WASHINGTON-Somewhere in southern Louisiana, Mama Tauzin lives alone, and her son, the congressman, worries about her. He wants to buy her a wireless device that would alert someone should she become disabled in some way, but Mama Tauzin won’t do it. She, like many older people, does not like or understand new electronic devices. And that’s the wireless industry’s fault, according to her son, the chairman of the House Telecommunications, Trade and Consumer subcommittee.
“There are opportunities being missed here,” said Rep. Billy Tauzin (R-La.) as he keynoted the annual Eugene C. Bowler Foundation awards and scholarship dinner, sponsored by the Personal Communications Industry Association last week. “I challenge you with a new project. Here’s a new customer for you who also would help you build out those networks-senior citizens. You have to teach Mama Tauzin how to use these things. And there would be a big payoff for you.”
Senior citizens, Tauzin explained, go to city council meetings, vote and keep on top of local affairs as they impact retirement years. If the wireless industry could reach these semi-technophobic people via classes, seminars and demonstrations on how to use personal communications devices and alarm systems, “they would be your best customers. They would tell local governments not to delay your buildouts, that it’s a good thing.” Tauzin, in partnership with Sen. John Breaux (D-La.), is planning to make political hay with this subject by organizing seniors conferences on this and other topics, inviting wireless carriers and manufacturers to display and demonstrate their wares. “Come on and show off all your gadgets,” he invited.
Mary Beth Richards, deputy chief of the Federal Communications Commission’s Common Carrier Bureau and recipient of this year’s Bowler Award, worked with Bowler in her first commission job in 1984. “I tend to diagram problems to understand them better and to solve them. One image Gene taught me stays with me to this day,” she said. “It involves what was then the innovative and spectrum-efficient concept of trunking. Gene taught me just to think of a single line at a bank waiting for the first available teller, as opposed to a bunch of parallel lines at McDonald’s, where all the other lines move faster than the one I’m usually in.”
In her acceptance speech, Richards recalled other memories of Bowler, who died in 1985, including a scene of a ping-pong ball lottery system gone amuck, his edits made in purple ink, and how some strict land mobile rules began to relax and/or disappear.
“At the time, in 1984, the rules required that licensees limit their radio transmissions to those communications that were essential to the official or business activities which made them `eligible’ in a particular service,” she said. “So, if you were on the Fire Radio Services frequencies, you talked about fires. If you were on the Petroleum Radio Service frequencies, you talked about petroleum. It seemed some firefighters in Boston made the horrible mistake of talking on the radio about where to get the best lobster, and someone turned them in. Busted for a lobster violation. We ended up relaxing the rules, eventually, over the objections of most of the commenting parties. We’ve come a long way in 13 years.”
Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), winner of the 1997 Lifetime Achievement Award, thanked the wireless industry for its creation of jobs and services, and for its efforts to bring down rates. “We can compete and dominate because we have the best service in the world,” McCain added.
