WASHINGTON-Like the communications industries it regulates, the Federal Communications Commission is converging.
Last Thursday, FCC Chairman William Kennard announced the FCC would reform itself along function, not technological sector, lines. “When wireless carriers compete with wireline carriers, when cable companies provide telephone service, when broadcasters transmit data, when you use fixed microwave licenses to transmit video or data and when you can make a local telephone call via a satellite, the world has changed. Over time, we’re going to change, too,” Kennard said.
The announcement of two new bureaus and perhaps a whole-scale revamping of the agency came at a legal seminar held last week that showed after nearly a year in the office “the new FCC” really may become a new organization.
The FCC last week created the Enforcement and Public Information bureaus in what Kennard called the first step in a reorganization by function rather than technological sector.
“It is clear we need to change our structure to become a 21st century agency … I am announcing today that we plan to consolidate the [FCC’s] consumer protection and information functions that are now spread across the agency … These two functions-providing swift and effective enforcement to protect consumers and competition and providing consumers with information about their rights in a competitive environment-are even more critical in a competitive world,” he said.
Kennard warned the reorganization would take time and a congressional blessing. Congressional support for convergence at the agency, if any, will become evident early next year when both the House and Senate are expected to consider FCC reauthorization legislation.
The FCC’s reorganization was punctuated by a panel on new technologies that was given not by bureau chiefs or even bureau staff but leaders of “offices” at the FCC. Function rather than technology always has been a key word for these offices, but in the past real policy making has occurred at the bureau level and not much has been publicly heard from the staff of the offices.
This is changing. Indeed, at the end of the panel, the moderator of the New Technologies Panel, Michele C. Farquhar, former chief of the FCC’s Wireless Telecommunications Bureau, remarked the make-up of the panel would probably be repeated in future seminars.
The panel was comprised of Robert M. Pepper, chief of the FCC’s Office of Plans and Policy, Dale N. Hatfield, chief of the FCC’s Office of Engineering and Technology, Catherine J.K. Sandoval, director of the FCC’s Office of Communications Business Opportunities, and FCC General Counsel Christopher J. Wright. Each of these offices deals with issues from all of the bureaus and all technology sectors.
In addition to creating the two cross-section bureaus, the FCC also is creating a Technical Advisory Committee under Hatfield’s leadership to gain as much outside technical expertise as possible. Creating the Technical Advisory Committee is necessary, both Kennard and Hatfield said, because the FCC has high turnover. It is hoped the committee will help combat this as the FCC deals with new technological issues in the next millennium.
