IP: : Powell: Market should guide telecom changes

[David Farber <dave@farber.net>]

>To: OpenDTV Mail List <openDTV@topica.com>
>From: Craig Birkmaier <craig@pcube.com>
>
>http://digitalmass.boston.com/news/daily/03/030801/fcc_telecoms.html
>
>Powell: Market should guide telecom changes
>FCC chief urges less reliance on law
>
>By Anthony Shadid, Globe Staff, 3/8/2001
>
>WASHINGTON - The government should rely less on the law and more on
>the market to guide changes that are remaking the telecommunications
>industry, from the Federal Communications Commission's regulatory
>role to rules determining which telecom companies have access to
>which markets, FCC chairman Michael K. Powell told industry
>representatives yesterday.
>
>Powell, whose Democratic predecessors brought a stringent
>interpretation to the law that often rankled the Bell companies and
>other big telecommunications firms, warned that the government should
>avoid intervening in the innovation of technology and overregulating
>a fast-changing market.
>
>''In government and in markets, we're all standing right now in
>no-man's land,'' Powell told a luncheon of the US Telecom
>Association, which represents the Bell companies. ''We're standing
>where things go wrong.''
>
>His remarks, echoing themes he has touched elsewhere since assuming
>the chairmanship, were noteworthy mostly for their context: They were
>delivered to the group that has lobbied the FCC to take a more
>lenient approach to regulation and to relax the rules that bar the
>powerful Bell companies from entering long-distance markets.
>
>Telecommunications, an area that has grown more important with the
>rise of the Internet and wireless, is defined in large part by
>landmark legislation passed in 1996 that has come under mounting
>pressure in Congress.
>
>The law, sweeping in its scope, deregulated the industry to spur
>competition by encouraging smaller companies to take on the
>longstanding Bell monopolies in local markets. The law bars the Bell
>companies from expanding into long-distance service until they can
>prove they have given up those monopolies.
>
>So far, the FCC has permitted only two Bell companies to enter the
>long-distance business: Verizon (formerly Bell Atlantic) in New York
>and SBC Communications in Texas, Kansas and Oklahoma. Verizon's
>application to provide service in Massachusetts is pending before the
>FCC.
>
>The Bells have argued that the FCC has overregulated the market,
>barring them from expanding despite their moves to open the local
>markets. In the meantime, they have pushed for new legislation that
>would allow them to offer long-distance data transmission, separate
>from long-distance voice service - a proposal that has drawn sharp
>criticism from public interest groups.
>
>Key telecom players in Congress, including Representative W.J.
>''Billy'' Tauzin, a Louisiana Republican who heads the powerful House
>Commerce Committee, have promised to reintroduce regulation making
>that possible. A similar measure was bottled up last session by
>Tauzin's predecessor.
>
>Powell suggested he would support such an approach, saying his agency
>had been ''overaggressive'' at times in applying the law.
>
>''The market clearly has to be at the pinnacle of any government
>philosophy or policy,'' he said.
>
>Citing the California electricity shortage that stemmed in part from
>a poorly devised deregulation plan, Powell said the government risks
>making even bigger mistakes by trying to create a hybrid from the
>market and regulation. Better, he said, is to let the market form ''a
>dialogue between consumers and producers,'' mediating innovation and
>new technologies.
>
>''The public interest works with letting the market work its magic,''
>said Powell, who served as an FCC commissioner before taking over as
>chairman.
>
>Critics of the plan, including US Representative Edward J. Markey,
>Democrat of Malden, have argued that smaller companies have no chance
>to compete if the Bells aren't forced to open local markets. Right
>now, they argue, that incentive is long-distance data transmission.
>
>While House support for a change in the Telecommunications Act
>remains likely, its fate in the Senate is less certain.
>
>''It is going to be very difficult to move legislation to enactment
>absent a consensus and there's not a consensus here,'' said Andrew
>Jay Schwartzman, president of the Media Access Project, a Washington
>public interest firm that deals with telecommunications issues.
>
>Powell spoke in favor, too, of streamlining the FCC's regulatory
>process. Some big telecoms firms, including the Bells, have urged the
>FCC to relax its oversight of mergers and quicken its decisions.
>
>Powell cautioned Congress from pushing too hard, but agreed that
>reform within the agency was a priority. ''I am fairly and firmly
>convinced that there are very healthy things that the agency can
>do,'' he said.
>
>Anthony Shadid can be reached at >Anthony Shadid can be reached at ashadid@globe.com.
>
>
>
>----------------------------------------------
>To unsubscribe from the OpenDTV list send a blank message to: 
>openDTV-unsubscribe@topica.com
>
>____________________________________________________________
>T O P I C A  -- Learn More. Surf Less. Newsletters, Tips and Discussions 
>on Topics You Choose.
>http://www.topica.com/partner/tag01
>



For archives see: http://www.interesting-people.org/