WASHINGTON-The Personal Communications Industry Association continued its march toward re-invention last week by holding a press briefing intended to show that the trade group is still relevant.
“Whatever we were doing two years ago, we aren’t doing it anymore. Whatever we were doing a year ago, we aren’t doing it anymore,” said PCIA President Jay Kitchen. “What we were doing a year ago we are not doing but what we were doing 10 years ago we are doing,” added Rob Hoggarth, PCIA senior vice president for government relations. Kitchen further stressed PCIA’s 50-year history of seeing technologies and wireless sectors-like paging and SMR-come and go.
The organization is now concentrating on convergence with a special focus on the mobile user-or, as PCIA likes to call them, the m-user.
Some of the issues PCIA is still involved in include interconnection and numbering.
On the numbering front, PCIA is preparing to ask the FCC to reconsider a recent public notice that seemed to suggest telecommunications carriers had been expected to report their utilization of telephone numbers in the 500 and 900 area codes. Since these are non-geographic area codes, there had been no rule to report this usage, said Harold Salters, PCIA director of government relations for numbering issues.
“It creates an anticipation that folks should have been filing 500 and 900 utilization data all along. … It opens up [the possibility] that the states [could audit for this utilization]. [The FCC] They need to remove the shadow of not being in compliance,” said Salters.
The Competitive Telecommunications Association is expected to join in the petition for reconsideration, said Salters.
On the new front, Kitchen continued to insist that PCIA’s trade show, Global Xchange, scheduled for September 11-13 in Los Angeles will be a different kind of trade show. When asked how it will be distinct from last year’s show, which also billed itself as new and different, Kitchen said last year’s show was a “show in transition.” He noted that in previous years there has been a “prominence in our show of RF” hardware products. Last year’s show saw the emergence of software instead of hardware. He believes at this year’s show, hardware will completely give way to software and the emergence of multiple virtual network operators.
PCIA’s show has been struggling for several years with many key wireless manufacturers dropping out of the show and last year PCIA changing the name to Global Xchange from PCS. In addition to changing the focus to the m-user, PCIA says Global X-change will offer its exhibitors and participants a new experience, including a personal assistant available to each exhibitor.
The trade show will offer many other services to its exhibitors that it admits are also offered by other tradeshows but it believes the Global Xchange experience will be unique. Some of these services include free advanced mailing lists and a president’s reception to help with networking.
Kitchen also said PCIA would be releasing a survey at the show meant to determine the needs of the m-user in the next decade. Dismissing comments about how consumers can know their needs 10 years out in such a dynamic and changing market as wireless, Kitchen assured reporters that Yankelovich Partners, who is conducting the survey, knows how to ask the questions in 800 face-to-face interviews in six countries to get the answers necessary.
This year’s show will be the same week as Wireless I.T. sponsored by PCIA’s chief trade association rival, the Cellular Telecommunications & Internet Association.
