Competitive Carriers Association opened its 2026 Annual Convention in New Orleans on September 15 with a keynote program built around a single throughline: regional and competitive carriers are being asked to compete on satellite, spectrum, and cost structure all at once, and CCA wants Washington’s rules to reflect that they’re not doing it with nationwide-carrier resources.
CCA 2026 runs September 14-16 at the Hyatt Regency New Orleans, with Pinnacle sponsors ClearSky Technologies, Ericsson, Interop Technologies, Oracle Communications, and T-Mobile backing a program built around one question: how does a regional carrier stay competitive against nationwide players with an entirely different resource base?
Louisiana Congressman Troy Carter, whose 2nd District covers New Orleans and the River Parishes, opened the keynote luncheon with a recorded welcome, thanking CCA President and CEO Tim Donovan for the association’s work keeping communities connected and stressing that closing the digital divide is a precondition for full participation in today’s economy.
Donovan: rules built for scale leave regional carriers without options
Donovan followed with the framing for the rest of the convention. “The agenda for this year’s Convention focuses on the decisions that will shape the future for every company in this room — how to grow what works, identify what comes next, manage costs, protect customer relationships, and support the right policies,” he said.
He was more pointed about why that agenda matters: “When policymakers write rules based on assumptions of national scale or resources, regional carriers can be left without workable options. This is why CCA advocacy matters. We fight for accurate maps, sustainable economics, access to spectrum and infrastructure, reasonable permitting, competitive policies, and more.” It’s a list that reads like CCA’s standing legislative agenda — the same priorities the association has pushed on Capitol Hill around permitting reform tied to BEAD deployment, the federal broadband buildout regional carriers are counting on to reach customers nationwide carriers won’t bother wiring.
T-Mobile’s satellite pitch: convergence, not competition
Jeff Giard, T-Mobile’s Vice President of Business Development & Partnership, used his keynote slot to walk the room through the satellite direct-to-device landscape that’s reshaped the industry’s coverage conversation over the past year. “The future isn’t about choosing between terrestrial and satellite. It’s about bringing them together to deliver a better experience for customers,” Giard said, framing the opportunity for rural America in particular.
His remarks come four months after T-Mobile, AT&T, and Verizon announced a joint venture on May 14, 2026, to pool spectrum resources and expand direct-to-device satellite connectivity nationwide — an unusual alliance among the three biggest carriers, widely read as a coordinated response to SpaceX’s Starlink Mobile momentum. T-Mobile CEO Srini Gopalan said in July that the carrier’s Starlink exclusivity arrangement would continue for now even as the three-way venture advances toward a definitive agreement.
For CCA’s membership, the pitch Giard made is specifically that satellite capacity gets built once and shared, not fought over — a meaningfully different posture than treating satellite as a nationwide-carrier perk regional operators have to watch from outside.
The Burn on Bourbon Street
Rounding out the morning, ClearSky Technologies — the Orlando-based wireless services provider best known among CCA’s membership for its traffic and policy management and A2P messaging platforms — hosted a keynote panel built for a New Orleans crowd: “The Burn on Bourbon Street,” in which panelists answered pointed industry questions while working through increasingly spicy hot wings. Ron Willett, ClearSky’s Vice President & GM, moderated a panel that paired ClearSky’s own Chip Damato, Business Development Director, with three carrier operators: Mark Lane, Director of Network Engineering & Operations at Cellular One of NE Arizona; Eric Woody, CEO of Union Wireless; and David Zylka, Chief Technology Officer of Carolina West Wireless.
The format departs from the policy-heavy tone of the rest of the keynote program, but the questions were the same ones running through Donovan’s and Giard’s remarks — just with higher stakes for anyone who flinched.
Three days, one exhibit floor
CCA’s Annual Convention is the industry’s single North American event focused on strategy and technology for competitive carriers, pulling in more senior decision-makers from carrier organizations than any comparable US trade show. Alongside the keynote program, three days of networking and educational sessions run alongside an exhibit floor mixing established suppliers with first-time exhibitors, including BROADRADIO International and GeoVaris.
For an association whose membership runs from carriers serving under 5,000 customers up through regional and nationwide players serving millions, the mix is the point: satellite convergence and spectrum policy get discussed on the same keynote stage as hot-wing panels and booth demos, because for CCA’s members, all of it is the same fight for viable economics against bigger competitors.
