Powell: New Broadband-Deployment Goals
By Ted Hearn -- Multichannel News, 10/23/2001 1:37:00 PM
In the next few years, the Federal Communications Commission is planning to place greater emphasis on promoting multiple providers of high-speed data in an environment marked by minimal regulation.
In calling for a new regulatory approach, FCC chairman Michael Powell said Tuesday that the agency hoped to spur the deployment of broadband facilities nationally -- a step that would likely involve overhauling rules adopted in implementing the Telecommunications Act of 1996 before his arrival at the agency in 1997.
Speaking to reporters at FCC headquarters, Republican Powell outlined a broad agenda with strong hints as to his preferences, but he refrained from stating when the FCC would act or from promising specific outcomes in various rulemakings already in progress or set to be launched.
But Powell's remarks at least contained clues that he prefers to allow cable operators to provide high-speed access without providing forced access to competitors and to allow phone companies to challenge cable operators in that arena under the same regulatory regime.
'I think broadband should exist in a minimally regulated space,' Powell said. 'We should limit regulatory costs and regulatory uncertainty.'
Powell suggested a role for regulation based on the presence of 'demonstrable anti-competitive risks and discriminatory provisioning.'
Apparently, his assumption is that a competitive broadband market would give network owners an incentive to reach out to unaffiliated content providers that offer applications that are popular with consumers, rather than limiting consumer choice to their affiliated services.
The FCC, Powell said, would move 'expeditiously' on whether cable operators and phone companies have to provide competing Internet-service providers with access to their advanced networks.
Powell also indicated that he wants to shift the commission away from promoting the resale of local phone service and the leasing of network elements and toward a model requiring competitors to build their own facilities.
'Facilities-based competition is the ultimate objective,' said Powell, who pointed to cable-provided local phone service as an example of a competitor relying on its own network.
Scott Cleland, a telecommunications analyst with The Precursor Group, said Powell's program would favor the Baby Bell phone companies in their campaign to obtain broadband deregulation -- something cable already enjoys.
'Cable has the most benign regulatory environment in over a decade, and that doesn't look to change. The Bells have the most nano-regulatory environment in their history and it looks like the trend is toward less regulation,' Cleland said.
Legg Mason Wood Walker Inc. telecommunications analyst Blair Levin said Powell's remarks confirmed his past support for competition over regulation. He added that Powell was less clear about the policies the agency would actually adopt in his quest to move the agency in a new direction.
'He did not make a policy cut in his presentation,' Levin said. 'The timing of that direction and the details of that direction, I am not sure we know that much more.'
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