WASHINGTON-Noting competition abounds in the wireless industry, FCC Commissioner Harold Furchtgott-Roth said the Federal Communications Commission should put itself out of business.
“It’s competitive. There’s no better words that a regulator can say. It means it’s time to get out of business,” Furchtgott-Roth said.
Furchtgott-Roth went on to say, apparently since the FCC is not going anywhere, that the first-ever Wireless Day should become an annual event, an occasion to get rid of the “regulatory underbrush.”
FCC Chairman William Kennard, who hailed the wireless industry as “one of the greatest success stories of competition” agreed to hold additional Wireless Days but did not agree the meetings would have a deregulatory tone.
The FCC held Wireless Day last Thursday to focus the public’s attention on the success of the wireless industry “where choice is up and prices are down,” said Kennard.
Thomas Wheeler, president of the Cellular Telecommunications Industry Association, agreed. “I think Wireless Day was a great idea. If we are what communications is going to look like, it is appropriate” for the FCC to focus on us, Wheeler said.
The FCC used the occasion of Wireless Day to adopt, but not release, its annual report to Congress on the state of competition in the commercial mobile radio service industry.
The report, which was a compilation and independent analysis of various industry and analyst reports from such entities as CTIA, the Strategis Group and Merrill Lynch and Co., showed that CMRS grew 350 percent since 1993. There are 134,754 jobs in the sector-a 238-percent increase since 1993.
At the same time as such phenomenal growth, the monthly bill for the average subscriber has gone down 36 percent and the application time has gone down from 24 months for comparative hearings to the current 7.8 months. This is a 68-percent decrease.
While Furchtgott-Roth believes the CMRS report highlights that the FCC should put itself out of business, the FCC did not get rid of any regulations at Wireless Day.
The FCC only considered items under the jurisdiction of its Wireless Telecommunications Bureau. The wireless industry has often complained that it is not the wireless bureau that gives it unnecessary regulation but the FCC’s Common Carrier Bureau. Wheeler is fond of saying that “wireless should not be a footnote in a common carrier item.”
One CCB item-which had nothing to do with wireless but rather low-volume long-distance customers-was pulled from the agenda.
Kennard announced in February the FCC would devote an entire meeting to resolving wireless items.
In addition to voting on six items, the FCC also heard presentations from Kathleen Wallman regarding the National Coordination Committee, which is developing technical standards for public-safety use of spectrum formerly known as TV channels 60-69, and Dr. Ricardo Martinez, administrator for the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration on the convergence of wireless 911 and traffic safety. A scheduled presentation on 911 implementation was cut due to time constraints.
