SAN DIEGO-If you are a small specialized mobile radio operator, which trade association, if any,
should you belong to?
Three trade associations, all based in the Washington, D.C., area, purport to represent the
SMR industry: the American Telecommunications Mobile Association, the Personal Communications Industry
Association and the Industrial Telecommunications Association.
SMR operators want information. They seem to
want to network with colleagues in similar business situations. But paying large fees to be told things they have heard
before or to have their questions go unanswered bothered some people, according to attendees at last week’s AMTA
conference. Attendees weren’t blaming only AMTA. They said all of the trade associations have these
problems.
PCIA, the umbrella organization that now houses the old National Association of Business and
Educational Radio, may be focusing too much on its consumer telephony members and not enough on its SMR
members.
ITA is viewed as the trade association for private wireless, but many commercial SMR operators and
radio dealers work with private systems as well.
AMTA has restructured, and it remains to be seen whether that will
placate members.
The three groups have distinct personalities, but all seem to believe they can best serve the needs
of the radio community. All three have developed council structures to allow smaller members to have a distinctive
voice separate and apart from the big players like Nextel Communications Inc.
PCIA is made up of councils
representing not only SMR operators-the old NABER members-but also paging and personal communications service
carriers.
Because it is larger than the other two associations, PCIA “has the resources and the reach to get the
results,” said PCIA President Jay Kitchen. “When there is a battle, we have the resources to
apply.”
PCIA works diligently to craft policies all members can agree to, said Alan Tilles, outside counsel at
PCIA.
If a disagreement were to occur, Kitchen said, a council could develop its own policy with “the full
resources of PCIA.” Such disagreements are rare, Tilles said. Indeed, The two SMR-related councils-the Mobile
Wireless Communications Alliance and the Private Systems Users Alliance -“have never taken a position
different from PCIA or contrary to each other. In every case, PCIA has been able to craft a position that [everyone]
could support-even in the 800 [MHz] proceeding,” Tilles said.
AMTA’s board of directors is made up of an
equal number of equipment dealers and operators. It also has a council structure that allows it to respond to the
concerns of the smaller SMR operators and get away from the stigma of being the “Nextel-only”
association, said AMTA Chairman Bart Fisher.
The council structure is a relatively new phenomenon within AMTA
that seems to be working well. “We have a very effective system of councils that provide direction to the board …
The board looks to the councils. The councils are free to assume their own policy … It didn’t always work this
way,” Fisher said. Indeed, AMTA board member Mark Abrams said before he got involved with the new
structure, he felt AMTA only represented Nextel.
There is a concerted effort within AMTA to focus on the small-
and medium-sized SMR operators, AMTA President Alan Shark told conference attendees at a general session of the
1999 Specialized Wireless Management Conference on Tuesday. In a separate interview, Shark said, “Our heart
and soul is small- and medium-sized business.”
ITA’s focus is private wireless. ITA President Mark Crosby
said he doesn’t care how many groups members belong to, but if they are associated with private wireless, he wants
them in ITA. “We are private-wireless driven and work toward regulation/legislation that impact private
wireless,” Crosby said.
The dues structure for ITA gives each member an equal voice, Crosby said. “I
don’t care what size you are. There is one vote,” he said.
