WASHINGTON-Wireless is here to stay and it is becoming more important. That was the take-away message from Thursday’s 22nd annual Institute on Telecommunications Policy & Regulation sponsored by the Practicing Law Institute and the Federal Communications Bar Association.
The wireless industry has “won the battle for the customer,” said John Muleta, chief of the FCC’s Wireless Telecommunications Bureau, by changing the relationship with the customer to one where the customer must have his or her wireless device all the time.
“I carry two wireless devices at all times. With all due respect, I don’t carry my DSL or cable modem,” said Muleta.
It is the functionality of wireless devices that FCC Chairman Michael Powell said he really likes. “I really like my Blackberry that converges all of my functions in a really light package,” said Powell.
A known lover of gadgets, Powell said his favorites are those that are the easiest to use. “I love technologies that are starting to get integration right, and by the way in a really simple form, because those of us from the ‘red states,’ we ain’t so smart-and that is the mass market. We need devices that are simplified, elegant and easy. Technology becomes invisible and quiet and reliable. The coolest things are the things that make things work together.”
This relationship could impact the future of the wireless industry because it could affect how the Federal Communications Commission views mergers in the future, said Blair Levin, telecommunications policy analyst for Legg Mason Equity Research. When the FCC recently approved the $41 billion merger between Cingular Wireless L.L.C. and AT&T Wireless Services Inc., the commission said consumers did not view their mobile phones as substitutes for their landline phones. “I am not sure that the next time they can reach the same conclusion,” said Levin.
With the technological changes led by wireless, questions were raised about the need for or the reason for the universal-service fund.
“Given the kind of technologies we have today. What do we mean by universal service?” asked Levin.
The CTIA representative on the panel had an answer.
“If the goal is to get cost-effective service out to consumers, I would argue that wireless is the solution not the problem,” said Diane Cornell, CTIA vice president of federal regulatory affairs.
Reforming the universal-service program is expected to be a key theme in 2005 and may be where Congress starts when it begins re-examining the Telecommunications Act of 1996.
Powell suggested, however, that rather than re-examining the telecom act-which he noted is really a collage of various communications laws from the last 100 years-maybe Congress should start over. Powell used the analogy of a family that remodels and adds on to its house, but at some point, it is just better for the family to move to another house.
