Personnel Notes

Qualcomm has hired Greg Farmer as its new vice president for government affairs. Farmer, who will lead Qualcomm's Washington office, was formerly senior vice president of global government relations and international trade at Nortel. Before that, he was Undersecretary of Commerce under President Bill Clinton.

A few of the issues Farmer intends to tackle in the coming months: universal broadband, the innovation agenda and patent reform.

"We're a great success story that's really not that well-known or understood in Washington, and we intend to change that," Farmer said in a short phone interview yesterday.

"We're all about innovation. We're enabling mobile technology to enhance people's lives and developing entrepreneurship," he said. "It lines up nicely with what the administration and Congress are doing."

Farmer is pushing sustained research and development activity. He also said, since Qualcomm's business model relies on patent licensing, "we feel very strongly that for our well-being we have to maintain incentives for innovation to flourish and strengthen. If that means a company like ours spends a lot of money on innovations for the future, we need to have a return on them."

Over the past few months, Google has brought on new staff to its growing Washington office, and the company is looking to fill at least four more policy-related positions.

Seth Webb, who was the House Financial Services Committee’s second-most senior Republican aide, joined Google in June to handle Republican outreach and to head small business development. Frannie Wellings, a senior staffer to Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-N.D.), will soon begin her new role handling third-party outreach for Google.

Google also brought on board Mistique Cano, formerly vice president of communications for the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights. Cano takes over media responsibilities for Adam Kovacevich, who had been the key press contact at Google for the past three years. In his new role, Kovacevich is leading the broader policy and communications strategy in the Washington office.

Google’s D.C. office started with one person, Alan Davidson, in 2005. As tech issues such as net neutrality started to bubble up in Washington, Google hired a slew of lobbyists. Andrew McLaughlin became Google’s director of public policy and government affairs.

McLaughlin is now deputy chief technology officer in the Obama administration. Davidson’s role has since expanded to oversee all of the Americas, including Canada and South America. The Washington office now has more than 20 full-time employees.

The Internet Innovation Alliance, a coalition of 53 businesses and non-profit groups aiming to increase broadband penetration and adoption, gets a new co-chairman today. David Sutphen, a former executive of Viacomm and the Recording Industry Association of America, will join current chairman Bruce Mehlman in running the coalition, which includes AT&T, OneEconomy and Connected Nation.

Until recently, Larry Irving was co-chair of the coalition, but he stepped down to take the role of vice president of Global Governmental Affairs at Hewlett Packard. Irving is a former White House technology advisor and is largely credited with coining the term "digital divide."

Sutphen replaces Irving at a time when broadband policy is getting a lot of attention in Washington. I had a brief chat with him yesterday afternoon about what's ahead for the five-year-old alliance. Read more...

Michael Powell, who served as FCC Chairman during the first four years of George W. Bush's administration, has been named to the board of AOL, the Internet company about to be spun off by Time Warner. When the separation is complete, Powell will join seven other new directors, including venture capitalist Bill Hambrecht and Richard Dalzall, former chief information officer at Amazon.com.

After leaving the FCC, Powell became a senior adviser to Providence Equity Partners, a private-equity firm whose portfolio includes online video service Hulu.com, Univision Communications and Warner Music Group. Powell, the son of former Secretary of State Colin Powell, put in place the FCC's existing net neutrality policies that current Chairman Julius Genachowski would like to codify. Powell was also forced to address media indecency issues during his tenure, largely due to Janet Jackson's SuperBowl wardrobe malfunction and Howard Stern's radio antics.

Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass) has hired Daniel Sepulveda as a senior advisor handling commerce, trade and business issues, as well as the key staffer handling issues related to the Senate Commerce Committee's Subcommittee on Communications, Technology and the Internet, which Kerry chairs.

Previously, Sepulveda served as legislative assistant on commerce, trade, immigration and labor issues for Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.). He also worked for President Barack Obama when he was a Senator. During the Clinton Administration, Sepulveda served as a special assistant at the Department of Labor. Most recently he was Assistant U.S. Trade Representative in the Office of Congressional Affairs for the current administration.

“This is a big addition for my Washington office, and I’m lucky to have landed someone of Danny’s enormous skill and capacity to join my senior management team,” Kerry said in a press release.  “Danny knows how to navigate the Senate and the Administration and brings with him the political savvy and policy expertise to dive in head first.  He’s a sharp mind and a big thinker who will lend his skill on everything from telecommunications to trade and immigration at a time when we have more on our agenda than ever before.  We’re fortunate to have Danny as the newest member of our team and look forward to the work ahead.”

Sepulveda replaces Brian Rice, who left Kerry's office over the summer to join Verizon Communications' regulatory shop in Washington.

ZTE, the largest telecommunications provider in China, hired Jon Christensen, former Republican Congressman from Nebraska, to help sell ZTE equipment and services to government agencies.

Christensen will also help the company find business opportunities with the recipients of broadband stimulus grants from the Commerce and Agriculture departments.

Frontier Communications Corp. has hired Petrizzo Strategic Group to focus on gaining regulatory approval for Frontier's acquisition of Verizon assets in 14 states.

Frontier says the acquisition will create the largest rural service provider and the nation's fifth largest incumbent local exchange carrier.

A member of Google's board of directors is leaving, the company announced today. Although Google did not give a reason for Arthur Levinson's departure, many are connecting it to the Federal Trade Commission's antitrust inquiry into the close ties between Apple and Google board members. The FTC launched the investigation earlier this year.

Levinson, former CEO of Genentech, is a corporate director of Apple and became a Google director five years ago.

Antitrust laws prohibit a person’s presence on the board of two rival companies when it would reduce competition between the firms. Google CEO Eric Schmidt had said he thought the revenue that Apple and Google recieved was less than 2 percent of either company's sales, under the Clayton Act of 1914.

Schmidt resigned from Apple's board in August.

Al Gore and Bill Campbell, former CEO of Intuit, are both Apple directors who are also advisers to Google.

Frannie Wellings, telecom staffer to Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-N.D.), is leaving Capitol Hill to join Google as federal policy outreach manager, a newly created position.

Wellings, who worked at public interest group Free Press before joining Dorgan's office, was the senator's lead staffer working on net neutrality issues in the Senate Commerce Committee. It is unclear whether she will register as a lobbyist, Roll Call reported this morning.

According to Roll Call, some Republicans are criticizing the move, especially at a time when lobbying over the controversial net neutrality regulations is heating up. Net neutrality supporters said it isn't an issue because Google and Dorgan have long been on the same page when it comes to the regulations, which would prohibit Internet service providers from blocking customer access to certain content and services.

Microsoft lobbyist Scott Corley is leaving to join Monument Policy Group, where he will be senior vice president of government affairs.

Corley's move was reported by Congress Daily earlier today. Corley will continue his lobbying focus on Senate Republicans on immigration and technology issues.

Here's a link to Monument's press release on his move.