The most powerful FCC chairman ever

There continues to be significant speculation about what wireless and other telecom sectors can expect from the Federal Communications Commission in the Obama era. Billions upon billions of dollars are at stake, not to mention safety of life and property in how telecom regulations are written and rewritten.
Julius Genachowski is unofficially the official pick of the president to chair the FCC. Obama has tapped Michael Copps, the senior Democrat on the FCC, to head the agency until the formalities of actually appointing Genachowski to the post and winning Senate confirmation are dispensed with.
Perhaps no FCC chairman has ever had the kind of close, personal ties to a U.S. president as Genachowski has with Obama. They were classmates at Harvard Law School, each sharing not-so-common-roll-off-the-tongue last names, analogous family histories and a love of pickup basketball. Both are tech savvy, an attribute leveraged to the hilt in fundraising and campaigning via cellphone text messaging and the Internet. Genachowski, a tech entrepreneur who was an aide to former FCC chairman Reed Hundt, was among the elite, prolific fundraisers in Obama’s presidential campaign. Obama picked Genachowski as one his top tech advisors on his transition team.
What might such a close relationship between Obama and the head of an independent regulatory agency mean?
For starters, one industry insider suggested well-heeled telecom companies could find it harder to get relief from the White House when they run into roadblocks at the FCC. He predicted lobbyists simply won’t be able to get to first base if they attempt a work-around strategy. That could create problems for industry titans like Verizon Communications Inc. and AT&T Inc., parent firms of the nation’s two largest mobile-phone carriers, cable TV giants and media moguls if Genachowski pursues policies fostering open, omnipresent broadband throughout the land.
But telecom policy does not exist in a vacuum. As such, the most pronounced and tangible changes at the FCC are apt to be manifested in the process of policymaking itself. It is the prelude to writing rules of the road that are legally sustainable and help consumers without picking market winners and losers in a predetermined, politically-connived fashion. Integrity and fairness matter. It is about injecting the kind of transparency Obama says he wants to overlay on government, the kind the House Commerce Committee said was sorely missing in the Bush administration under former FCC head Kevin Martin. In fairness to the ex-chairman, Martin-bashing became so utterly fashionable and unforgiving that objectivity largely evaporated into the same ether where wireless signals travel.
Whether Genachowski can loosen lobbyists’ grip on the FCC is uncertain. It hasn’t been done before, seeing that influence-wielding is so ingrained in and endemic to the organic political culture of official Washington. Good luck.
In reality, Genachowski may find his real clout lies not with his Obama connection but rather with one-to-one personal skills and the power of technology. It lies in his ability to lift the morale of a down-trodden FCC, delegating authority to trusted staff who feel free to disagree and possibly reinventing the FCC Web site so as to accommodate those outside the Beltway.
In today’s world, a Web site is the face and front door of organizations public and private alike. It is the medium through which most people interact to obtain information and register their views. It should (and can) be more than a relatively passive venue that posts press releases and archives public comments. Indeed, if redesigned, the FCC Web site could be the invaluable sixth man on Genachowski’s five-member team at the FCC.