Federal Communications Commission member Deborah Taylor Tate urged the cellphone industry to tackle emerging challenges – such as protecting children from mobile adult content and battling wireless spam – as carriers take steps to open networks to third-party devices and applications.
“I’m concerned about the unintended consequences of openness,” Tate told attendees at CTIA Wireless 2008.
Among the concerns she flagged were piracy, privacy and the potential foray of pornography and spam into the wireless space, the latter having gained a firm foothold in the wired Internet world.
“Let’s be clear. I’m really not talking about censorship, but I’m talking about empowering parents and caregivers so that they can protect their children,” said Tate. She is one of three Republicans on the GOP-controlled FCC.
Tate, who joined the FCC in early 2006, is awaiting Senate action on President Bush’s nomination of her to a second term.
“We need to protect our children online just as we protect them in the off-line world,” Tate stated. Tate applauded a handful of efforts to make parental controls available in the wireless industry and said she looks forward to hearing an upcoming announcement by CTIA that is expected to lay out a major initiative by top cellular carriers to employ wireless Internet filtering.
Tate does not appear to want federal regulators to dictate how cellular carriers design open platforms, saying she’d rather leave the job to wireless engineers. Indeed, Tate believes pro-market policies best promote competition, innovation and consumer choice in the wireless industry generally. She said she believes such an approach could address the adult content issue confronting parents of young mobile-phone users.
“As the best entrepreneurs have seen, there’s clearly a market for what I call family-friendly services,” Tate said. Nonetheless, she said industry still must take a proactive approach to safeguarding children.
“The industry must address both the rewards [of wireless technology] and the risks to consumers,” Tate stated. Overall, Tate said she embraces ‘regulatory humility’ to ensure rules are technology and platform neutral so as to not favor one company over another.
On the recently completed 700 MHz auction, Tate said some parties wanted smaller licenses and other changes. She said she believes the FCC took a reasoned and balanced approach to auction rules and licensing. Tate said the FCC needs to get back to work to consider D-Block options in the aftermath of the failure to attract a bidder willing pay the $1.3 billion reserve price for the 700 MHz national commercial/public-safety license.
