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The top 10 women in wirelessBy Martha DeGrasse

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Advocating for wireless customers

Mignon Clyburn’s decisions may not always please the companies she regulates, but it’s not because she isn’t listening to them. When Sprint Nextel asked the Federal Communications Commission to put conditions on Verizon Communications’ proposed $3.9 billion spectrum purchase from a group of cable companies, Mignon Clyburn was the Commissioner who heard the company’s arguments. Later, when Verizon rebutted those arguments, it was again Clyburn’s office that met with the company. Reports that the spectrum deal is near approval are a sign that Clyburn did not hear anything to make her think the deal would result in higher prices for consumers. During her three years with the agency, Clyburn has demonstrated a consistent commitment to consumers, particularly low-income Americans and rural communities.

Clyburn opposed AT&T’s $39 billion bid for T-Mobile USA because she thought

that a less competitive market could mean higher prices and less service for low-income subscribers, small businesses and rural areas. She also voted in favor of net neutrality rules earlier this year, despite the protestations of the nation’s largest carriers.

Before her political career, which be-gan with an 11-year stint as a utility regulator, Clyburn spent 14 years run-ning a community newspaper that she owned with her father, Representative Jim Clyburn (D-SC).

Those years as a small business owner inform Clyburn’s work at the FCC, where she is always on the lookout for opportu-nities for smaller companies. This spring when the FCC heard comments on a pro-posal to reallocate 40 megahertz of spec-trum in the 2 GHz band from mobile satel-lite service to mobile broadband, Clyburn asked if small business bidding credits would enable new companies to start of-fering mobile service. She also wanted to know how the reallocation of the spectrum could benefit rural wireless service.

Clyburn is also committed to helping women advance in telecommunications. She has made a point of meeting with female telecom executives to discuss mentoring programs and the promotion of women.

Women in the telecommunications industry have found that working hard in a rapidly evolving industry can lead to amazing opportunities and achievements. This describes the career path of the second woman on our list, AT&T Chief Marketing Officer Cathy Coughlin.

Driving innovation and impacting policy

Cathy Coughlin has seen a lot of change during her 33 years with AT&T. For one thing, the company name has changed – she started at Southwestern Bell long be-fore the company became SBC and then bought AT&T. But Coughlin says the last five years have brought some of the most exciting changes.

“Technology has advanced so far that it enriches people’s lives, whereas a few short years ago technology was very intimidating,” she says. “We do a lot of research with our customers. When we were doing research for our current

The U.S. mobile economy is a powerful engine of job creation and technical innovation, and many of the most important initiatives are driven by outstanding women. There are hundreds of women who are making significant contributions; here we highlight our Top 10 Women in Wireless for 2012. Listed in alphabetical order.

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Mignon ClyburnFCC Commissioner

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CathyCoughlinCMO, AT&T

advertising campaign just a few years ago, we were testing the notion of ‘do people want to do more with phones?’ Our customers said ‘I don’t want to do more; I’m already connected all the time.’ Now people love technology. They say ‘my phone is just an extension of who I am.’”

Coughlin’s research eventually led AT&T to its “Rethink Possible” market-ing campaign, which she says is not just a message for customers, but a call for change in AT&T’s corporate culture.

“We have marketed it as much internally as externally,” she says. “Our 250,000 employees are very important stakeholders … and innovation is part of everyone’s job.” She says that more than half of AT&T’s employees have participated in the company’s Innovation Pipeline, which encourages workers to submit product or service ideas. Coughlin says AT&T has funded about 50 of these ideas, including the highly successful AT&T Toggle, which allows users to “toggle” their smart devices between work mode and personal mode.

Coughlin herself seems very comfortable toggling between work mode and personal mode. She loves the camera on her white Nokia Lumia 900, and says she has more communication than ever with her 10 nieces and nephews since they got smartphones and started texting her. But she worries about the network’s ability to handle the increasing traffic, particularly video. “The [Federal Communications Commission] has forecast that the demand for spectrum will exceed supply by 2013,” she says “We are … very vocal about policy

changes. We are very specific in our urging to require spectrum holders to put the airwaves to work.”

One spectrum holder that has not hesi-tated to put its airwaves to work is U.S. Cellular, one of a handful of regional car-riers that is leading the way to LTE. The third woman on our list is U.S. Cellular CEO Mary Dillon.

Blazing the trail to LTE

Mary Dillon decided early last year to accelerate her company’s LTE deployment. While many regional carriers are delaying LTE investments due to concerns about device availability and interoperability, Dillon has forged ahead without ever looking back. She says that by the end of this year more than half U.S. Cellular’s customers will have access to LTE.

After famously saying “no thank you” to Apple’s iPhone offer last year, U.S. Cellular is saying “yes please” to the Samsung Galaxy S III, an LTE Android phone that should make efficient use of precious spectrum on U.S. Cellular’s LTE network. Dillon carries a Galaxy S III as well as a Galaxy Tab 10.1. “I think devices will become integrated with all facets of our lives,” says the mother of four. “Our

phone is our camera, our credit card and will manage activities throughout our homes, cars and offices.”

Dillon says her company’s greatest contribution to the industry is providing great customer service and “delighting” customers. She has been customer-focused throughout her career, overseeing global marketing at McDonald’s before joining U.S. Cellular.

“I continue to learn from the many mentors who helped guide my career,” says Dillon. “I encourage people to reach out to others in their field to gain as much information as they can. For women in wireless, currently you get the perk of enjoying the short women’s room lines at industry events (which you don’t see in many other parts of life), but that will change.”

While Mary Dillon and her team work to bring the next generation of wireless service to the Midwest, the next woman on our list is helping to extend mobile broadband to the developing world.

Extending the mobile revolution

“Every person on the planet is going to be connected by broadband,” says

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MaryDillonCEO, U.S. Cellular

4

PeggyJohnsonEVP and President, Global Market Development, Qualcomm

Peggy Johnson. “The dynamics that will produce will be startling, especially for areas that never had access to education or healthcare.”

As president of global marketing for Qualcomm, Johnson spends a lot of time on planes, and a lot of those planes are headed to India. She is proud of her role in Qualcomm’s recent agreement to sell spectrum in India to Bharti Airtel, and knows that the sale is unlikely to be the end of her trips to that country. Qualcomm has five offices there, and Johnson likes India so much that she vacationed there with her husband and children this year.

“You literally step off through time into rural villages, “ she says, “but I would get 3G access. When you look around you see people in varying states of eco-nomic ability. But everyone has a phone. Food, water, shelter and a cell phone are the priorities.”

For Qualcomm, one of the world’s largest providers of chipsets and related software for mobile devices, the opportunities in the developing world are clearly very compelling. And the company is committed to bringing high-end capabilities to the lower end of the market. Johnson is excited about the latest iteration of BREW, a software platform for mobile devices designed to boost the performance of mass-market feature phones to smartphone levels. She was part of the team that developed the original BREW platform almost a decade ago. Long before Apple had an app store, “We pioneered the idea of an ecosphere of developers who

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sales of the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1, and followed it up the next week with a similar injunction on the Galaxy Nexus, the Android smartphone that Samsung developed with Google. As of this writing, Samsung and Apple are headed back to Judge Koh’s courtroom for a jury trial, with Apple demand-ing $2.52 billion in damages from Samsung, and Samsung claiming that Apple couldn’t have developed the iP-hone without leveraging the Korean company’s patents.

In the time since Koh’s last decision, the highly respected Judge Richard Posner of the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals has dismissed patent lawsuits filed in his court by Apple and Google, saying he will not hear arguments because the companies are using patents as anticompetitive tools. His decision may encourage some companies to pause before they file new lawsuits, but it remains to be seen whether it will influence Judge Koh.

Koh, the first U.S. District Court Judge of Korean descent, was nominated for her position by President Obama in January 2010. At that time she was a judge in the Superior Court of California in Santa Clara. She received her B.A. and her J.D. from Harvard, and is married to a Stanford law professor. She protects her courtroom and her privacy by not giving interviews to the media.

When it comes to the media, the next woman on our list is as outspoken as Judge Koh is reserved. Selina Lo of Ruck-us Wireless loves to talk about her pas-sion for her company and her industry.

developed apps and got paid and circled around and developed more apps,” says Johnson. Apple, of course, took the app store to a whole new level by making it part of the iconic “iDevices.” Now Apple is fighting to make sure its innovations are not overshadowed by less expensive competitors, as the Macintosh computer was 25 years ago. And many of those battles are being fought in the San Jose courtroom of Judge Lucy Koh, the next woman on our list.

On the front lines in the patent wars

Lucy Koh made headlines earlier this year when she held two tablets above her head in her courtroom. One was an iPad and the other was a Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1. Koh asked Samsung’s lawyers which tablet was which and the response was not immediate – apparently the law-yers had a hard time distinguishing their client’s product from Apple’s.

Judge Koh has since found that two Samsung products infringe on Apple’s patents and are likely to cause finan-cial harm to Apple. In June Koh is-sued a preliminary injunction banning

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LucyKohU.S. District Court Judge, San Jose, CA, Northern District

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Lucent’s Sandy Motley is committed to helping carriers of all sizes forge a path to LTE.

Champion for LTE

Sandy Motley remembers a time when wireless devices were primarily for “road warriors,” and says she still carries an “army of devices,” when she travels. But now, many of her trips are inspired by the new reality of wireless communications. “Today the mainstream use of this tech-nology is phenomenal,” says Motley, and as consumers demand constant wireless communication, Motley is frequently on the road calling on regional U.S. carri-ers who are thinking about LTE. “This is the year for competitive carriers,” says Motley. “4G is really starting to go main-stream and they’re all moving to LTE.”

As the new COO of Alcatel-Lucent’s wireless division, Motley says she’ll continue her work to help smaller carriers approach LTE thoughtfully and successfully. In her previous role as VP of U.S. wireless sales, Motley made a strong case for LTE as the way for carriers to keep up with the growing demand for video, which she says will represent 70% of data traffic by 2014. “This will explode

Wi-Fi evangelist

“Middle-of-the-road” is not a phrase that comes to mind when talking about Selina Lo, the high-profile CEO of Ruckus Wire-less. But the middle of the road is exactly where Lo’s company found the route to success with its Wi-Fi hardware, software and services. “We were one of the first to focus on the mid-tier enterprise,” says Lo. “Prior to Ruckus coming into the market in 2008, if you looked at Cisco, Aruba and HP, they were all chasing tier-one univer-sities and Fortune 1000 companies. We were the first to say ‘we want to go after the mid-tier enterprise.’”

Now Lo is on a mission to bring Wi-Fi connectivity to everyone. “Wi-Fi is the new Ethernet,” Lo says. “The new genera-tion, when they sit down in a public place, they look for Wi-Fi first. All public facing enterprises are finding it necessary to of-fer Wi-Fi hotspots.” Lo thinks the trend toward Wi-Fi-only devices will accelerate during the next five years. “More people are going to carry devices that do not have an Ethernet port,” she says.

While more and more companies now see Wi-Fi as a cost of doing business, many also see a revenue opportunity. Retailers are especially interested in using Wi-Fi networks to deliver real-time promotions to customers in their stores. “Since Wi-Fi

is the de-facto indoor solution for wireless, if we want any of the commercial apps to work such as coupon sending and promotions and payments, we need to do a much better job with location services,” says Lo. Ruckus is working on new software that will help pinpoint a network user’s exact location. “Our partners are very interested but they haven’t seen the applications that are going to make this a new revenue stream, but I think they are going to see that emerge by the end of this year,” says Lo.

Lo is also very excited about the effort five of the nation’s largest cable compa-nies are making to create a nationwide Wi-Fi network. “When these guys start adding their footprint together they are going to offer a public access footprint bigger than AT&T,” she says.

Selina Lo was born in Hong Kong and received her B.S. in computer science from the University of California at Berkeley. She co-founded Centillion Net-works and then sold it to Bay Networks. Lo then served as VP of marketing for Alteon Networks, where she was very involved in the company’s initial public offering and subsequent sale to Nortel Networks for $7.8 billion.

Lo won’t comment on the timing of a possible IPO for Ruckus, but she does ex-pect her company to make some headlines this year one way or another. “We like to make a ruckus,” she says, “so there will be news. ... I can just promise that there will be news.”

If Selina Lo is a Wi-Fi evangelist, the next woman on our list is an equally articulate proponent of LTE. Alcatel-

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SelinaLoCEO, Ruckus Wireless

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SandyMotleyCOO, Wireless Division, Alcatel-Lucent

the needs on the carriers’ networks, so we all need to get ready for that and ... LTE is the solution,” Motley says. “It will bring great services and great user experiences for video.”

Motley knows it will not be easy for re-gional carriers. This spring she began her keynote address at the RCA Spring Expo the way Charles Dickens began “A Tale of Two Cities,” saying that for smaller carri-ers it is “the best of times and the worst of times.” Motley says Alcatel-Lucent works with carriers to help them free up spec-trum so that they can deploy next-gen-eration services. “Tier-two and tier-three (carriers) do have some unique needs,” she says. “Some are certainly able to get addi-tional spectrum but they don’t have large volumes of spectrum. ... We need to work with them to free up spectrum. There are ways to free up (3G) spectrum so they can use it for 4G. They need to have interoper-ability between 3G and 4G; they have to do some data handoffs.”

Motley says much of the work that has given her the most satisfaction at Alca-tel-Lucent has been centered on mak-ing customers successful. “I was part of some very early development on what we called the first mini cell,” she says. “I was part of the team that was able to produce and deploy the first mini cell to satisfy our customers’ drive in going from analog to digital technology.”

As she approaches her new role as COO of her company’s wireless division, Motley identifies several key focus areas. “I really can’t talk about my role without us being successful in LTE,” she says. “We are looking to grow. Also, the small

cell space: microcells, apps in light radio, that’s an area where we are absolutely leading and we have a lot of objectives.” Finally, Motley singles out machine-to-machine as an important focus area for Alcatel-Lucent. “M2M is a very critical market for us and we will continue to be a major player in defining the standards,” she says.

The next woman on our list knows all about setting the standard. Under her leadership, the nation’s largest carrier convinced millions of Ameri-cans that 4G LTE is the new standard for wireless connectivity.

Setting the standard

Marni Walden is a Wyoming native who has crisscrossed the country on her rise to the top of the wireless industry. With Verizon Wireless, Walden served as pres-ident of the company’s Southern Califor-nia region and the Midwest area. Before that, she worked at several other wire-less service providers, including AT&T Wireless and McCaw Communications.

“My advice to women is to be open to new opportunities and new roles, ap-proach your work with passion and con-viction, and be accountable for the deci-sions you make,” says Walden.

Walden arrived in Verizon Wireless’ New York headquarters in late 2010 to serve as CMO, and was promoted a year later to COO. She had a primary role in creating and delivering the media cam-paigns that raised public awareness of LTE. Walden has maintained a consis-tent focus on securing and promoting iconic devices, particularly LTE devices.

“From the beginning, our strategy has been clear: to have the very best network, the best lineup of devices and the best cus-tomer experience,” says Walden. “Smart-phones, tablets and Internet devices are quickly becoming the new necessity. For an industry still in its infancy, the growth and changes have been explosive but there is still a lot more to come.”

Walden played a key role in developing Verizon’s new shared data pricing plan. “Our new ShareEverything plan is a great option for customers who have a number of data devices or who want unlimited voice calls or text messages,” says Walden. “It’s a whole new pricing framework, but it of-fers customers the simplicity and flexibil-ity they tell us they want. Verizon Wire-less’ contributions in advancing wireless communications have always centered on the customer.” And customers, of course, are what Verizon has more of than any other U.S. carrier. “The most impressive element of Verizon’s growth .. has been growth from the core retail (and until the iPad, postpaid) wireless business,” says analyst Jim Patterson.

Developing and maintaining relationships with a wide range of device manufacturers has been another big job for Walden. Verizon Wireless has the

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MarniWaldenCOO, Verizon Wireless

capability to make or break a new device, and the carrier’s support has made a huge difference for some of the Android device makers. One of these, HTC, is led by the next woman on our list, Cher Wang.

Quietly brilliant

HTC’s tagline might describe its chair better than its products. Taiwan’s Cher Wang has quietly transformed HTC from a contract feature-phone manufacturer into a premium smartphone brand, and she’s done it while staying out of the spotlight. “Her contribution was to hire the right people and get them what they needed. And outspend some of their larg-er competitors,” says William Stofega, who manages IDC’s mobile device and technology trends research program.

HTC reported a sharp drop in earnings for its most recent quarter, and Stofega says that Wang’s next challenge could be narrowing the company’s focus. “On the last earnings call they talked about growth market countries like India and China,” Stofega said. “The problem there is that margins are tight and you need big volume.” Stofega is not sure HTC is ready to simultaneously address both emerging and mature markets.

Patents are a major priority for Wang, who recently told employees that her company plans to acquire and register a large number of patents in a variety of fields. Wang saw shipments of the compa-ny’s flagship LTE phone, the HTC One X, delayed by U.S. customs officials because of HTC’s patent disputes with Apple.

Competing with Apple remains perhaps the biggest challenge for smartphone and tablet makers. The “iDevices” continue to attract first-time buyers as well as the technically sophisticated. The iPhone is the device of choice for Cisco System’s Chief Technology and Strategy Officer, the final woman on our list.

Leading the charge to the cloud

“Moving Cisco into becoming a leader in cloud, developing our architecture strategy and most recently developing our Cisco ONE strategy have all been key highlights for me,” said Padmasree War-rior, who recently added the role of chief strategy officer to her job description at Cisco. Cisco ONE refers to the company’s Open Network Environment. Cisco has emerged as a leader in the push to open network architectures and analysts say

this could make the company a leader in selling the “network as a service.”

Warrior says a cloud-intelligent net-work of networks is needed to architect the mobile network of the future. “We have now entered the post-macrocell era, in which ‘small cells’ will play a critical role in delivering the next-gen-eration mobile Internet,” she says. “Ex-isting mobile network infrastructures simply cannot sustain the growth we’re seeing on their own. Tomorrow’s mobile Internet must span multiple networks and deliver seamless and highly secure mobile experiences.”

Warrior has been CTO at Cisco since late 2007; she was previously CTO at Mo-torola. In preparation for her new role, Warrior picked up a copy of “Thinking, Fast and Slow,” by Daniel Kahneman, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences. The book contrasts intuitive, emotional thinking with deliberate, logical thinking, and explains how both types of thought can have a role in the corporate environment.

Warrior says she’s “passionate about helping women in technology.” She al-most missed her calling because she thought that as a woman she wouldn’t have much opportunity to advance in a technical field. Warrior was working on her doctorate when she took a summer job at Motorola, and ended up staying there for 23 years.

RCR Wireless was honored to receive many outstand-

ing nominations for the Top 10 Women in Wireless for

2012. Many of these women are making amazing con-

tributions and we hope to highlight several of them in

our upcoming report, “Women to Watch in Wireless.”

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CherWangCo-Founder and Chair, HTC

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PadmasreeWarriorChief Technology and Strategy Officer, Cisco Systems