WASHINGTON-FCC Commissioner Michael Copps issued a clarion call against the deregulatory stance taken by the Federal Communications Commission chaired by Michael Powell.
“I don’t think there will be gaps to be filled in (by wireless) if we make the wrong regulatory decisions now. I think you could find the field of play pretty much occupied by the teams that are already on it, and everybody else trying to get on the field will have a problem. I think government has a responsibility to look into the misuse or potential misuse of power. You don’t have to say that all of these things with 100-percent certainty are going to happen, but I think that if you imbue a person or an organization with power, they will try to exercise that power to its full potential,” said Copps.
Copps was the luncheon speaker at the New America Foundation Thursday.
In a more than 30-minute speech, he did not seem to be much interested in wireless, and even though the New America Foundation’s Michael Calabrese tried to get Copps to put a stake in the ground in favor of unlicensed, he seemed to stick to the battle between cable modems and digital subscriber lines.
“I certainly hope we will keep an eye on the wireless agenda. I think these other technologies have a wonderful promise, wonderful potential. We should be encouraging how we are going to regulate them as common carriers or whatever, or what principles we are going to apply to it is something we have to think about and talk about. I just want us to keep our eye on the goal that I have talked about, which is openness and accessibility and choices and options,” said Copps. “We are not anywhere near the new world of intermodal competition yet. While we are tending these fields and watering these fields, and nurturing these technologies, let’s keep a close eye on the big players and the technology that is with us right now because if we don’t do that, the game could be over before these other technologies could be sprouted to anything close to their full potential.”
