WASHINGTON-The Progress & Freedom Foundation said Thursday that state agencies should be given greater latitude on telecommunications social policy, but less on economic regulation.
“The advent of digital technologies in general and the Internet in particular challenges the legal distinctions embodied in the Telecommunications Act of 1996. On account of the Internet’s transformative effect on communications markets and the clear trend of technological convergence, the historic distinctions between interstate and intrastate services are evaporating. Moreover, given that Internet services-such as Voice over Internet Protocol-are national (and even international) in scope, there are increasing risks associated with allowing states to regulate telecommunications outside a unifying federal-regulatory regime. For social-policy concerns, however, there is an increasing recognition that matters ranging from universal-service concerns to consumer fraud to enhanced 911 and emergency services will require the involvement of state and local authorities,” reads the preliminary report from the DACA Federal-State Framework Working Group. DACA, the Digital Age Communications Act, is the PFF initiative to re-write communications policy.
The report said that clear distinctions were left out of the telecom act, thus leading to legal wrangling.
“In the case of the responsibilities assigned to federal, state and local entities, the lack of careful thinking in developing the telecom act led to legal uncertainty, tension between the different governmental authorities and continuing litigation,” according to the report.
The DACA initiative is a set of five working groups dealing with spectrum policy, regulatory framework, institutional reform, universal service/social policy and the federal/state framework. The regulatory framework working group last month proposed converting the Federal Communications Commission into a regulator focused on competition, modeling the agency after the Federal Trade Commission.
