Government Should Adopt Policies to Ensure Competition and Then ‘Move Out of the Way,’ MMTC Panelists Say
The telecom industry is at a “defining moment” that gets to the heart of “the way we used to think” about investment, versus how the industry needs to think about it in the future, said Bob Quinn, AT&T senior vice president of federal regulatory. At a Minority Media and Telecom Council event Wednesday, telecom executives urged lifting legacy regulations they say are counterproductive in an increasingly wireless world. Panelists also called for more spectrum to help narrow the digital divide, and more outreach programs to encourage broadband adoption.
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Quinn compared Verizon’s experience attempting to install FiOS to Google’s fiber project in the Kansas City, Mo., area: In Montgomery County, Md., Google faced a municipal lawsuit that held up deployment for two years. In Kansas City, “the municipality took a fundamentally different approach to that investment” from what local governments usually do, Quinn said. Instead of trying to “extract” things from the company, lawmakers there cleared up the bureaucracy involved with digging up streets, and asked what they could do to “to move out of the way” and make the infrastructure a reality, he said. Verizon finally got to install fiber to homes in Maryland, but “the idea that we don’t have fiber running to every single building in downtown D.C. is crazy,” Quinn said. He called for “an environment that’s friendly for this investment."
Humans have a problem thinking about “large leaps” in technology, said Craig Silliman, senior vice president-public policy and federal government relations at Verizon: Wireless devices are defined by what it’s not -- “It doesn’t have wires!” It similarly took a long time before “horseless carriages” became known as cars, he said. “There’s a danger of incrementalism, of saying what we're developing now is just a slight incremental change, and therefore we just tweak the old rules and apply them to the new.” That will hinder investment and broadband buildout, he said.
Competition gives regulators the freedom to deregulate, said Kathleen Ham, vice president-government affairs at T-Mobile. “The more robust competition there is in the marketplace, the more … the government can step aside.” That’s why the government should adopt policies that ensure competition, she said. T-Mobile is investing substantial amounts in its network, she said. “T-Mobile, armed with LTE, is good for competition.” Competition leads to innovation, and innovation serves the customer base well, she said, pointing out that more than half of T-Mobile’s customers are minorities. The company is trying to “shake things up” and “be disruptive,” she said, touting a new plan that lets people bring other carriers’ phones to T-Mobile. “We think that’s very good for the communities that MMTC cares about."
More spectrum would help narrow the country’s digital divide, said Dean Garfield, president of the Information Technology Industry Council. “Spectrum is an instance where more is more. We need to get more of it out more quickly,” he said. “It’s democratizing.” Garfield also called for technology leaders to make diversity a higher priority in spectrum policy, and in technology generally. Talking to peers about the importance of women on boards, and as “important, viable contributors to our economy,” can have an “incredible impact,” he said. “It resonates. I'm not suggesting regulation necessarily, but using the bully pulpit to make clear that that’s a priority."
The No. 1 reason people don’t subscribe to broadband is that they think they don’t need it, Silliman said. Fernando Laguarda, Time Warner Cable vice president-external affairs, encouraged the government to promote adoption activities. Connect2Compete, which offers low-cost Internet service and computer equipment, is a good start, but there should be more programs, he said. Bret Perkins, Comcast vice president-external and government affairs, said the telecom industry is “at a walk and chew gum moment with regard to this technology.” Too many people haven’t adopted broadband, and haven’t experienced what it can do for quality of life, he said. If people aren’t connected, the pace of technology creation “starts to fall apart,” he said.
Quinn spoke at length about AT&T’s November filing encouraging the creation of an FCC proceeding on the Internet Protocol transition, in which various test wire centers would have some of the legacy regulations lifted (CD Nov 11 p10). There aren’t enough USF dollars to expand broadband everywhere it needs to be, Quinn said, and only by letting go of some of the old public switched telecom network obligations can the government spur private investment. The “old Lily Tomlin switchboard” was a “great technology that lasted us a hundred years,” he said. “We've got to let people retire that technology.”