View source for Cellular Telephone Industry Association

{{CSStub}}


The '''Cellular Telephone Industry Association (CTIA)''' was the main umbrella association for cellular mobile telephone manufacturers and service providers.  In the 1990s it found $25 million to fund the '''[[Wireless Technology Research[[ (WTR)''' program decreed essential by Congress.  This was to examine evidence that the first pulse-code digital mobile phones (called D-AMPS or GSM) were likely to cause brain tumours in long-term users.  It transpired that almost no biomedical research had been done by the manufacturers before large numbers of the devices were released on the public.

The CTIA took the advice of its PR company [[Ketchum]] (Associates?) and selected science-for-sale entrepreneur [[George L Carlo]] and his pseudo research company known as [[Health & Environmental Services]].  They "''spent $17 millions of dollars without ever getting a testtube wet"''. <ref>Louis Slessin, editor of Microwave News</ref>

Dr Henry Lai and Dr Narenda P Singh working in the University of Washington discovered that radiations from the pulsed-power type of mobiles increased the number of detected DNA breaks in the brain cells in their laboratory mice.  DNA breaks are a clear indicator that the radiation pulses were having biomedical effects -- long claimed to be impossible by CTIA members.  Eventually the pulsed power technique was quietly abandoned (although the name GSM was retained) and the pulsed outpur replaced by a steady-state Wideband CDMA form, which is used today.

At about the same time the Association changed its name to '''Cellular Telecommunications Industry Association''' (also CTIA) to reflect its coverage of WiFi and other similar radio technologies.