Congress, FCC Showdown Looming

Members of Congress are scheduled for a showdown tomorrow with the Federal Communications Commission over the ailing telecommunications sector.

The hearing will come six days after the top telecom regulator made the most significant policy changes in telephone and broadband regulations since Congress passed the Telecommunications Act of 1996.

The Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet, which is a part of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, will meet 10 a.m. Wednesday in Washington D.C.

Press officers representing several members of the telecom subcommittee could not say immediately Tuesday how the Congressional representatives viewed the FCC’s ruling.

However, Billy Tauzin, (R-La.), who is chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, last week blasted the FCC over its decision to preserve regulations that allow companies such as AT&T Corp. to provide consumers and small businesses local phone service by leasing the incumbent Bell networks at deep discounts.

“Today’s decision is another body blow to the American economy,” he said in a statement issued Feb. 20. “Ironically, as president Bush campaigned around the country on behalf of a promising new program to create more jobs and more opportunities, a renegade Republican at the FCC assured the continuation of a tired old program that will only create more layoffs and more misery for working families in the future.”

FCC Commissioner Kevin J. Martin, a Republican, played a pivotal role in last week’s decision by rallying the support of his colleagues Michael J. Copps and Jonathan S. Adelstein, two Democrats. The three commissioners voted last Thursday to support a national finding that competitive phone companies would be impaired without the current phone regulations, and they granted state public utility commissions the ultimate role to determine whether and where there is sufficient competition to ease the phone regulations on the Bells.

The order will be published in the Federal Register in a number of weeks, a top FCC official said yesterday.

Tauzin reacted to the decision with harsh criticism of the agency where Chairman Michael K. Powell failed to gain a majority vote to deregulate the Bells in the local phone market. Powell, who is the son of Secretary of State Colin Powell, had the support of only FCC Commissioner Kathleen Q. Abernathy.

“Clearly this marks a low point for the FCC,” Tauzin said. “Despite Chairman Powell’s best efforts and those of Commissioner Kathleen Abernathy, regulatory reform has been stabbed in the back. A palace coup led by Commissioner Kevin Martin has breathed new life into the dying era of big government control over US telecommunications policy. Market forced once again have been shackled by political forces.”

"But there is some hope. Just like the rules crafted by Mr. Martin’s ideological brothers, Reed Hundt and Bill Kennard (former FCC chairmen), I believe this latest government-interventionist policy is destined for the judicial junk pile. The scheme adopted today abdicates the FCC’s statutory responsibility and ignores the pervasive deployment of circuit switching. Fortunately, the courts have a better understanding of the Telecommunications Act than Mr. Martin and his pro-regulatory soulmates at the FCC.

“Finally today’s decision once again points out the urgent need for Congress to enact new legislation designed to promote real – not phony – competition in the marketplace. Given the FCC’s lack of leadership I am now prepared to immediately begin that debate.”

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