Ex-FCC official Blair Levin is singling out Commissioner Robert McDowell in Levin’s...
Ex-FCC official Blair Levin is singling out Commissioner Robert McDowell in Levin’s efforts to push the Universal Service Fund away from its traditional support for rural, wireline operators. “In his Wall Street Journal editorials and his Commission statements, [McDowell] has…
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stated his fervent commitment to capitalism and free markets,” Levin said on the Innovation Policy Blog. “I was hoping he would take the same analytic view of universal service. After all, our current system of rate of return regulation -- a system born more than a century ago designed to serve a completely different market -- involves using the government’s power to assess consumers to subsidize private companies and insure their permanent profitability, no matter what changes in technology or consumer preferences there are in the market.” It’s hard to know how to characterize the current system, Levin said: “But you can’t call it capitalism or the free market at work.” Levin told us, “Rob McDowell goes into The Wall Street Journal and talks about free markets, free markets, free markets. He has watched millions of dollars be spent and not said anything.” The FCC has to say at some point, “Here’s what the end point looks like,” Levin said. The McDowell office declined to comment Monday since a USF overhaul proposal is on the sunshine agenda for Tuesday’s open meeting.