WCA Board Members Say Association Needed Fresh Leadership
Wireless Communications Association board members said Wednesday the group hired former FCC Wireless Bureau Chief Fred Campbell as acting president to bring new leadership as WiMAX nears commercialization, they said Wednesday. Campbell, a former top aide to FCC Chairman Kevin Martin, replaced long-time president Andrew Kreig. Campbell, along with Hank Hultquist, an AT&T vice president, and Mark Pagon, CEO of Pegasus Communications, met Wednesday with reporters to discuss his hiring.
Sign up for a free preview to unlock the rest of this article
Timely, relevant coverage of court proceedings and agency rulings involving tariffs, classification, valuation, origin and antidumping and countervailing duties. Each day, Trade Law Daily subscribers receive a daily headline email, in-depth PDF edition and access to all relevant documents via our trade law source document library and website.
Before WCA announced Campbell’s hiring, sources said it could raise red flags, with WCA’s two dominant members, Sprint Nextel and Clearwire, pursuing FCC approval of their WiMAX partnership (CD Aug 12 p1). An FCC spokesperson said Martin didn’t prompt the WCA to appoint Campbell. FCC ethics rules bar him from lobbying the agency, about the partnership or anything else, for a year, Campbell said.
“For AT&T, certainly, that played no role in this,” Hultquist said. AT&T has opposed approval of the partnership. “Every discussion we've had has been focused on the association going forward -- the association, not any particular members of the association.” Discussion also has addressed the November WCA trade show, he added.
Campbell’s “acting” status reflects no lack of confidence in him, Hultquist said. “I don’t think it necessarily should be viewed as temporary,” he said. “I think it just it reflects that there has to be some due diligence that goes into giving someone a permanent position.” Hultquist said of Campbell, “Even though he didn’t have a background in association work, we had a lot of confidence that he could come in and take this challenge on, not just the [trade show] but the association as a whole.” Campbell made clear he wants to keep the job.
The decision to change leaders wasn’t a criticism of Kreig, Hultquist said. An industry publication reported that board members blamed Kreig for declining attendance at WCA’s two annual trade shows. “I don’t think the assessment was that Andrew was deficient,” Hultquist said. “He really built the association from something very different… and really laid the foundation for this opportunity.”
“The board was very impressed with Fred’s energy and enthusiasm, and I think the primary consideration for the association at this point is sort of looking to the future and really at the dawn of commercialization of fourth generation technologies in wireless broadband,” Pagon said. - - Howard Buskirk