Few issues stoke the ire of workers like executive pay. The average CEO of Standard & Poor’s 500 company list made $15.06 million in 2006, which is the most recent year for executive compensation figures. The ten U.S.-based, public wireless company CEOs whose pay we tracked averaged about $18.34 million in 2006. Only half of them are on Standard & Poor’s 500 list.

Because every company has their own nuanced approach to executive compensation, we tried to make it easy and follow the new 2006 rule that the SEC requires public companies to disclose total compensation, which includes salary, bonus and "other" compensation. The “other” compensation category includes vested restricted stock grants and "stock gains," the value realized from exercising stock options during the past fiscal year.

Whether it was because of retirement or a forced resignation, some of the CEOs in our top ten list such as Sprint Nextel’s Gary Forsee, Motorola’s Ed Zander and AT&T’s Ed Whitacre Jr. are no longer at their posts Take a look back at what these executives and their still gainfully employed colleagues made back in 2006. How much does it cost to retain a wireless leader? Here are ten answers that brought varying degrees of success. -Brian

1. Ed Whitacre Jr., AT&T CEO [0]
2. Paul Jacobs, Qualcomm CEO [0]
3. Ivan Seidenberg, Verizon CEO [0]
4. Gary Forsee, Sprint Nextel CEO [0]
5. Scott Ford, Alltel CEO [0]
6. Ed Zander, Motorola CEO [0]
7. Mike Zafirovski, Nortel Networks CEO [0]
8. Michael Gallagher, FiberTower CEO [0]
9. Doug Hutcheson, Leap Wireless CEO [0]
10. Steven Dussek, Dobson CEO [0]

photo credit: From Flickr user - stopnlook [1] under the CC license