Chairman's Corner - 2024 Tower Times Magazine Volume 1
What a busy fall this has been, time has flown by since the NATE Summer Conference in Indianapolis, Indiana. We are now in the final stages of preparing for NATE UNITE 2024, in Memphis, Tennessee. I am very excited about the plans for NATE UNITE 2024. The Trade Show Committee is continually making improvements and we are encouraged by the early registrations indicating this may be one of our biggest and best shows yet.
November was a busy month with our C-Suite tour to AT&T in Dallas, Texas, down to Houston, Texas, to meet Crown Castle and then up to Bellevue, Washington to meet T-Mobile. These meetings provide a great venue to discuss and better understand the needs of some of our larger customers and it allows us a forum to present many of the issues that are important to our member companies. Topics ranged from matrix pricing, safety metrics, MSA terms, third-party vetting systems, inflation, worker recruitment and retention issues, all the way to regulatory matters and how we can support each other to provide a continual future flow of work, which will support our industry.
A few days later, we went to Denver, Colorado, where Todd Schlekeway received the Jay Kitchen Leadership Award from Radio Club of America. The Radio Club was formed in 1909 and is the world’s oldest professional society for persons involved in the wireless industry. It was a great night honoring the award winners and was topped off by Marty Cooper as the keynote speaker for the event.
November ended with the election of new officers for the NATE Board of Directors. We had eleven candidates running for the four open positions. I want to congratulate Randy Scott and Aaron Paulette, who will remain on the board. Joel Hightower and Casey Banner will both be joining the Board at NATE UNITE 2024 in February. All the candidates did a great job representing themselves and the wireless industry. I would also like to thank Jimmy Miller, who will be stepping down from the board after 10 years of service to NATE. Although Jimmy will be missed in the board room, he will continue to support NATE’s Legislative & Regulatory Council.
December started with my fifth visit to Washington D.C. in the last two years. This trip was to visit several new Senators, Congressmen, Congresswomen, four FCC Commissioners, and the Department of Labor. The topics with the Senators and Congressional Representatives revolved around the spectrum authority delays and the impact that it is having on our industry and in particular the NATE member companies. Simply put, without spectrum, we do not have anything to build. The next topic was the hold up in D.C. over the allocation of new frequency bands for 6G and beyond.
The United States has continually been a world leader in technology and this delay has put us at least two years behind other countries around the globe.
Our last meeting was the signing of the NATE-OSHA-FCC National Strategic Partnership. This new 5-year agreement will allow NATE to continue leading the charge towards identifying trends in the workplace that would otherwise lead to injuries or fatalities.
Over the last two years, the committees have reviewed over 5,500 individual jobsite audits and categorized tens of thousands of data points collected through the NATE STAR participants and other industry partners. If you are not a NATE STAR participant, I would encourage you to consider it. As Chairman, I am very proud to have signed this agreement on behalf of NATE.
Victor Drouin is the Chairman of NATE and President of Green Mountain Communications, Inc. in Pembroke, New Hampshire. He can be reached at 603-717- 7117 or v.drouin@ greenmtncomm.com.
