Broadband providers responded negatively to the release of a Federal Communications Commission Notice of Inquiry Thursday that seeks comments on a new legal framework for governing broadband access. The goal is to correct a recent decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals that cast doubt on whether the FCC has authority to regulate broadband as it is currently classified.
Among other things, the FCC is considering whether to reclassify broadband as a telecommunications service, which would give the commission the regulatory authority it needs to fully implement its national broadband plan. However, AT&T Senior Executive Vice President Jim Cicconi called the proposal “troubling and, in many respects, unsettling.”
Cicconi believes the proposal will create investment uncertainty at a time when certainty is most needed, damage jobs in a period of far-too-high unemployment, and even undermine the FCC’s own goals. “AT&T continues to feel congressional action is far preferable, and far less risky to jobs and investment,” Cicconi wrote in a blog.
Searching for a Third Way
FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski said he fully supports a congressional effort to update the Communications Act in a way that would establish a broadband framework that promotes investment and innovation, fosters competition, and empowers consumers. In view of the appeals court decision, however, he said the FCC has an obligation to move forward with an open, constructive public-comment inquiry. “The congressional and FCC processes are complementary,” Genachowski said.
He also observed that the FCC’s proposals include a “third way” that would avoid the extremes of either forcing service providers to conform with the FCC’s legacy phone regulations or eliminate FCC oversight of broadband.
“It’s not hard to understand why companies subject to an agency’s oversight would prefer no oversight at all if they had the chance,” Genachowski said. “But a system of checks and balances in the communications sector…