LARGENT WANTS TO TAKE CTIA IN MORE ‘PROACTIVE’ DIRECTION
CTIA Pres. Steve Largent, who took over the helm of the Assn. this month, said in an interview he would like to focus the group on being “transparent and collaborative and a team player, because that’s a reflection of my personality.” Largent, a pro football Hall of Famer with the Seattle Seahawks, said he would like to see the group get ahead of issues, “as opposed to being just reactionary.” Separately, he praised the removal last week of Northpoint language from the Senate appropriations bill.
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“We are going to do a lot of things differently -- I want to take CTIA to the next level and that’s both an internal and an external effort,” he told us last week. Largent, a former House member (R-Okla.), took over as head of CTIA from Tom Wheeler, who announced earlier this year he was leaving. Largent said he would focus on “trying to be ahead of issues, as opposed to reacting, although sometimes that’s not possible.” He said wireless local number portability, which took effect Mon. in the top 100 markets, was an example of an area where industry could have been “much more ahead of the curve, because it’s been on the radar screen for almost 3 years.”
“As an industry, with a situation like this, if it should arise in the future, you have to work out a Plan A as well as have a Plan B if it doesn’t go your way, as it has not gone our way on local number portability,” Largent said. For example, CTIA had asked the U.S. Appeals Court, D.C., in a petition for mandamus this fall to compel the FCC to resolve unanswered questions on implementing LNP. The group later withdrew the order after the FCC issued orders on both wireless-to-wireless LNP implementation and on wireline-to- wireless LNP rollout. CTIA said earlier this month it was embracing wireless LNP rollout as the Nov. 24 deadline approached.
“Do consumers want this?” Largent asked of wireless LNP. He said in a “vacuum” the answer is yes, until they understand that the $1 billion startup costs for LNP and the subsequent annual costs of about $500 million a year industrywide represent money that carriers can’t use to upgrade their systems. Once consumers understand the actual trade-offs for carriers in rolling out LNP, he said the number of those who would support it dropped dramatically. “I still think I could sit here and make an incredibly strong ideological argument about why we don’t need local number portability as a competitive industry that is very sensitive to our subscribers and knows that our subscribers’ number one issue is not about being able to keep their number, it’s about quality of service,” Largent said. “But this train is on the tracks. That’s an argument that failed and we are in a different world now.”
Meanwhile, Largent lauded the stripping of the Northpoint language from the appropriations process by Senate Appropriations Committee Chmn. Stevens (R-Alaska) as “a very positive development.” CTIA has opposed the so-called “Northpoint amendment.” Rider language first jeopardized a proposed spectrum relocation trust fund last summer when the Senate Commerce Committee voted an amendment to aid Northpoint by letting multichannel video distribution & data services share spectrum with satellite services at 12.2-12.7 GHz. Supporters said the amendment would let Northpoint roll out broadband and cellphone services to rural areas.
Largent said he still was optimistic there was a chance that spectrum trust fund legislation could pass this year, although he acknowledged time was running short. The Administration-backed spectrum trust fund proposal would set up a fund to help govt. incumbents relocate when they were displaced from auctioned spectrum, such as planned 3G auctions. The fund would receive portions of auction proceeds, which the govt. would dole out to eligible users to relocate. It is a key part of plans to auction 3G spectrum at 1.7 GHz and 2.1 GHz, which Dept. of Defense users would vacate. “The thrust of the bill, both the one that was reported out of the House and the Senate, is very responsible,” Largent said. “What it is doing is taking a long view, a thoughtful view, of spectrum management. The more lead time that we allow agencies like the Department of Defense to prepare for the inevitable, it’s just a more mature response.”
“My hope is that this is going to happen, that with the Northpoint amendment [removed] that the dam broke and now we can get a consistent flow and make this work,” Largent said.
In addition to meeting with FCC officials and Hill staffers as he settles in on the job, Largent said he wants to identify the top trade association leaders in Washington and find out from them what does and doesn’t work. “This is really kind of a bottoms-up review and reorganizational effort.”