The National Association of Broadcasters announced this week that Robert Weller, the FCC's Chief of Technical Analysis, will be joining NAB as vice president of spectrum policy, reporting to Rick Kaplan, executive vice president of Strategic Planning.
This is good news for NAB, but I'm sorry to see the FCC lose such a talented engineer, particularly one like Weller who knows the broadcast business through 14 years with the consulting engineering firm of Hammett & Edison. His first stint at the FCC started in 1984 as a radio inspector in San Francisco and later, in 1993, as director of its Denver District Office. He rejoined the FCC in its Office of Engineering and Technology in 2007.
“Bob” Weller was a great resource and I learned much from him while he was working at Hammett & Edison and providing consulting engineering services to the company I was working for. When the FCC Office of Engineering Technology was developing TVStudy, his activity on the AFCCE-CDBS mailing list helped me and other engineers get up to speed with the new program. When a bug was found or a feature requested, Bob was there to help. While most readers will know him through his work on broadcast engineering, his experience goes beyond. For example, he was involved with some of the first mesh network wireless Internet deployments using unlicensed 900 MHz spectrum.
I'm looking forward to seeing what projects he'll be working on at NAB!
