Welcome to PR Vibes, created by Calysto Communications to provide you with key insights into the publications and events in the communications industry. Today, we’re featuring an interview with RCA President & CEO Steven K. Berry. As an executive and attorney, Berry has more than 25 years’ experience managing government relations, public policy and advocacy initiatives for corporations and trade associations, including serving on four congressional committees. He joined RCA in 2009, and with the direction of RCA’s Board of Directors, has helped RCA become the home for competitive carriers across the U.S.In this interview, Berry defines some key advocacy issues for RCA, as well as gives us an update on RCA’s event schedule for 2012. Enjoy!
Overall, how would you summarize the mission of RCA as an organization?
Our goal is to make sure that we have a healthy industry of competitive carriers.
Can you give us some background/context on what’s happening at RCA?
When I joined RCA in October, 2009, it was a critical time on the policy and advocacy front for rural and regional wireless carriers. The Board of Directors had made the decision to increase RCA’s profile and significantly enhance the organization’s advocacy voice in Washington D.C. Shortly after I came on board, we moved our offices from Tysons Corner to Washington D.C. and established a strong presence. We’ve built sustainable capability here within RCA, adding legal, legislative, as well as media communications resources. At the same time, we were aggressively pursuing new members. Today, virtually all of the competitive wireless carriers, with the exception of AT&T and Verizon are RCA members.
What issues are at the forefront of RCA’s advocacy efforts?
Our Board is really focused on the policy issues — I call them “oxygen issues” – that are the lifeblood and can mean the very existence of our members as competitive carriers. Some of our most critical issues include interoperability throughout the 700 MHz spectrum, automatic data roaming, and spectrum availability – policy and licensing issues. Needless to say, it’s been an interesting, fast-paced time here at RCA for the last year and a half, and we’re still growing!
Let’s talk about growth. You’ve added a lot of people and have some aggressive goals. What’s the next step?
We know what our sweet spot is: smaller Tier 1 and Tier 2 carriers. And, the same problems and challenges for Tier 2 carriers in the United States exist in other countries, so we’re also trying to expand our footprint there as well. We have three Canadian members, members providing service in the Pacific Rim and U.S. Territories, and we are actively reaching out to those in Latin America and the Caribbean. We also want to expand our more than 175 associate members, which encompass telecom support services and infrastructure companies, such as Alcatel-Lucent, Ericsson, Syniverse, American Tower and others.
So, our goal is to have a home for all of the smaller competitive wireless carriers, wherever they are. As part of that goal, we offer our members networking and education opportunities through events.
What types of events does RCA offer?
RCA has two major events per year. The Competitive Carriers Global Expo occurs in the spring and offers numerous educational sessions that really drill down into today’s hot topics. RCA’s Annual Competitive Carriers Convention, our largest show, occurs each year in the fall. Both shows have full exhibit halls. Many of our carriers are located in rural areas all over the U.S. and Canada. For many of our members – carriers, associates and affiliates — to meet in person would require them to be on the road for a long time, so the Convention and Expo for our membership really makes sense.
Our members come to our shows for three reasons:
1) Networking — to learn how other carriers of the same size are handling particular problems.
2) Educational — we provide breakout sessions that are planned or identified by our carrier members as topics that they want more information about. We have a higher percentage of participation from our carrier members because, hopefully, we are providing them with educational opportunities that meet their business needs. At our last several shows, 30 percent of those attending were decision-maker employees of carriers.
3) Technology — we try to keep our shows small enough to ensure effective networking, yet large enough to ensure our members have access to the latest, greatest technologies available and targeted to the Tier 2 community.
We now know where our sweet spot is, where our strength is, and we plan to expand and provide more opportunities for our members.
What does RCA’s event schedule look like for 2012?
Our spring event, the 2012 RCA Competitive Carriers Global Expo, is a technical educational opportunity. It’s going to be on the road, and every year we’ll pick a new city. This year it will be to be held March 28 – 30 at the Walt Disney World Dolphin Resort in Orlando with a great lineup of carrier speakers including Sprint, Leap, LightSquared, C Spire NTELOS and more.
Our largest event – RCA’s Annual Convention — will take place September 23-26 in Las Vegas. Since carriers are putting their budgets together during August, September, and October, they want to know what new technology is on the horizon. Our fall event in Las Vegas gives them an opportunity to see the new technology first hand. Then, if they decide to invest, our spring event gives them the chance to gain more in depth knowledge about those technologies, especially in the breakout sessions. This year’s Annual Convention is very special, since we will be celebrating 20 years of competitive carriers. We are planning a Gala Dinner for Sunday, September 22, and we are very excited about the event.
What is the RCA buying consortium? Are there any other initiatives on the horizon?
To make sure our members have access to devices that are competitive, we’ve created a buying consortium for GSM handsets. When you think about it, to be able to purchase at the scale that would make you competitive with, say, AT&T, is very, very difficult. We’ve found that on the GSM side, it’s difficult for our carriers to get the scope and scale to purchase handsets and be competitive in the market. So, we’ve formed a coalition of our members that is totally carrier-driven. We have a steering committee comprised of carrier members; RCA provides the glue to hold it together, allowing them to make their own decisions. It has successfully launched and they’ve already made their first purchases. RCA members can immediately join the GSM buying consortium at no cost and work with your colleagues of small carriers. And, we’re also thinking about doing the same thing for the 4G LTE, if necessary. There are many issues our members need to think about – privacy, mobile marketing, mobile money — as well as location-based services. Now that many of our carriers are 3G and trying to find a way to 4G, we’re going to be very competitive in some of those rural smaller markets, and we want to make sure that our members have access to the new technology that is being rolled out.
Those are just a few of the things; we’ve got others in the works, as well. For example, we’ve created a Business Innovation Group. We’re looking at ideas of how we can bring scope and scale to other aspects of the telecom services and needs that smaller carriers have. We’re hoping that we can move very quickly on some of those ideas this year.
In closing, our spies tell us that RCA has a long history/tradition with golf. Can you elaborate?
Yes, it’s a fun tradition at RCA that dates back to the association’s beginning. RCA was formed 20 years ago, and it sort of all started with a group of carriers getting together over a round of golf and talking about various issues and challenges facing their companies. Once RCA was officially created, each year the members would gather together in what became the Annual Convention, and since the beginning, a golf tournament has been part of that event. Today, RCA has the largest golf tournament in the wireless industry, and it’s a fun, unique event we’re proud to still offer. It’s a wonderful opportunity to network, meet new contacts in the industry and catch up with old friends. It’s certainly a “do not miss” networking opportunity!