The Man Who Will Make You Move

In the boxing ring, fights are not judged strictly by who's stronger or by who lands more punches, but by who dictates the tempo and direction of the battle. The same can be said of lobbyists.

In conversation, Brad Ramsay never lets you get a jab in. Disarmingly quick and prone to sudden, wild crescendos, he lurches ahead of you through his arguments. When you start to talk, Ramsay hits you again, speaking (in categories “on the record,” “off the record,” or “BIG-TIME off the record”) in a hip-deep southern accent that was born in Texas and baked in “Mississippi, Louisiana — you name it.” He unabashedly rattles off impossible phrases like “I guaran-dadgum-tee ya.”

As general counsel for the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners, Ramsay is now trying to dictate the tempo and direction of the fight for wireless local number portability. At press time, the deadline for carriers to comply with WLNP — which gives customers the option to keep their phone numbers if they switch carriers — was Nov. 24, 2002. Though wireline carriers were forced into portability years ago, wireless carriers have staved off the mandate with a series of delay requests.

The latest, a Verizon petition for permanent forbearance from WLNP mandates, has been languishing at the FCC for about a year, collecting more than 660 responses. The FCC has until July 26 to make a ruling. “We're in a holding pattern,” said a Verizon spokesman. “We're hoping the FCC rules soon. They've had our petition for 11 months.”

Ramsay and NARUC have fought Verizon's petition round after sweaty round, pitting them against wireless carriers across the country, not to mention the Cellular Telephone & Internet Association, which successfully pushed the deadline back once before from its previous date of March 2000. NARUC enlisted the help of the Consumers Union and Leap Wireless, which calls itself “the lone ranger” among carriers in this fight because it hopes to convert customers more easily once WLNP is in effect.

Portability will require carriers to buy new software for their back offices and upgrade their retail outlets. Most are holding off on purchasing the software until they have to, complaining to the FCC that portability would cost them $1 billion to implement and another half-billion a year to maintain. Cingular Wireless said it would have to pay $250 million for the first five years; Verizon Wireless said it would cost more than $270 million.

Ramsay is vocally unsympathetic to these pleas. For an industry that took in almost $47 billion in revenues last year, the multimillion-dollar implementation costs service providers are griping about would only amount to a few more cents per month for each customer. “Excuse me if I'm not too concerned!” Ramsay screamed into the phone, then laughed hysterically.

There's another oft-repeated response from the pro-WLNP lobby to the cost complaint: Carriers will have to spend most of that money anyway. The FCC requires them to configure their networks to comply with number pooling, a system of allocating numbers in small blocks to forestall exhausting area codes, which would cover more than 70% of the cost and labor that portability entails.

The real cost carriers are afraid to incur, Ramsay said, is from increased churn once customers can switch carriers without the inconvenience of having to change their phone number, reprint their business cards and get their new mobile number out to everyone they know. In a Harris Interactive poll, 25% of mobile phone users said they would switch carriers if they could keep their current number in the process.

Carriers' chief argument is that portability is flat-out unnecessary. It was intended to ensure competition, but with at least six carriers crowded into each top market, there's clearly no shortage of competition. Ramsay called this argument “the most ludicrous I've heard in 12 years at NARUC,” which is the kind of thing lobbyists usually say when an opponent makes a good point.

Ramsay said he's not used to winning battles against CTIA, which he said habitually undermines the authority of state regulators to control their members' interstate networks. (For example, he was defeated trying to block the 1993 Omnibus Reconciliation Act, which preempted state rate oversight of the specialized mobile radios used by taxi cabs.) Ramsay defends states' jurisdiction over wireless but said they don't have undue interest in using it.

“We don't really want to regulate those guys. We've got our hands full,” he said. “We want to stimulate competition so we don't have to regulate [the major carriers], the guys we're worried about.”

Ramsay's perennial opponent in wireless frays is a man he's become so familiar with that he repeatedly identifies him only by his last name (“Wheeler said…,” “Wheeler was quoted…”), as if Tom Wheeler, president of the CTIA, were an industry celebrity of such status that, like Madonna or Cher, one name sufficed to describe him. Ramsay may paint his nemesis as a fierce, indomitable lobbyist, but he also doesn't hide his admiration for the man, calling Wheeler “a good guy” in public filings even as he's trying to shoot down the CTIA's positions. (The CTIA did not respond to repeated requests for comment.)

With the Consumers' Union on his side in the WLNP fight, Ramsay knows he has a more compelling argument than his rival at the CTIA. But that doesn't mean he'll win. The November deadline is far from guaran-dadgum-teed.

In January, the National Emergency Number Association recommended the deadline be extended to May on the grounds that technical issues surrounding portability might disrupt mobile E-911 service. Ramsay can dismiss carrier arguments as self-serving easily enough, but NENA's not acting out of greed, and its credibility is so ironclad that NARUC could harm its own reputation just by trying to discount NENA's. Ramsay's ally, Leap Wireless Senior Vice President Dan Pegg, called NENA's argument “pure folly.” (NENA representatives did not respond to requests for comment.)

But even if Ramsay loses this fight, NARUC will eventually get portability. It's just a question of when.

Once WLNP is in place, however, watchdogs like Ramsay will still be looking closely at how convenient it is for customers to use. Only 17% of respondents in the Harris Interactive poll said they would switch carriers if they had to pay a one-time $50 fee to keep their phone number, suggesting 8% less churn if carriers make their customers pay to port. “Having WLNP and having it reasonably available could be two different things if all the details aren't attended to,” said Pegg.

In the meantime, Ramsay seems intent on giving carriers the feeling that he's always breathing down their necks. “They're approaching 60% penetration,” he said. “Once they get to that level, if they don't get the service-quality crap right — and I mean having [customer service] people answer the phone, being honest and getting billing stuff done — man, they're going to be regulated BIG-TIME.”