Spectrum Management Crucial in Telecom Rewrite, NetCompetition Head Says
A Capitol Hill telecom rewrite could and should include many priorities that could gain bipartisan support, said panelists at a Wednesday Hill event hosted by NetCompetition, whose members include major ISPs and associations like CTIA, NCTA and USTelecom. “We’re…
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all competing in this same space,” Minority Media and Telecommunications Council Vice President Nicol Turner-Lee said, adding that the old Communications Act titles don’t necessarily make sense anymore. “When you have an obsolete law, it causes problems,” NetCompetition Chairman Scott Cleland said. He said he sees several problems with current telecom law, citing an anti-innovation bias, uncertain and eroding FCC regulatory authority and a decay of the public switched telephone network (PSTN), with the “fiscal insanity” of a fifth of consumers paying to back the network. Spectrum management -- or lack thereof -- is in a “scandalous” state, Cleland said. “Who’s hoarding most of it? It’s the federal government,” he said, lamenting lack of “coherent policy” and “no formal spectrum budget process.” Internet Innovation Alliance honorary co-chair Rick Boucher, a former Democratic chairman of the House Communications Subcommittee, repeated his backing for a rewrite, citing the unsustainable PSTN and a need to eliminate barriers. “Let’s find a creative way to get [spectrum] on the auction block a lot faster,” Boucher said, expressing pleasant shock at the AWS-3 spectrum auction having surpassed $40 billion in bids. Several panelists, including ex-FCC Commissioner Robert McDowell and Free State Foundation President Randolph May, cited the trouble with the Communications Act silos, regulating different types of industries that offer similar services with different rules.