WASHINGTON-One of the core goals of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in the 21st century is to effectively manage radio-frequency spectrum, the FCC said recently in a draft strategic report it sent to the U.S. Congress. To accomplish this, the commission plans to restructure its operations along functional lines rather than by industry sector by 2003.
In other words, the FCC’s Wireless Telecommunications Bureau (WTB) will cease to exist.
“With this plan, the FCC is meeting the challenge of reinventing itself to keep pace with the rapidly changing communications industry landscape … It will allow the FCC to enter the next century able to respond fully and quickly to emerging technologies and the inexorable movement from regulation to competition,” said FCC Chairman William Kennard.
WTB functions will be combined with the same functions from the FCC’s Common Carrier Bureau (CCB) to form a policy bureau and a licensing bureau.
The FCC will begin this process by “selecting one of our current technology-specific bureaus as a test case. We will restructure this bureau into a prototype of the eventual agencywide structure,” according to the report.
The FCC’s International Bureau, which has the lead on satellite issues and preparations for the 2000 World Radio Conference, will remain in its current form.
Kennard announced last fall that he was reorganizing the agency to place all enforcement and consumer-information activities into two bureaus. This action is still awaiting congressional approval.
