FCC Waging War on Private Investment in Infrastructure, AT&T Lobbyist Says
The current FCC appears to be waging a “war” against private infrastructure investment, Bob Quinn, AT&T senior vice president-federal regulatory, said Tuesday in a blog post. Quinn cited reports that the agency is sending out “SWAT” teams of FCC staffers…
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“to preach the use” of USF dollars “to build government-owned and operated broadband infrastructure in rural and non-rural areas,” and pointed to the agency’s enhanced look at special access rates. “To be clear, we at AT&T have no problem with government-owned networks in areas where there has been a market failure because the economics for the private sector just don’t work,” Quinn wrote. “Unfortunately, the FCC’s advocacy here … doesn’t appear to be limited to circumstances of market failure.” In the past, “incenting all companies to build broadband was THE goal of all policymakers. It doesn’t feel that way anymore,” he said. The FCC started down this “circa-1980’s regulatory journey” three years ago, he said. “I fretted that these moves signaled its intent to abandon policies that were designed to, and did, result in significant broadband infrastructure investment in the U.S. I called the FCC’s moves the Bridge to Nowhere. My point then, and still is, that the FCC should be focused on establishing policies that lead to more fiber and broadband infrastructure investment in this country. ... It’s high time the FCC got serious about policies that incent that kind of investment.”