Fires, floods, avalanches, carjackings. Disaster at every turn. This is everyday Americana?
Yes, according to CTIA head Tom Wheeler at last week’s CTIA’s Wireless Foundation Awards dinner honoring 51 VITA Award winners. (OK, Wheeler didn’t say it exactly that way.)
Wheeler was praising-as well he should-51 people who heroically aided their fellow man in distress, alerting authorities to drunk drivers and would-be kidnappers; giving comfort to parents whose children were out on a field trip during a tornado; and offering directions to a father-to-be whose wife was minutes away from giving birth. These Good Samaritans, as well as Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-N.D.); Rep. Billy Tauzin (R-La.), chairman of the House Telecom Subcommittee; and John Stanton, chief executive of Western Wireless and VoiceStream Wireless, were saluted by industry.
Dorgan was feted for leading the Wireless Caucus, as well as his work on uniform sourcing legislation.
Tauzin, a longtime friend to the wireless industry, was lauded for his work to mandate 911 as the universal emergency service number as well as his efforts to repeal the telephone excise tax.
Stanton received the Achievement Award for Outstanding Leadership.
But what about the unsung heroes, the guys who never get any recognition, but whose efforts are instrumental in getting that call delivered from Point A to Point B?
To the battery builders, whose advances in battery life have made it so a phone can be left on for a few days, I thank you.
To the roaming clearinghouses, which enable a mother traveling on business to call home to see if the little one’s rash is subsiding, I thank you.
To the test equipment vendors, who get no glory, but whose work fine-tunes the network, I thank you.
To the tower guys, who fight stubborn city commissions and neighborhood associations to find a compromise on where that next tower should go and who help disguise the tower to make it palatable, I thank you.
To the distributors and accessory retailers, for the cigarette lighter battery charger-which undoubtedly has helped more than one person keep connected when on the road-I thank you.
Each segment of this industry contributes to its 90 million-plus success stories. And once a year, you should all pat yourselves on the back for the job you are doing. Pat, pat.
