Americans spend 90% of their time indoors, where 70–80% of wireless data and 80% of 9-1-1 calls happen — yet indoor coverage has been largely invisible to the market. Third-party platforms now collect billions of indoor measurements every year. SBC Founder Seth Buechley with Bryan Darr (Ookla) on why visibility, not mandate, drives market improvement: report cards show users what they’re getting, and markets respond.

It is said that Fire and Building Codes “are written in blood” — meaning that so many are based on real life-changing experiences and after-action reports. The Triangle Shirtwaist factory fire. MGM Grand. The Station Nightclub. Grenfell Tower. Every generation of building codes represents a hard lesson paid for in tragedy. The same is true of public safety communications codes — provisions that ensure first responders can talk to each other inside buildings, that 9-1-1 calls reach dispatch, that emergency radio doesn’t fail at the moment it matters most. These rules exist because they had to. Today, those provisions are under coordinated assault. State legislatures are passing bills that disable code enforcement, abolish fire prevention commissions, and reframe core safety requirements as anti-business overreach. Indiana’s HB 1001 banned ERCES enforcement outright in March 2026. Other states are watching closely. This Power Session is about what’s happening, who’s driving it, and what an effective counter-strategy looks like — at the statehouse, in the code-development process, and in the public conversation. With Chief Alan Perdue (Executive Director, SBC), Seth Statler (Director of Government Affairs, NFPA), and Richard Roberts (Senior Industry Affairs Manager, Honeywell Fire Safety).

Dr. Vinton G. Cerf — VP & Chief Internet Evangelist, Google. Internet pioneer, Turing Award laureate, and Presidential Medal of Freedom recipient, on the Ubiquitous Internet and what it means for the 90% of life lived indoors.

Rep. Richard Hudson (R-NC) — Chairman, House Communications & Technology Subcommittee. Principal congressional authority over the FCC, spectrum, and public safety communications. Chairman Hudson plays a central role in shaping federal telecommunications policy. Presented as a fireside conversation with Chief Alan Perdue, Executive Director, SBC, on the policy environment for in-building wireless, public safety communications, and the FCC priorities shaping the road ahead.

The leaders of America’s major wireless industry associations share well-aligned objectives — but they reach those objectives from different vantage points. Tower infrastructure. Broadband. Public safety communications. Contractor workforce. In-building deployment. Each association represents a constituency that experiences the same policy and technology landscape differently, and translates the priorities of the industry to its members in its own way. This roundtable convenes that lineup for a layered conversation about where wireless actually stands in 2026. Five senior leaders take up the top policy and technology issues of the day — spectrum, public safety modernization, workforce development and contractor realities, and the headwinds and tailwinds shaping the wireless business outlook — each through the lens of the organization they lead. Threaded throughout: how each of these issues lands inside the buildings where most communications now happen. The result is a single conversation that shows where alignment already exists and where the next round of industry effort is heading. Patrick Halley, President & CEO, Wireless Infrastructure Association (WIA). Tiago Rodrigues, CEO, Wireless Broadband Alliance (WBA). Steve Devine, CTO, APCO International. Nathan Leamer, DC State Liaison, National Association of Tower Erectors (NATE) / CEO, Fixed Gear Strategies. Moderated by John Foley, Managing Director, Safer Buildings Coalition (SBC).

The wireless industry has been talking about the workforce gap for a decade — towers waiting on crews, in-building deployments stalled for lack of qualified technicians, public safety projects pushed back because the people to build them weren’t available. Talking about a problem is not the same as solving it. Learning Alliance Corporation built a solution. This session is the first public look at LAC’s new Tampa training complex — purpose-built to close the in-building wireless workforce gap at scale. What you’ll hear: the design decisions behind the campus, the program model, the partnerships that make it work, and what attendees can expect from the talent pipeline coming out of it. The conversation extends to the broader industry context — how training has to evolve to match what is actually being deployed in buildings, and what it takes for workforce solutions to keep pace with the technology. Moderated by John Thompson (Vice President, In-Building, Mobile Communications of America; Board Vice President, SBC) with Cesar Ruiz (President & CEO, Learning Alliance Corporation), Ben Brubeck (Principal & CEO, Government Affairs Solutions), and Michiel Lotter (CEO, Nextivity).

When the Puget Sound Emergency Radio Network (PSERN) set out to modernize the public safety radio system serving King County, Washington — including Seattle, Bellevue, and dozens of other cities — the team ran into a problem no one had documented: more than 1,000 in-building signal boosters had been deployed across the county over the years, and almost none of them had paperwork. No registration. No contact information for owners or contractors. No record of how each one was configured. The new system required reconfiguring, combining, and changing frequencies. Every one of those 1,000+ boosters had to be located, documented, owners identified, and re-tuned. A monumental effort — done backwards, after the fact, at significant cost. That experience is the heart of FCC Petition for Rulemaking RM-12009: what if signal boosters were documented from the day they are installed? Registration. Records. Contactable owners. PSERN learned what it costs to do that work in reverse. The Petition is the case for not doing it that way again. Moderated by Steve Devine (CTO, APCO International) with Creighton Donovan, PMP (DAS Coordinator, PSERN) and John Foley (Managing Director, SBC).

Dr. Preston Marshall — Author, Evolving to 6G: The Case for a New Approach to 6G and Beyond, founder and ex-Chair of the CBRS Alliance — on why the next generation of wireless must be designed for buildings (not adapted to them), and why no single technology will get us there. In conversation with SBC Managing Director John Foley.

Columbine, 1999. Uvalde, 2022. Twenty-three years apart, and in both, first responder communications inside a school building failed at the moment they mattered most. The problem persists — in school buildings and every other structure where the people who answer 9-1-1 cannot reliably hear or be heard. What has changed is the toolkit. In technology and in policy, the path forward is broader than it has ever been. Col. Jim Wolfinbarger — retired 7th Chief of the Colorado State Patrol, longtime IACP Homeland Security Committee chair, and senior leader at Motorola Solutions — closes Day 1 with a career-spanning view of where the work goes from here.

TJ Kennedy — CEO, GeoComm. Founding President of FirstNet. A former firefighter, paramedic, and state trooper, TJ brings the first-responder’s view of the indoor revolution now underway — school safety laws driving statewide mapping programs, 3D vertical location accuracy, and the data PSAPs now need to answer the most important question: where is the emergency — exactly. Keynote followed by audience Q&A.

When someone calls 9-1-1 from inside a building, getting the call through is only the beginning. Responders still have to find the person in time to help. The pieces that make that possible are being built in separate lanes: Ray Baum’s Act and dispatchable location, wireless location accuracy at the FCC, NG9-1-1 modernization, indoor mapping in the GIS community, and school safety legislation in Congress and the states. What will it take to connect these efforts so every 9-1-1 call from inside a building reaches help that can rapidly find the caller? Moderated by Brooks Shannon, ENP (Esri), with David Furth (Deputy Chief, FCC PSHSB), Brian Tegtmeyer, ENP (NHTSA National 9-1-1 Program), and Matt Gerike, PhD, GISP (Virginia 9-1-1 & Geospatial Services).

What do PSAPs actually need from buildings, technology providers, and policy? Three people who answer that question every day take the stage to talk plainly about what is working, what isn’t, and what’s coming next. Two 9-1-1 directors and a senior industry leader — speaking from inside the operation. Heather McGaffin runs 9-1-1 for the nation’s capital as Director of the DC Office of Unified Communications. Scott Brillman, ENP, CEM, runs it for Fairfax County, Virginia — one of the largest and busiest 9-1-1 centers in the country. Lisa Madden, ENP brings the platform view as Regional Manager of Motorola Solutions’ Command Center Software Ecosystem, and serves as Treasurer of iCERT. The conversation will cover what PSAP directors are wrestling with right now: indoor location accuracy and dispatchable location, the NG9-1-1 transition, real-time data from inside buildings, video and IoT integration, cybersecurity, and the workforce pressures that touch every one of those. Moderated by Steve Devine, CTO of APCO International. The 9-1-1 conversation, set inside the buildings where most calls now originate.

Todd Piett — Senior VP, Command Center Solutions, Motorola Solutions. West Point honors graduate, Harvard MBA, and former U.S. Army aviation officer, leading the platform behind 9-1-1 call handling, NG9-1-1, CAD, and the cloud that ties emergency response together. Keynote presented as a fireside conversation with Lorraine Chambliss, PMP (Director Global Offer Management, Motorola Solutions), on what happens once responders are inside the building.

Alyssa’s Law is now on the books in twelve states. Alyssa’s Act of 2025 (HR 6809) takes the next step — a standards-driven federal bill designed to complement state mandates with nationwide consistency. Lori Alhadeff (Make Our Schools Safe) on the movement and what the bill needs to deliver, Chuck Wilson (PASS K-12) on why standards-based legislation is the right model for school safety, and Ryan Wilcox (Utah House of Representatives, District 7) on the state-level Alyssa’s Law experience. Moderated by Eric Toenjes — Board Work Group Sponsor, SBC School Safety / Graybar.

Classroom smartphone distraction is real, and blanket cell-phone bans have become the dominant policy response. SBC’s white paper Proposal: School Mode for Cell Phones offers a targeted technology alternative: a “School Mode” for phones. At scale, the approach depends on something that doesn’t yet exist: a consistent geo-library of school perimeters. This panel connects the theoretical value of mapping standards to the real-world case for them. Moderated by Eric Toenjes (Graybar / SBC), with Jason Eyre, CETL (Murray City School District), Brooks Shannon, ENP (Esri), and Dan Craigie (GeoComm).