Spectrum of Greed

Kevin Martin announced his retirement yesterday, well timed considering the Obama administration’s announcement of his successor a couple of days earlier.  Better to not let the door hit you in the ass on the way out.  No one can blame him for sticking around in case his job really wasn’t in jeopardy after all, but that has been resolved.  In his speech recognizing Mr. Martin’s many accomplishments while serving as the FCC Chair, Mike Copps made a remark I found astonishing;

“We should also remember that those High Noon moments at the Commission, when the cameras pack this room, the media is hanging on every uttered word and perceived nuance, and everyone is waiting to see who is going to draw their Colt 45 first, are not the daily norm here.  Probably 90 per cent or more of what the Commission decides is decided through consensus.  Our discussions are not duels in the sun, but more often searches for understanding the facts of a case, the meaning of a statute, or the arcania of legislative history.” 

I don’t know about you, but I think with this one piece of prose, Mr. Copp has zeroed in on several of the most damning behaviors of this office.  First, anyone that is looking at their work as a ‘High Noon’ moment and is romantisicing about Colt 45 gunfights is probably not too well focused on the actual impacts of what they are doing with those high noon decision speeches.  It sounds like they are more interested in how the drama of the moment will be experienced.  Then the comment that despite this drama, the vast majority of their time is spend on searches for understanding facts, meanings of statutes (someone else’s decision) or the arcania of legislative history.  Sounds like a whip saw between one extreme of incompetence and another, rather than the strategic role this office needs to provide and cannot.

That is NOT how I want to manage the innovative economy of  America’s broadband future - trying to understand the arcana of legislative history.  Tradition unhampered by progress is not a formula for a robust broadband economy.  Let’s stop trying to understand what they meant when they could not predict the future and made statements that are no longer relevant and simply get on with creating a robust wireless and wired broadband economy.

It will be interesting to see where Mr. Martin surfaces in a few months, after the publicity light is no longer focused on the Federal Communication Circus.  One of the companies that gained significant business advantage under his watch is a likely location.  Former FCC Chairs routinely resurface as consultants in the industry they have been regulating.  In order to make sure that you have a gentle landing, it is always prudent to not rule with too harsh a hand, so that you have a soft landing in the private sector to look forward to.  This is a time honored tradition that in no way interferes with the mandate of regulating the companies that are their future employers with only the public interest in mind.  Naturally the companies being regulated also have only the public’s interest in mind, so there is very little friction in this regard.

Of course, the big news is the $6 Billion dollar windfall to the broadband economy coming out of the new Obama Economic Stimulus package.  While a lot of detail has yet to be disclosed, the shape of the initial package wording indicates that the majority of the funding will be allocated to bringing the 5 to 10% of the American rural population without broadband into the fold.

Of course, they will need to change the definition of ‘broadband’ from the constipated 200k definition it has been historically to something that will actually support ecommerce, education and healthcare in today’s internet performance metrics. Some existing providers are lobbying for 1.5Meg as the new broadband definition, since they are already providing that level of speed to a majority of their customers.  This is capitalism in action - optimize profit from existing investment before even dreaming of expending funds to upgrade infrastructure.  Then wail convincingly of the pain of expansion so that help will be offered.

The other ironic part of this is that while the incumbent carriers stand with hat in hand to explain their urgent need for this additional funding to expand their network, less than ten months back almost $20 Billion was wagered by these same incumbent carriers to purchase wireless spectrum that is ideal for just such rural areas as everyone agrees needs to be served.  Seems like the well intentioned providers must have already been planning an altruistic enhancement of our infrastructure, and just ran a little low on funds because of the economic meltdown the rest of us are suffering from.

Administrators for the broadband package will need to think about attaching some transparency and accountability to the money not only be defining how fast broadband should be, but also by requiring providers to either recognize that they are getting federal assistance to build infrastructure, and so they should be required to sign non-compete agreements regarding providing content on that infrastructure.

The entire net neutrality issue stems from the fact that we have the fox guarding the hen house.  ISP’s are gatekeepers and infrastructure providers.  They enable ecommerce.  If we also allow them to be competitors to provide content on the networks they manage, it would be insane for anyone to think that they could approach managing their content and their competitors objectively.  Of course they will have an advantage, no matter what rules are placed on them.  The sooner we provide common sense guidelines for this industry, the faster we can get it moving at the speed it should be - the speed of light.

FCC isn’t the only problem - congress ties their hands while holding out their own.