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Grumbling in private wireless land. The word is the refarming item that was anticipated for vote this month is being pushed back until fall, which could delay further the reconfiguration of private networks and orders for narrower band equipment.
… John Windhausen, senior counsel for telecommunications policy on the Senate Commerce Committee, leaves the Hill after nine years to join the new Competition Policy Institute. CPI will focus on telecom and energy from a consumer interest.
… Ellie Adair, a physiologist at Yale’s John B. Pierce Lab is headed this fall to become senior scientist, Electromagnetic Radiation Effects in the Directorate of Occupational and Environmental Health at Armstrong Laboratory at Brooks Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas.
… Scott Harris, former chief of the FCC International Bureau, was named by FCC Chairman Reed Hunt to head the agency’s advisory committee in preparation for the 1997 World Radio Communication Conference in Geneva. Harris recently left the agency to head the communications law group at Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher in D.C.
… Anne Bingaman, chief of the Justice Department’s antitrust division, filed comments with the FCC that predict $12 billion in savings to consumers if price competition comes to local markets.
… Conrad Burns, the Clipper III naysayer Republican from Montana, urged President Clinton to clip the wings of the administration’s latest encryption policy proposal. Burns pointed to last week’s National Research Council report recommendation to ease computer encryption export controls.
… For $75,000, you too can join Tom (CTIA) Wheeler’s President’s Club, which entitles carrier and manufacturing CEOs to talk about industry issues “at the highest levels.”
… Vice President Gore speaks on new telecom law next Monday here at a conference sponsored by the Fenton Foundation.
… A conference on wireless antenna siting hosted by local government officials and wireless carriers in Oakland last week could be a model for the rest of the country as zoning boards and carriers grapple with the new national antenna siting.
Another issue that came up and made headlines recently in Montgomery County, Md.-local wireless taxes. It’s got legs.
… Word from Beijing is U.S. and Chinese officials meet today on copyright piracy and prospect of punitive tariffs on cellular phones and other Chinese products worth $2 billion: Keep politics out of trade talks.
