WASHINGTON-If a proposal to convert the Federal Communications Commission into a regulator focused on competition is accepted, the new FCC should make more entrenched players prove they are not being anti-competitive rather than make the startups prove they are, said Jonathan Askin, general counsel for pulver.com Enterprises, which controls more than 50 operating companies touching various aspects of Internet-Protocol-based communications.
“I would flip the burden of proof so the smaller aggrieved party is given the benefit of the doubt,” said Askin.
The Progress & Freedom Foundation June 17 released a report and legislative language to model the FCC after the FTC. At a PFF-sponsored forum last week, various industry and academic leaders, regulators and lawmakers responded to the report.
“I understand the preference for adjudication rather than regulation, but I am not sure I would drink that Kool-Aid all the way. But getting rid of the mesh of regulations is a good idea,” said Thomas Sugrue, former chief of the FCC’s Wireless Telecommunications Bureau and now vice president of government affairs at T-Mobile USA Inc.
While the telecom industry is becoming competitive, some aspects still make a separate regulator necessary, according to PFF.
“If you have a sector-specific regulator, they are going to focus on that sector. If that sector doesn’t need to be regulated, they will find a way to regulate it or else they would be out of a job,” countered James Gattuso, regulatory policy fellow at the Heritage Institute, a think tank.
An outgoing regulator, FCC Commissioner Kathleen Abernathy said competition is messy and can confuse customers.
“Competition can confuse consumers since they have to become accustomed to new technologies that may or may not act like older technologies,” said Abernathy. “In a competitive market, some people will pay more for their Rice Krispies. If you pay attention, you will pay less. If you don’t pay attention, you will pay more.”
While Abernathy said she does not agree with all aspects of PFF’s plan, she believes the topic has to be debated.
Abernathy, whose term expired last year, must leave the FCC by the end of the year. She has asked not to be renominated.
The regulatory-framework working group departed from the FTC model in one aspect, concluding that interconnection issues-sometimes the most contentious the FCC faces-may require a different approach.
Sugrue said there should be an absolute right to interconnection, but many free marketers in the room countered that would keep the FCC in the price-setting arena-something these people desperately want to change.
PFF is leading an effort to write a replacement for the Communications Act to be known as the Digital Age Communications Act. The DACA initiative is a set of five working groups dealing with spectrum policy, regulatory framework, institutional reform, universal service/social policy and the federal/state framework. The FTC proposal was presented by the regulatory framework working group.
While some questioned the lack of detail in PFF’s proposed legislative language, PFF President Raymond Gifford said, “An act for the 21st century digital age needed to be short and sweet.”
Not everyone has jumped on the telecommunications-reform bandwagon.
“No matter how much I rail against the current regulatory framework, I know how they work for my company,” said Bill Hunt, regulatory counsel for Level 3 Communications Inc.
