A little faux consumer advocate revisionist history....
Former FCC boss Kevin Martin has broken his silence this week as the newly reformed FCC gets ready to unveil their national broadband plan. He's also apparently busily engaging in some revisionist history, telling attendees of a Seattle breakfast event this week that he was a staunch supporter of consumer rights and of "open access" broadband policies during his tenure. Martin gets a little help from
mocoNews, which informs its readers that Martin played a big role in getting Verizon Wireless to open up their network:
Open access is a term Martin knows all about. During his stint as FCC Chairman, he helped push through rules in a spectrum auction that would require the winner—in this case, Verizon Wireless—to ensure open access to its network. While vague, it means that Verizon won’t be able to limit users, devices or applications on the network. However, Verizon has just started to build-out its 4G network, so it’s still unclear how that will be practiced. Martin said.
The "open access" requirements Martin is talking about were included as conditions for 2008's 700 MHz AWS spectrum auction. The problem is, those conditions were intentionally
packed with loopholes, giving Verizon or AT&T lawyers ample opportunity to completely ignore them. Which brings us to Martin's other main point this week: a lack of power at the FCC. According to Martin, the agency increasingly has less and less authority to act in the telecom sector:
The FCC’s “direct authority is less and less the more it gets pushed out from the carriers. It has ways, but I think it’s more difficult…This was an issue when I was there, and there’s a balance between protecting a consumer’s rights and having access to the internet, and recognizing that carriers have to manage their networks…I think that you do need to find the appropriate balances and it gets more difficult the further outside the carrier you get."
The problem again is, Martin really wasn't looking for "balance," as the majority of his tenure focused on giving the baby bells and endless list of regulatory favors and passing rules that
freed them from government oversight. Consumer advocacy, regardless of which party controls the FCC, has been little more than lip service. Meanwhile, Martin's complaints about the FCC being a policy wimp essentially mirror recent comments by FCC broadband plan director Blair Levin, who last week informed the world the FCC was
essentially too weak to impose true open access conditions on carriers.
The problem is, nobody at the FCC seems eager to addresses the FCC's role in this steady erosion of authority. Both parties have made the FCC's primary purpose to please the nation's wealthiest carriers, and not coincidentally, the FCC now finds itself complaining it lacks the authority to adequately police the sector. To have both Martin and Levin now throwing up their hands in confused wonder at the agency's lack of authority ignores both reality and the FCC's own role in allowing this to happen.
UpdateHere's a little addendum brought to our attention by user MAR_03_2002: Kevin Martin is apparently working
with the labor unions in their fight against the NBC Universal Comcast merger. While traditionally
very friendly to the baby bells, the cable industry long believed that Martin had it out for them.
FCC power drain mostly thru lost court decisions
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