About Scott Cleland
![]() |
|
You are hereWill the FCC Lose the Future?
Submitted by Scott Cleland on Thu, 2011-02-10 11:41
Do the actions of the FCC match the FCC's words of support for the President's commitment to the "least burdensome tools to achieve regulatory ends?"
There are three disturbing trends at the FCC: preservationism, pessimism and silo-ism -- that all strongly indicate that the FCC's trajectory is more geared toward losing the future than winning the future. I. FCC Preservationism (Shackling the future with the mindset, approaches and legacy networks/regulations of the past.) Most of the last year the FCC has been obsessed with FCC historical preservation, i.e. strongly considering restoring the FCC to its past glory days with new Title II common carrier regulation of the Internet, but then settling on a 1934 era interpretation of the FCC's Title I authority at its most boundless.
The FCC's Open Internet Order was really about preserving the FCC's relevance in the Internet Age, given that the DC Court of Appeals greatly constrained the FCC's imagined Internet authority, and given that there was no real industry problem that needed an FCC Open Internet regulatory solution. The FCC has been in preservationist mode since the Comcast decision indicated the FCC has a much smaller role in the Internet era than they hoped or imagined for themselves. To preserve its relevance, and much of its budget authority and staffing in a budget-deficit focused environment, the FCC's self-preservation instincts have been in overdrive discrediting competition gains and successes, assuming market failure tacitly, and promoting the need for regulatory involvement most wherever possible. This helps explain the hyper-regulatory trajectory of the FCC's supposed data modernization NPRM which the FCC billed would: "streamline and modernize the collection of data... while minimizing burdens on voice and broadband providers."
II. FCC Pessimism (No communications can be safe or ok for consumers without FCC involvement.) The FCC's newfound need for institutional self-preservationism, has required the FCC to adopt a new pessimism about the future of the Internet, competition, and innovation in order to create justification for a full budget and staffing complement at the FCC.
The big evidence of the FCC's new found pessimism is that to justify the reassertion of the FCC's relevance in the future in the Open Internet order, the FCC had to implicitly assert, with scant evidence or argument, that competition was no longer sufficient to protect consumers.
III. FCC Silo-ism (Convergence and cross-silo competition threatens the FCC's iron regulatory grip on individual technology/industry silos.) The FCC has come to appreciate that convergence and competition reduce the need and relevance of pre-convergence regulation.
The poster child for FCC silo-ism is the tortured logic the FCC went through to deny Qwest's voice forbearance petition by ignoring that 25% of consumers have cut the cord and are using wireless as their competitive substitute for voice.
There are glaring examples of FCC silo-ism in the cable market as well.
In sum, the FCC's actions, not its words, are signaling that the FCC is more interested in winning the past than the future.
Simply, if the FCC remains more concerned about winning its own bureaucratic future than winning the nation's future, the FCC will lose the future.
» |