As we noted yesterday, the GOP this week urged FCC boss Tom Wheeler to pause all FCC policy making and effectively wait for President-elect Trump to take office on January 20. The chairs of the House Energy & Commerce Committee and Communications Subcommittee have officially asked FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler to avoid trying to implement these or any other "controversial" efforts in his final months in office. Note: everything Wheeler has implemented, including net neutrality, is "controversial" to the GOP.
Wheeler was quick to oblige, the FCC issuing an
update yesterday stating that nearly all of the items on the FCC's agenda had been wiped.
Those items included a number of things the FCC under a new administration would have to ponder anyway, including efforts to further standardize voice over LTE roaming standards. The clean slate also eliminating FCC policy making on funding deployment of wireless broadband to the rural areas the GOP claims to be concerned about, something that annoyed consumer groups and lawmakers like Senator Ron Wyden.
"The FCC must fulfill its responsibility to provide a lifeline to rural communities and a connection to the global economy," Wyden said in a statement reacting to the FCC effectively shutting down. "Wireless cell service and broadband internet spur economic opportunity, improve public safety and increase educational outcomes for rural Americans. Any delay causes these rural communities to wait even longer for help."
The move isn't unique. Republican FCC boss Kevin Martin froze all government policy ahead of an incoming Obama administration. But consumer groups note that many of the frozen action items were things completed after years of work and discussion with the sector.
"While respecting the tradition that the FCC should generally wait for the new administration before acting on any new initiatives, these items were essentially completed and ready to move," consumer group Public Knowledge said of the FCC's decision. "It seems absurd that if Chairman Wheeler had scheduled the meeting on election day, we would have already resolved the decade-old proceeding on legacy business data services pricing."
For his part, Wheeler issued a statement saying that the FCC has yet to be contacted by the Trump administration, but his goal was an efficient transfer of power. Wheeler also was quick to point out that his policies were only considered "controversial" because giant companies like AT&T, Comcast and Verizon didn't like them.
"All of these matters are so-called 'controversial' because they are opposed principally by the largest incumbent firms in the sector," Wheeler says. "As the deferred items reflect, when so-called controversy is the result of choosing between the broader common good or those incumbents preferring the status quo, I believe the public interest should prevail."
Despite Wheeler's lobbying past he was generally seen as a populist hero for standing up to incumbent ISPs and passing net neutrality rules. Ironic then that the GOP appears poised to gut most of the progress made by Wheeler under the banner of populist reform.