Tony Clark, who was recently appointed president of the National Association of Regulatory Commissioners, should bring a strong understanding of rural telecom issues to his new position. His experience includes 10 years as North Dakota public service commissioner, as well as previous work in the North Dakota state government.

But despite his rural state roots, Clark demonstrated in an interview today with Connected Planet that he aims to balance the needs and interests of small and large states in his new role.

Telecom priorities

Connected Planet: What are some of the state regulators’ chief concerns with regard to telecom?

Tony Clark: One thing about telecom policy is that every state is a bit different. Generally speaking what we’re concerned about is upholding our end of the telecom act, to do what we can to make sure we have world class communications services and to make them available as widely as possible and at roughly comparable rates regardless of where people live.

Tough on traffic pumping

Connected Planet: NARUC recently passed a resolution encouraging the FCC to address the traffic pumping issue. Why did you feel it was important to pass this resolution?

Tony Clark: We felt with this particular one the issues were pretty clear and it was something that could be taken up right away. There are lots of broader issues involving inter-carrier compensation but this was a transparently abusive arbitrage scheme and we felt it should be taken care of first and shouldn’t have to wait for the rest of inter-carrier compensation reform.

Seeking stimulus oversight

Connected Planet: You also passed a resolution asking Congress to make money available to oversee the broadband stimulus projects. Same question there. Why is that so important to state regulators?

Tony Clark: State regulators are like everyone else. They fall out on different sides about whether they thought the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act was good or not. But regardless of where they came down, everyone had an interest in ensuring once the money was obligated that it was spent wisely and that taxpayers are getting a net benefit. We want to make sure the state regulators have the ability to do that.

An influential organization?

Connected Planet: Historically have organizations such as the FCC and Congress been swayed by resolutions passed by NARUC?

Tony Clark: There is evidence that they have. There certainly are some issues we speak to that are huge broad issues, and a resolution from NARUC may not be the one that puts them over the top. But where we can be especially effective is where we can be an honest broker [of information] on discrete and specific issues.

NARUC was one of the first actors to talk about slamming rules and ways we could partner with the FCC to ensure those rules were enforced throughout the country. Last quarter the FCC granted a request by NARUC members Kansas and Nebraska to allow the assessment of VOIP providers for state universal service programs.

Connected Planet: What are NARUC’s primary avenues for influencing telecom policy?

Tony Clark: Sometimes it’s court and agency pleadings. NARUC staff may file briefs. Sometimes commissioners in the FCC have an ongoing relationship with a commissioner at the state level. Commissioner Clyburn was a former South Carolina commissioner. So it runs the gamut from formal processes to informal ones.

Connected Planet: Does NARUC influence or interface in any formal way with the state regulators that are on the Joint Board of state and federal regulatory commissioners?

Tony Clark: The president of NARUC appoints the state members of the joint board. But once they’re on the board, there’s not any specific oversight or influence over them. Especially on things like Universal Service, it’s typical that NARUC wouldn’t have a specific nationwide recommendation. It’s very much a geographic and regional issue.

The smart grid

Connected Planet: As regulators of power companies, NARUC members will be involved in the Smart Grid. You also regulate telcos who may be involved there, too. It seems like NARUC is in a unique position to help ensure those industries can work well together. What do you see your involvement being there?

Tony Clark: We sit at the nexus of a lot of industries that cross paths on this issue. It’s a whole set of issues that state commissioners are going to be dealing with. [One move is to] set up a smart grid work group to handle questions we’re getting from industry and Capitol Hill . . . about smart grid and what it means.

Some challenges are more related to the electric industry, things like cost recovery. Commissioners are on the spot because people are hearing about the things smart grid can do. On the other hand, these are very expensive projects. Someone has to demand good cost/benefit analysis and it’s the commissions that have to deal with that.

There are also issues about security, critical infrastructure protection and user privacy. Those are all very important and a lot of that gets into telecommunications—who has access and who owns that information.

Then there’s the whole issue of technology standards. The reason it’s important to state commissioners isn’t that we’re going to be the engineers that are writing the standards. A technical standard for smart grid eventually becomes a commercial standard and to the extent that we’re talking about devices in consumers’ homes, you’re interfacing with the consumer rate structure and that’s clearly within our scope.

[Things are] converging to make this one of the major issues for state commissioners and one we’ll be grappling with for many year.

Communication is key

Connected Planet: What goals would you like to achieve as president of NARUC?

Tony Clark: The one I’ve set for our association is to have NARUC help state commissioners . . . develop specific strategies to ensure a better job communicating with all our stakeholders. State commissioners are involved in [several] sectors, including energy, telecom and [others.] They face an incredible set of challenges . . . because there is a significant level of uncertainty that we haven’t always had in the past. Communicating these challenges to Congress, consumers and industry stakeholders is good strategic policy for NARUC to have.