WASHINGTON-FCC Chairman Michael Powell said Wednesday that the actions the Federal Communications Commission has taken on spectrum are one of his greatest accomplishments even as he tried to downplay his rumored imminent departure.
“We took the view that spectrum was in trouble,” Powell told reporters at a press breakfast in explaining why he has placed a high priority on spectrum management. He believes President George W. Bush will win re-election, and he will remain as chairman. “I am still confident that we will still be here.”
Powell took 20 minutes to preach about the benefits of broadband, highlighting his spectrum actions.
“A wire is great and under the right circumstances, it is the best. But if you really want that world where you have information anytime anywhere you have to cover when you are moving, you have to cover when you are in the car, you have to cover when you are walking from point A to point B, you have to cover all kinds of spaces and account for a family’s mobility, a family’s transience, and a family’s preferences and one of those is personalization. To have a device that lives on you or is with you all the time is not really possible with wires. If you want to have the communicator that Dr. Spock is walking around with, you have got to have wireless, and wireless is a major part of the broadband story,” said Powell.
The press breakfast followed a Tuesday appearance at the Federation for Economically Rational Utility Policy where Powell forcefully called for a re-write of the Communications Act, calling the Telecommunications Act of 1996 “dead weight.”
Powell has long called for the end of the stovepipes found in the Communications Act that require differing regulation for wireline, wireless, cable and broadcast.
Congressional leaders have indicated that telecom reform will begin in earnest next year.
Before Powell appeared at the FERUP DC Summit, Steve Largent, chief executive officer of the Cellular Telecommunications & Internet Association, and Stan Sigman, CEO of Cingular Wireless L.L.C., implored the state regulatory audience to look at the growth of the wireless industry before regulating.
Sigman said it was the competition that drove the innovation that meant the subscription predictions for wireless in the early 1980s were so off.
“They looked back and saw how the highly regulated monopolistic industry had grown, and they expected more of the same,” said Sigman. “Competition is the reason why those predictions from the early 1980s were so wrong.”
Sigman said that carriers innovate to keep customers. “In my Bell system days, I thought churn was the making of ice cream.”
Largent said regulation and taxation are the two “speed bumps” that could slow wireless. “What is causing me heartburn is more and more regulation,” he said.
Wireless devices are more powerful than much larger devices of decades ago, said Largent. “The cell phone you have on your waist or in your purse has more computing power than the capsule that landed on the moon,” Largent said.
Largent, a former Republican congressman from Oklahoma, was careful to not offend his audience made up of consumer advocates and state regulators. He even admitted that some taxation-when it is directed for a specific purpose like the gas tax for transportation-is necessary.
“I don’t think regulators are bad people,” said Largent. But “they are creating more problems than they are helping.”
