FCC pulling the rug out from under the Administration's broadband policy?

Kudos to the Wall Street Journal today for their twin great editorials on net neutrality and the 700 MHz auction: "Reed Hundt's Spectrum Play" by the Jounal editorial writers and "Telecom Time Warp" by Robert Crandall and Hal Singer.

• The Journal editorial accurately hits on the Google/Hundt cabal to rig the auction rules so they can win the Nation's most valuable spectrum at a deep discount.
• Google is laughing all the way to the bank that they could sucker a Republican Chairman of the FCC to carry their water and stand heavily on the competitive scales to pick them as winner before the bidding commences.
• It will be interesting to see how Chairman Martin "squares this circle" and explains why market participants should ever trust what he says going forward on competition and regulation given that up to now he has discussed no market failure or consumer problem that requires regulation to solve up to now.
• My favorite point of many in Robert and Hal's great editorial is reminding everyone the outrageousness of the FCC mandating "unbundling" (a drastic action reserved for entrenched monopolies) when the wireless industry is so obviously competitive that the price of a wireless minute has fallen by 84% over the last decade!
• Amazing! Chairman Martin apparently finds market failure when prices are plummeting, consumer choice has exploded, subscribership and usage has skyrocketed and investment boomed. Huh?
• What's wrong with this picture? 
• The only apparent explanation is that Chairman Martin now believes more in the regulatory hand of Big Government than the "invisible hand" of market forces.
• Wireless is the single biggest competitive success story in communications!
• And Mr. Martin's reward for all those market players that invested billions of dollars of risk capital to buildout the world's most competitive facilities-based wireless marketplace -- is heavy handed and unnecessary "separations" and unbundling monopoly regulation!

Bottomline:  The Bush Adminstration's sole policy goal in telecommunications has been to promote broadband investment and deployment to all Americans.

• Just as the Bush Administration is taking well-deserved credit for its highly-successful, market-forces broadband policy that has achieved rapid success in driving competitive availability of broadband to all Americans, Chairman Martin is apparently pulling the rug out from under that Adminstration success story.
• Moveon.org is quietly fist-pumping in glee for this political gift to bludgeon the Administration with.    
• It will be interesting to see how the Chairman tries to explain how Government regulation is needed now, when its market forces policy has been fabulously successful, but not early in Chairman Martin's tenure when their was a whole lot less broadband competition than there is now. 
• The key question for Chairman Martin:
• Does he still support the Adminstration's market forces broadband policy or does he now support a new and different government "managed competition" and net neutrality broadband policy?