WASHINGTON-While policymakers are under mandate from the American electorate to govern from the center with the return of a Democratic White House and a GOP Congress, the wireless telecommunications industry is still apt to get caught up in partisan battles. New personalities may spark this tension once the honeymoon between President Clinton and the Republican leadership ends.
At the outset, there will be at least three issues that cause fireworks between the Clinton administration and the GOP-led Congress: telecom act implementation, Federal Communications Commission reform and spectrum reform.
Clinton Democratic appointee Reed Hundt and the agency he heads, the FCC, are expected to be prime targets of congressional telecom leaders Thomas Bliley (R-Va.), chairman of the House Commerce Committee, telecommunications subcommittee Chairman Billy Tauzin (R-La.) and John McCain (R-Ariz.), a likely heir to the Senate Commerce Committee chair.
The FCC’s implementation of the interconnection provisions of the 1996 telecom act-designed to spur local landline competition-is bogged down in litigation. Those rules vastly improve wireless-wireline interconnection, but strong opposition from state regulators and the regional Bell telephone companies-big campaign contributors to telecom lawmakers-has caused embarrassment to key congressional drafters of the historic telecom bill.
Republicans will likely haul Hundt and his fellow commissioners into more oversight hearings and keep the FCC chairman busy replying to brow-beating congressional letters as the agency crafts access charge and universal service rules required by the telecom act.
“Interconnection was just the warm-up round,” said Thomas Wheeler, president of the Cellular Telecommunications Industry Association.
Jay Kitchen, president of the Personal Communications Industry Association, said telecommunications policy will continue to be driven by bipartisan forces.
For sure, the telecom act of 1996 had bipartisan support in Congress and what controversies did arise had to do with differences over the degree of deregulation (Republicans tending to favor more deregulation than Democrats) or over parochial issues tied to individual lawmakers’ constituencies.
But House and Senate GOP telecom lawmakers are not going to let Hundt off the hook if they believe he is not carrying out congressional intent of the new telecom law.
Lawmakers believe once competition kicks in, if it does, the FCC should be downsized to reflect reduced regulatory duties. Congress, which started down that path this fall, is expected to keep the pressure on when the House and Senate begin the 105th session early next year.
Hundt, for his part, is believed to be preparing to leave the FCC after completing major telecom act implementation tasks and return to the private sector where he may begin early work on Vice President Gore’s presidential bid in 2000.
The wireless industry will find in Tauzin and McCain two activists. That may or may not be good for the industry; it will depend on each man’s agenda and what legislative pet projects they choose to embrace.
It would not be surprising, for example, for McCain to continue defeated Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Larry Pressler’s (R-S.D.) push for spectrum reform.
