companies, I looked around and thought that Jimmy was the guy I would most want to be in a fox hole with in that situation,” John Stanton, founder of Trilogy Partners and founder and former CEO of Western Wireless Corp. and VoiceStream Wireless, said in a prepared statement. “He was a brilliant lawyer, but never intimidated anyone, and a strategic genius, but you never knew that until he had executed his strategy.”
Dwyer served in the military during the late ’50s in the U.S. Army’s 101st Airborne Division, attended City College of New York and then the New York University School of Law.