FCC Eyeing an End to Some Muni Broadband Rules, O'Rielly Says
FCC rules that pre-empt state laws requiring municipal broadband networks have a business plan, plus state and local barriers that hinder private network deployment, are in the agency's crosshairs, Commissioner Mike O'Rielly said Wednesday at a Small Business & Entrepreneurship (SBE) Council-organized symposium on startup entrepreneurship policy issues. He said the FCC is looking negatively at local, state and tribal governments treating small-cell networks the same as macro tower deployments, since per-tower regulatory fees for dense small-cell deployments would be onerously expensive.
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The GOP-controlled FCC is much more small-business-friendly than the previous administration, O'Rielly said. "They didn't approach the issues with the idea there's a cost to everything they did. They just accepted the fate that's the cost of doing business," he said.
O'Rielly said "it's going to take us a little time to ramp up" the proposed Office of Economics and Data (see 1704050047), but the result will be some policies "that probably won't make the cut" because of their costs -- a cost-benefit the agency hasn't done in the past.
Polls of small businesses since late last year are bullish about business prospects, but new firm formation continues to lag as it has since the end of the 2007-09 recession, with the nation about 3.4 million short of where it should be, said SBE Chief Economist Raymond Keating. He said post-recession annual economic growth was retarded by a lack of private sector investment, which dropped last year for the first time since 2009. New firm formation, which collapsed during the Great Recession, is today half of what it was in the 1970s, said Economic Innovation Group co-founder John Lettieri.
Federal policy since the Great Recession heavily focused on avoiding risk, and the pendulum swing toward more embracing of risk is happening slowly, said U.S. Chamber of Commerce Vice President-Small Business Policy Tom Sullivan. Lettieri said there’s a particular need for relief from state and local regulatory structures.
Net neutrality will get upward of 5 million comments (see 1706280037), but lower-profile FCC proceedings that would affect small businesses still don’t get small business input “that would be so beneficial,” O’Rielly said. He personally received 1,000 emails daily about net neutrality, “some of them are extremely colorful … others are helpful and substantive. We’ll try to digest all of them.” He said he stated an opinion on a Communications Act Title II rules rollback, but "I'm willing to be convinced otherwise," and the FCC likely will take action this fall after the comments period ends this summer.
To aid small businesses better, the FTC created a section of its website aimed at them, in plain language, said acting Chairwoman Maureen Ohlhausen. She said the FTC is doing an ongoing rules review in the name of regulatory streamlining, an example being taking comments on possible change to its 1966 picture tube rule governing the advertising of screen sizes.