FCC redefinition of 1996 Telecom Act

["Laina Raveendran Greene" <laina@getit.org>]

Dear APPLers,

For those of you who follow and are interested in telecom regulations,
you may want to follow the proceedings at the Senate Committee on the
telecom industry with the 5 FCC commissioners. I managed to watch it on
CSPAN here in the US and it was very interesting. 

The sentiment seems to be that while the 1996 Act was needed given that
the preceeding Act was dated 1935, the 1996 does not take into account
many of the convergence and industry consolidation issues and has not
led to more competition and lower prices. Where new technologies was
concerned, many of the senators were intrigued with Wi-FI and even the
FCC Chair, Michael Powell, was quite aware of Wi-fi to be more than
hotspot or WLAN technology. The debate however focused on more heavily
on issues such as the competition landscape, the concern for
consolidation the marketplace, protecting indencency from the
information highways, cross ownership of media, etc. 

>From what I learnt, this debate will be going on for the next few
months. While the FCC will also see how it can clamp down on
anticompetitive behaviour and other areas within their jurisdiction,
Congress will be reviewing new Bills such as a broadband bill being
placed on the table. Many of the senators are from the panel that helped
craft the 1996 Act so it is interesting to see how they see future
changes.

For those countries thinking of adopting the FCC model, it will be
useful to follow these debates to see how it is finetuned and refined.
Many in the discussion felt that the 1996 has not necessarily led to
more competition and lower prices for consumers (consumers, many
Senators felt, should not be forgotten in these debates). Universal
service obligation and the depletion of the USO fund was also discussed.

Laina

PS- check out also the accusation by an organization in the Americas
that countries such as Japan, Singapore, Hong Kong, etc are not living
up to their WTO commitments.