My New Year’s resolution is the same every year: find some way to stay in this business and make more money. However, this time, I think I’ve got a plan that will work (for the money part). After reading a Dec. 17 letter from Terry Carlstrom, a regional director for the National Park Service, to WTB chief Dan Phythyon protesting U.S. Cellular’s plan to build a 260-foot lattice tower near Harper’s Ferry National Historic Park in West Virginia, I have decided to lease out my deck as a cell site, albeit a small one.
Living on the top floor of my condo building, I have access to the roof; there probably would be no problem with my neighbors (the most apathetic bunch of people you’ve ever met, unless the cable goes out), and I’d just tell them it was a DBS dish; I hold two positions on the condo board; and Montgomery County, Md., sure has had its problems with tower siting. I wouldn’t ask much in remuneration; I have two-plus years of college payments in front of me that I’d like to see cleared, and then I plan to move. Give me a call.
There are other industry leaders who have wishes and resolutions for 1998, including:
Tom Wheeler, Cellular Telecommunications Industry Association-“My New Year’s wish is that policy makers would wake up and realize that the competitive market they created has forced them to change how they bury government mandates in phone bills.”
Dan Phythyon, FCC WTB chief-“I resolve that there be a phone in every pocket and a tower on every roof.” (Good. Maybe my financial plan will work.)
Alan Shark, American Mobile Telecommunications Association-“I wish the powers that be will recognize that the cumulative effect of all their regulation and legislation has hurt small businesses, and that they will wake up and listen to those people who have suggested ways to be pro-competitive. Regulators and congressmen have operated not out of malice, but out of ignorance.”
Jay Kitchen, Personal Communications Industry Association-“Our New Year’s resolution is to lead the wireless industry to victory on the interconnection issue, and to forge a settlement on CALEA that includes PCS and extends the compliance date.”
Mark Crosby, Industrial Telecommunications Association-“My wish is that the FCC finally sees the light and allocates spectrum for the private radio industry, which enables America’s industrial, transportation and business sectors to enhance their contributions to society and to the general welfare of the public. My resolution is that I will quit picking on public safety in 1998.”
Here’s to a safe, healthy, prosperous and competitive 1998.
