Chairman's Bio

Scott Cleland
Chairman, NetCompetition.org
Founder & President, Precursor, LLC

Summary: Scott Cleland is one of nation's foremost techcom analysts and experts at the nexus of: capital markets, public policy and techcom industry change. He is widely-respected in industry, government, media and capital markets as a forward thinker, free market proponent, and leading authority on the future of communications. Precursor LLC is an industry research and consulting firm, specializing in the techcom sector, whose mission is to help companies anticipate change for competitive advantage. Cleland is also Chairman of NetCompetition.org, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Precursor LLC and an e-forum on Net Neutrality funded by a wide range of broadband telecom, cable and wireless companies. He previously founded The Precursor Group Inc., which Institutional Investor magazine ranked as the #1 "Best Independent" research firm in communications for two years in a row.

I. Capital Markets Expertise: Scott Cleland has testified before three different Congressional Subcommittees on different forward-looking capital markets issues. He was the first expert witness to testify before Congress analyzing Enron's collapse. He also testified on both conflicts of interest and accounting tricks that contributed to telecom bankruptcies and fraud during the market bubble. Fortune Magazine profiled Cleland as "ahead of the pack in raising questions about WorldCom's debt, profitability, and survival." Then-WorldCom CEO Bernie Ebbers tried to discredit Cleland's prescient and hard-hitting research on WorldCom by deriding him as the "idiot Washington analyst." Cleland also served as the lead source and primary analyst for Hedrick Smith's Emmy Award winning PBS Frontline Special, "The Wall Street Fix."

• Scott Cleland has extensive professional and entrepreneurial experience in capital markets. He founded and built the Precursor Group Broker Dealer from scratch to the #1 Institutional Investor-recognized independent research firm in communications in four years. The Precursor Group Inc. served most of the top investment institutions in the U.S, including 39 of the top 50. Overall, he has 13 years experience in the institutional investment business including working for Legg Mason and the Schwab Washington Research Group.
  
  
• In 2002, Cleland conceived and was the Founding Chairman of the Investorside Research Association, the first and only trade association of independent research firms, which has over 70 members. He also was Investorside's point person with the industry, SEC, Congress and the Administration on regulatory and legislative matters relating to soft dollars. In 2002, Institutional Investor Magazine called Cleland "the de facto spokesperson for the independent research community."

II. Public Policy Expertise: Cleland has testified before Congress several times on the 1996 Telecom Act and competition issues. He is widely respected in Washington as one of the foremost analysts and observers of the Federal Communications Commission and regulatory policy.

• Cleland has extensive public policy experience in and out of government. He served President George H.W. Bush as a Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for telecom trade matters, and served as a Senior Policy Advisor for Legislative Affairs to then Secretary of State James A. Baker III. Cleland received the Superior Honor Award for his role as the lead congressional briefer to Secretary Baker on all foreign policy matters during the first Gulf War and the dissolution of the former Soviet Union.
  
  
• Cleland is also a Member of the United States Department of State, Advisory Committee on International Communications and Information Policy.
  
  
• In addition, he has Federal government experience as Director of Legislative Affairs for the U.S. Department of the Treasury and as a Budget Examiner for OMB in the U.S. Executive Office of the President.
  
  
• Cleland has a Masters of Public Affairs from the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin and a BA in Political Science from Kalamazoo College.

III. Techcom Industry Change Expertise: Cleland also has testified several times before Congress on forward-looking industry issues, such as the impact of the AT&T-SBC and Verizon-MCI mergers, the Echostar-DirecTV merger and the future of cable competition. In 2004 and 2005, Cleland was voted #1 independent researcher in communications Institutional Investor Magazine. In addition, Cleland has been interviewed three different years by Barrons Magazine on the future of the telecom industry.

Cleland has a high-profile track record of foreseeing change before others do. He was the first researcher to publicly predict a wide variety of industry developments accurately including that:

• local franchising would slow Bell video entry;
• UNE-P price regulation would not be ruled legal;
• the decline and ultimate bankruptcy of Worldcom;
• the "Datatopia" burst of the fiber bubble from hyped data traffic growth;
• Department of Justice's blocking of the Worldcom-Sprint merger;
• the failure of the regulatory-dependent CLEC model;
• the importance of the techcom growth dynamic;
• the Sprint local spin-off leading to a new cable alliance;
• the new viability of Broadband over Power-lines (BPL);
• the Telecom Act would lead to Bell consolidation and a radio industry rollup, and
• originally that the 1996 Telecom Act would pass.