The policy patrol

Carolyn Brandon: Fell in love with wireless in law school, immersed herself in it for 13 years at Wilkinson Barker Knauer. Even married in, to former AT&T Wireless VP Doug Brandon. Now head of CTIA's policy department--a job she got when she thought she was going to be scolded.

I got this call one day, and [new CTIA Chief Operations Officer] Brian Kidney says, “I need you to come over.” At this point, I'm thinking, “Boy, he must really be mad at me to ask to see me in person.” He pulled me into his office and said, “Have you ever considered leaving your firm?” I said, “Excuse me? My head is over here thinking about conflict resolution, and you're offering me a job?” So Brian walks me into [new CTIA CEO] Steve Largent's office, and it essentially turns into an interview. It had been 13 years since I had interviewed for a job, and I'm sitting there in my slacks and boots — it was casual Friday at our firm — thinking, “I'm interviewing for a job, and I don't even know what it really is.”

I walked back to my office thinking, “What the heck just happened?”

It was a hard decision, but the opportunity to work with Steve's new team to chart a course for an industry poised to go in one of several directions was one I couldn't pass up. We're very focused on trying to make sure regulation does not get in the way of the next iteration of wireless. If you start to micromanage either the technology or the relationship between a carrier and its customers, you inhibit a carrier's ability to innovate at the rate that they have been innovating. The consumers in the market are the best ones to make those decisions, not the federal government. What would have happened if the FCC had made the choice between Beta and VHS?

Chairman [Michael] Powell has always been a staunch advocate of letting the marketplace make decisions in a competitive market. We hope somebody will step into the chairman's office that has a similar outlook.

The issue of taxation on wireless is similar to the discussion of taxation on telecommunications in general. Telecommunications is a huge economic driver, and wireless plays a significant role in that. So a tax scheme that is essentially taxing us in the same way as taxes applied to behavior that the government is trying to discourage seems counterproductive.

At the end of the day, you have an industry that can produce revenues, can produce jobs, can produce dollars and economic growth. Why do you want to limit that?