WASHINGTON-CTIA plans to spend “tens of millions of dollars over the next three years” on an advocacy strategy legally separate from the wireless association, CTIA President Steve Largent told the press Tuesday.
Largent said the CTIA executive committee had pledged the money, and no surcharges will be added to consumer bills.
Kimberly Kuo, a holdover from the days of former president Thomas Wheeler, will lead the as-yet-unnamed advocacy section. Kuo has been named vice president of advocacy and will run a separate CTIA department. Staffing of the advocacy department is still being developed, but additional hires are planned, John Walls, CTIA vice president of public affairs, told RCR Wireless News Wednesday morning.
The new initiative should be ready for prime time before the end of the first quarter, said Walls, adding that whether it will be a public unveiling is still being determined.
The advocacy initiative was the third option of how to combat increasing regulatory and legislative efforts at both the state and federal level.
The first option-an image campaign similar to the “Got Milk” campaign by the National Milk Processor Promotion Board-was rejected, although Wheeler pushed it for the last two years of his reign, said Largent. “Our board was resistant. This is an industry that spends well over $2 billion in advertising alone,” he said.
The second option was to set up satellite shops around the country by hiring either additional staff or retaining consultants. This option was tried in California in an unsuccessful attempt to quash the California bill of rights, which passed last year, but is now seeing an uncertain future. “We spent several million dollars in California, and it was not as effective as we hoped it would be,” said Largent.
The third option was something “completely different,” said Largent.
“Our goal in an advocacy campaign is to enlist what I believe is the most potent weapon we have in our arsenal to effectively wage war in the policy battles that are impacting the wireless industry, and that is our 174 million consumers in the country-many of whom are willing and able to be advocates for the wireless industry,” said Largent.
