Kneuer Warns of Dangers Posed by ‘Knee-Jerk’ Regulation
“Knee-jerk” FCC regulation is the greatest threat to continued broadband rollout, Acting NTIA Dir. John Kneuer said Tues. Answering questions at a Catholic U. telecom symposium, Kneuer took particular issue with comments by Comr. Copps in regard to an Oct. 2004 Commission order for broadband over powerline rules. Copps was the lone member to dissent in part and concur in part to the order.
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“One of the commissioners, who shall remain nameless, concurred but dissented,” Kneuer said. “He objected that they weren’t regulatory enough in the proceeding: ‘What are we going to do about competitive protection? How are we going to provide economic regulation on these guys?’ The immediate reaction to a new technology coming to the marketplace was, ‘How do we regulate it?'”
“That is an old world view of looking at things,” Kneuer said. “It’s a monopolist view of looking at things. The presumption is, if you are a communications technology, you're a monopoly and you need to be subject to economic regulation.”
Kneuer defended the Bush administration against charges that the U.S. lags behind much of the rest of the world in broadband rollout. A recent survey put the U.S. at 16th, he said. “Number 16?” Kneuer said. “We're the largest broadband marketplace in the world… This isn’t just broadband for broadband’s sake. This isn’t to get our numbers up on some… international ranking. This is about our economy and I think if you look at some of the other countries we're being compared to in the broadband space we're the envy of the world in the status of our economy now.”
Provisions in the FCC’s Triennial Review Order loosening broadband regulation had “significant impact,” resulting in more than $6 billion in investments by Verizon, $5 billion by AT&T, Kneuer said. “During the triennial review, all the debate was focused on the old networks, the unbundled network element platform,” he said. “Lost in all that debate was the broadband piece of that, which said, essentially, don’t burden new networks with monopoly economic regulation.”