Influential thinkers at wireless show
Author, journalist, screenwriter, and teacher, Mark Bowden will keynote IWCE 2004 March 24 in Las Vegas.
Bowden has traveled the world writing about issues related to national security and crime fighting in which mobile communications has played a vital role or proven deficient and life threatening.
His book, Black Hawk Down: A Story of Modern War, (The Atlantic Monthly Press, 1999), was a finalist for the National Book Award and won an Overseas Press Club Award for foreign reporting. Communications proved to be a key problem in the bloody 1993 battle American soldiers fought in Mogadishu, Somalia. It inspired an acclaimed feature film.
Bowden wrote the international best-seller Killing Pablo: The Hunt for the World’s Greatest Outlaw, (The Atlantic Monthly Press, 2001), which tells the story of the hunt for Colombian cocaine billionaire Pablo Escobar. Killing Pablo won the Overseas Press Club’s Cornelius Ryan Award as the best book of 2001, and is being adapted for film. Bowden worked on the screenplay adaptations for both films.
He is also the author of Doctor Dealer, (Warner Books, 1987), Bringing the Heat (Knopf, 1994), Our Finest Day, (Chronicle, 2002) and Finders Keepers, which was published by The Atlantic Monthly Press in October 2002. He is also co-producing and writing a feature film entitled Tales of the Tyrant for Fox television.
Bowden is a national correspondent for The Atlantic Monthly. He was a staff writer for The Philadelphia Inquirer for 23 years, and is an adjunct professor at Loyola College of Maryland, where he teaches creative writing and journalism. He has also written for The New Yorker, Sports Illustrated, and The New York Times, among other publications.
IWCE will be March 24-26 in Las Vegas. IWCE hosts more than 350 exhibiting companies and 10,000 attendees annually, and covers the ever changing regulatory climate and advances in mobile communications technology.
The number of conference sessions will increase as will the number of special events.
Moot Court debate
In an industry that cannot even agree on what spectrum is, IWCE will feature a moot court debate between some of the most influential thinkers on how spectrum should be used.
The moot court will feature arguments before a moot court as if before the Supreme Court on “Spectrum Policy: Private or Commons?” Panelists will include Thomas Hazelett, Gerry Faulhaber, Michael Calabrese and Peter Pitsch. The arguments will be moderated by Dale Hatfield.
Hazlett
Hazlett, is a senior fellow with the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research and a Columnist for the Financial Times’ New Economy Policy Forum. His research focuses on law and economics, with particular emphasis on telecommunications policy. Hazlett received his Ph.D. in economics from U.C.L.A. From 1984 through June 2000 he was a professor at the University of California, Davis, where he taught economics and finance and served as Director of the Program on Telecommunications Policy. In 1990-91 he was a Visiting Scholar at the Columbia University Graduate School of Business, and in 1991-92 he was Chief Economist of the Federal Communications Commission in Washington, D.C. He is currently a Senior Research Associate at the Columbia Institute for Tele-Information and a Fellow of the AEI-Brookings Joint Center for Regulatory Studies.
Hazlett is a senior adviser to Analysis Group/Economics, and has provided expert testimony in federal and state courts, before the Department of Commerce, General Accounting Office, and the Federal Communications Commission, and to committees of Congress.
Faulhaber
Faulhaber served as Chief Economist at the Federal Communications Commission from July 1, 2000 to July 1, 2001 and is a Professor of Public Policy and Management at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. His current research is the microeconomics, management, and public policy aspects of telecommunications and technology firms (“information infrastructure”), and in the political economy of regulation. Faulhaber has published widely in professional journals, and is the author of several books, including European Economic Integration: Technological Perspectives and Telecommunications in Turmoil: Technology and Public Policy. He has served on numerous scholarly boards and review committees and was vice-president of the Board of Directors of the Telecommunications Policy Research Conference in Washington, DC. He served on the Editorial Board of the Journal of Industrial Economics, and is an editor of Information Economics and Policy. Early in his career, Faulhaber was Director of Strategic Planning and Financial Management at AT&T, after holding the position of Head of Economics Research at Bell Laboratories.
Calabrese
Calabrese is the director of the Spectrum Policy Program at the New America Foundation. Calabrese manages the organization’s efforts to improve the management and allocation of the airwaves and other public assets. As co-director of the Retirement Security Program, he also oversees the Foundation’s work to reform and expand the nation’s private pension system. Calabrese served as Director of Domestic Policy Programs at the Center for National Policy, as General Counsel of the Congressional Joint Economic Committee, and as pension and employee benefits counsel at the national AFL-CIO. An attorney and graduate of both Stanford Business and Law Schools, Calabrese speaks and writes on issues related to fiscal policy, retirement security, health coverage, and labor markets. He has co-authored three books and published opinion articles in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, and The Washington Post.
Pitsch
Pitsch is the Director of Communications Policy for Intel Corporation. He is responsible for the coordination of Intel policy surrounding communications and electronic commerce. Prior to joining Intel, Pitsch was the president of Pitsch Communications from 1989 to 1998 which represented telecommunication’s clients before the FCC and Congress, provided business and regulatory planning, and published and lectured on U.S. regulatory policy.
Pitsch was the Chief of Staff to the Chairman of the FCC from 1987 to 1989 where he advised the Chairman on all issues before the FCC including access reforms, price caps, major tariffs, and broadcasting. Before his move to Chief of Staff. Pitsch was Chief of Office of Plans and Policy. His responsibilities included managing the FCC policy office that provided recommendations on major issues such as access reforms, major tariffs, broadcast regulation, auction and spectrum allocations.
From 1980 to 1981, Pitsch was a staff member of the Reagan Administration Transition Team, which developed recommendations for reforming the Federal Trade Commission with special focus on antitrust issues. He was a senior attorney at Montgomery Ward, Inc. from 1979 to 1981. He provided legal counsel and legislative lobbying of FTC, consumer protection, energy and international trade matters. Prior to that, he worked for three year as an attorney and adviser to Commissioner Calvin Collier at the Federal Trade Commission.
Hatfield
Dale Hatfield, is the former chief of the FCC’s Office of Engineering and Technology. Hatfield, currently with the Department of Interdisciplinary Telecom at the University of Colorado, has also served the industry as a policy-maker, a consultant and an academic and is the author of the Hatfield Report. The report details issues pertaining to the deployment of wireless enhanced 911 services, prepared on behalf of the FCC. The report was filed with the FCC Oct. 15, 2002. Of course, it is controversial and it has been difficult for the FCC to implement all of Hatfield’s ideas.
Federal Communications Commission Chairman Michael K. Powell said in a speech to APCO attendees in Indianapolis in August: “As many of you know, the FCC was fortunate to retain the services of Dale Hatfield – a former Chief of our Office of Engineering and Technology – to take a step back and identify — in a comprehensive way — the issues and challenges associated with E911. In many ways, the ‘Hatfield Report’ has become our guidebook in working through many of these issues.”
Hatfield will also hold a session called: Solving the E-911 emergency with The Hatfield Report. This will be an interactive update with the author himself.
New sessions for this year will address the regulatory, technical, and public safety issues facing software defined radio presented by the SDR Forum.
Session topics will include where the money is, homeland security outlook and forecast, tracking management for hazardous material, budgeting and economics of digital technology and mobile workforce management.
The hottest current issues such as Number Portability will be addressed and, of course, educational and debate sessions will address the controversial re-banding of 800 MHz and the “Consensus Plan.” Public safety and wireless interoperable communications will be a central portion of the program.
Homeland Security Issues for Transportation, Public Safety and Interoperability and Spectrum Management will be part of the program even weighing software choices for PSAP.
Updates on projects such as Washington, DC Comm (CapWIN) and Project SafeCom will be presented.
