New trade association formed to represent communications interests of non-public-safety government entities

GWTCA’s positions on various issues will be determined by a vote of its membership, according to Lougee.

“All of our advocacy is going to be done by voting by the members,” he said. “If these issues are important to you, and if you want to vote on the advocacy position that GWTCA takes, then you need to be a member. And, as a member, you would be able to participate in the development of our positions, and you would be able to participate in the actual decision about what position we take.”

GWTCA board members will meet later this month to identify a handful of key issues that the organization hopes to address. Although other trade associations offer frequency-coordination services, Lougee said he does not anticipate GWTCA pursuing that line of business in the near future.

“That’s not on our current agenda; we really want to be an effective advocate,” Lougee said. “A lot of people have asked us about [frequency coordination], but I don’t expect it to be high on our list right now.

“As we go forward, if our members start requesting those kinds of services or especially if we start getting questions from our members about eligibility—there are certain things you can’t do unless you are a frequency coordinator, so there are certain services that you can’t perform for your members—if it got to that point, we would consider it, but I’m going to cross that bridge when we come to it.”

GWTCA plans to take advocacy positions on issues associated with land-mobile-radio (LMR) issues, as well as myriad other emerging technologies, including LTE, cybersecurity, wearable applications, smart vehicles and smart-cities systems, Lougee said.

“There are a lot of wireless applications that aren’t necessarily what we’d consider two-way radio communications,” he said. “What we want to do is try to balance the needs of all different users of spectrum, including different modes of operation and different bands.”

In addition to Lougee and Tilles, other GWTCA officials announced last week are:

• Vice president: Andrew Seybold
• Secretary: Michael Marusich
• Treasurer: Tricia Russo
• Other board members: Denis Marin, Andy Maxymillian, William Maconachy, Randy Brooks and Curtis Levinson.

For more information about the organization, visit its website at www.gwtca.org.