Regulation

For those who have been following my Obsolete Communications Law Series, and those interested in an outstanding and more in-depth free-market analysis of the many communications matters that demand modernization for the digital age, please don't miss: Communications Law and Policy in the Digital Age -- The Next Five Years, edited by Randy May of the Free State Foundation.

• One can get it on Amazon here.

The important work and views of Randy May, Rep. Marsha Blackburn, Seth Cooper, Christopher Yoo, James Speta, Michelle Connolly, Daniel Lyons, Ellen Goodman, and Bruce Owen are a must read for those who want to learn how we can vastly improve current obsolete and increasingly dysfunctional communications law and policy in the United States.

Kudos for an important book well done!

This week Google's actions made the case that U.S. communications law and regulation is obsolete.

The Head of Google Fiber disclosed that Google considered offering phone services in Kansas City as part of its bundle of Gigabit "ultra high-speed" Internet service and TV offering, but declined to do so when they became familiar with the prohibitive morass of legacy analog federal and state telephone regulations with which Google would have had to comply. While acknowledging that the incremental cost of offering voice services would have been "almost nothing," Mr. Medin lamented that Google would have had to build a more complex billing system to comply with the various state calculations in Kansas and Missouri.

It is telling that with all the special tax breaks and large business subsidies that Google was offered to choose Kansas City as the pilot Google Fiber city, they were still not enough to offset the high operational, management, and regulatory costs to comply with legacy telephone regulations.

While the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals gave the FCC a significant win in upholding the FCC's Data Roaming Order, the incremental, serpentine, and limiting way the court did it suggests that this same Court will likely not uphold the FCC's sweeping assertion of legislative-like Internet regulation authority in its Open Internet Order.

In upholding the Data Roaming Order, the Court was faced with a set of facts where the FCC already had clear authority to require mobile voice roaming and the question was whether the FCC had enough authority to extend it to data roaming. In excruciating legal detail, the Court explained why the FCC had the Title III radio authority for this limited action and why the FCC "warrants deference" in this "gray area" of determining when a service is or isn't common carrier. Nevertheless, the court warned the FCC to not try and overreach beyond the narrow boundaries that the court allowed.

Simply, the court gave the FCC more leash in this set of circumstances, but still warned they remained on the court's leash.

Please see my new power point presentation here entitled: "Modern Beats Obsolete in Spurring Economic Growth and Innovation -- Modernize Obsolete Communications Law and Spectrum Management." It is the culmination of a year of research and presents very powerful evidence of how woefully obsolete and absurdly dysfunctional America's communications policy has become.

This neglected problem has been bipartisan in the making over sixteen administrations and dozens of Congresses. It also will take a long-term bipartisan effort to correct. It will only become increasingly imperative to do so as more and more of our economy and society depends on a fully modern mobile Internet.

After reading this presentation you won't be able to look at current American communications policy in the same way again. America's got a lot of work to do to ensure our leadership in the Internet and high tech continues and is not slowed by the nonsensical and unnecessary drag on investment, innovation and growth of obsolete law and spectrum resource management.

Please don't miss the charts. An outline of the presentation follows:

See my latest Daily Caller Op-ed: "U.S. Falling behind the World in Auctioning Broadband Spectrum" here.

This is part 12 of my Obsolete Communications Law research series.

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Obsolete Communications Law Op-ed Series:

Unfortunately, the FCC Chairman's remarks to a Silicon Valley audience last week -- trumpeting his new concern for "anything that depresses broadband usage" -- are creating abundant uncertainty for broadband businesses and investors.

Specifically, Gigaom reported: "When asked about the impact of data caps on broadband innovation by my colleague Janko Roettgers and how his thinking had evolved on the topic, the chairman said he was concerned about data caps. He added, “Anything that depresses broadband usage is something that we need to be really concerned about.” And he further said, “We should all be concerned with anything that is incompatible with the psychology of abundance.”

This appears to signal a stupefying 180-degree reversal of the FCC Chairman's well-established policy position on broadband usage pricing.

Please see my latest Daily Caller op-ed: "The FCC Showcases its Growing Obsolescence" here. This piece is part 9 of my Obsolete Communications Law research series.

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Obsolete Communications Law Op-ed Series:

Part 1: "Obsolete communications law stifles innovation, harms consumers"

Part 2: "The FCC's Public Interest Test Problem"

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE -- August 21, 2012

Contact: Scott Cleland 703-217-2407

The FCC's Obsolete Section 706 Report

Obsolete law and technological assumptions yield nonsensical reporting requirements

WASHINGTON D.C. – Concerning the FCC's release of its Section 706 report on "Advanced Telecommunications Incentives," the following quotes may be attributed to Scott Cleland, Chairman of NetCompetition.org:

Please see my latest Daily Caller Op-ed: "Google Fiber: Modern Technology, but Obsolete Policy Thinking" here.

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Obsolete Communications Law Op-ed Series:

Part 1: "Obsolete communications law stifles innovation, harms consumers"

Please see my latest Daily Caller Op-ed: "FCC's Over-Reliance on Obsolete Law" here. It spotlights the FCC's clear pattern of relying on obsolete law and non-existing statutory authority.

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Obsolete Communications Law Op-ed Series:

Part 1: "Obsolete communications law stifles innovation, harms consumers"