At one point, expressing his faith in the industry to operate responsibly without close FCC oversight, Powell said, "Ask yourself: If you want something at home, and you want to be able to do this, why should the government have a role that says you can't?"

Discussing a host of issues, Powell repeatedly made the case that his version of the FCC is "passionate" about a free-market, laissez-faire approach to regulation. For example, on the question of the United States catching up to Japan, South Korea and other countries in providing high-speed broadband to every home, Powell said flatly, "This problem will have to be solved by the private market."

By the same token, Powell evinced an animated enthusiasm for the private market to solve the U.S. broadband lag, promising that "every American home" would have broadband connectivity by 2010. "The president says 2007," Powell added, "so we're working a lot harder on this."

Powell said that in most case, any new technology that succeeds, because of sufficient capital and marketing know-how — and without significant government oversight — will naturally prove beneficial to the consumer, to the economy and to society. If there are problems with the technology, Powell noted, government regulators can always step in later to intervene on the consumer's behalf.

"Just deploy," said Powell, "and we'll figure it out."

Powell cited the FCC's hands-off approach to the rapid development of voice-over-Internet Protocol, or VoIP. On this issue, said Powell, "I think you should, for once, be proud of the FCC. The technology was nascent and the province of peer-to-peer geeks two years ago, and we saw it coming." Under sympathetic scrutiny from the FCC, Powell said, VoIP was allowed to emerge unfettered and undelayed. "We had several VoIP proceedings, but they were all about protecting it," said Powell.

Shapiro quizzed Powell on several pressing regulatory issues but got only a handful of clear answers. Powell was equivocal about the FCC position on a "broadcast flag" favored by major content owners — mainly Hollywood studios — that would sharply restrict consumer copying of new digital content broadcasts.

Powell was equally reluctant to assuage anxieties over the legislatively mandated cutoff of all analog broadcast signals by 2006. Delays in the deployment of digital receiving technology, combined with consumer reluctance to buy the more costly digital TV sets, have rendered the 2006 cutoff highly unlikely and politically explosive. Powell said only that, "by the end of 2005," the FCC would take a position on the prospect of millions of American TVs going black some day next year.

Asked about his position about the proper medium for deployment of broadband, an issue that has been simplified in countries such as Japan — where the government mandated fiber-to-the-home — Powell was typically anti-regulatory. He said the FCC's job is no longer a matter of "picking winners and losers in technology." He issued this manifesto: "You're always in trouble in an industry when you start asking government to write your technical standards."

By: DocMemory
Copyright © 2023 CST, Inc. All Rights Reserved