Democracy is so refreshing when it defies precision political choreography. So it was last Tuesday when the 2000 presidential election turned into Twin Peaks, Duck Soup, Seinfeld, HeeHaw and Dallas all in one. “Whaddaya mean I voted for Pat Buchanan, and not Al Gore!?”
Here in the great United States, high-tech capital of the universe, we had a third-world election.
Was this some mischief concocted by the Founding Fathers, yukking it up at the Constitutional Convention in the sky? Or maybe Little Havana’s revenge? Did someone hack the Constitution? And what’s the controlling legal authority here anyway?
No matter, wacko presidential elections make for good mobile phone, pager and Internet business. Off-peak traffic is way up, I hear.
Now I know why education was a hot campaign topic: America can’t count ballots. How wonderfully poetic and befitting that such an elusive outcome occurred during a presidential contest between a candidate adept at mangling simple sentences and another skilled at truth stretching. Is it any wonder the American people can’t get a straight answer on the vote?
Policy-makers should follow the lead of Congress insofar as wireless 911 and local taxation bills. Simplify and standardize voting procedures.
Hats off, too, to the king of the airwaves-TV broadcasters. Credit the corporate welfare giants for family-friendly programming of the schizophrenic kind. When you add to that the broadcasters’ reluctance to air the presidential debates, it’s easy to see why our government decided to give TV broadcasters billions of dollars worth of spectrum for free.
Given the sweeping presidential curve thrown at us, the wireless industry still stands solid as a rock. Industry is well schooled in Alice in Wonderland.
For instance, we still don’t know who holds NextWave Telecom Inc.’s wireless licenses. NextWave or the FCC? And, by the way, is the December C-block re-auction on or off?
And, of course, there’s the dreamy world of E911, where compliance and enforcement never really happen. Same goes for mobile Internet in La La Land.
But this is no time to panic. For the wireless industry, it really doesn’t matter who occupies the White House or who even sleeps in the Lincoln Bedroom.
What matters is that Billy Tauzin will become the next chairman of the House Commerce Committee, given that the GOP retained both houses of Congress.
The Louisiana lawmaker, a modern-day Moses for mobile-phone carriers, is poised to lead the wireless industry to the promised land. Get ready for Billy Ball.
