The Activist

Tom Wheeler: Cable industry lobbyist turned entrepreneur turned helmsman of the Cellular Telecommunications & Internet Association. Guided wireless through its formative years. Moving on at the end of this year to pursue opportunities in the market he helped shape.

I was hired as executive vice president of the National Cable Television Association when cable TV was a community antenna service. Two years later I became president. I had just turned thirty.

I left the cable association in 1984 and ran several companies. I was the CEO of the first company to distribute high-speed data over cable TV lines. I founded a company that was the first to deliver digital video over satellites. Along the way, I was part of a group that won a cellular license in the lottery. That was my entry into cellular.

Wireless is an exponential transformation. Thus far we've seen wireless transform the voice experience. What's now beginning to happen — and will really take off in the next couple years — is exactly the same thing in the computer space.

In 1983, when the government first granted cellular licenses, it did something that was absolutely unknown previously: It granted two licenses, created competition and said it would back out. As a result, we got new services, new kinds of equipment, we moved from a twenty-five-pound car phone in your trunk to something that gets lost in your pocket, we went from analog to digital, we went from voice to data — all because of competition.

The challenge we face as an industry is to help government understand that the environment that breeds success is one in which competition and innovation rule, rather than the whims of regulators. Unfortunately of late, government forgot what brought us to this point. And they missed the connection with the success of the Internet and the success of Wi-Fi — that the government stayed out of it and let competition rule the day.

We have to become part of the economic growth engine again by providing services that consumers want, that put you in a situation where you need to invest in capital plant and equipment, which produces jobs, which raises the water level for the whole economy.

Everybody deserves repotting every once in a while. I'm not retiring; I'm repotting — and CTIA will repot, and that will be beneficial for both of us. I'm looking at various business opportunities. Let's be real specific: The world's future is a wireless future, and I intend to be part of it.