Abernathy: FCC must evolve with the times

WASHINGTON DC– FCC Commissioner Kathleen Abernathy told attendees of The Yankee Group’s telecom forum yesterday that the commission must keep pace with technological changes and marketplace developments, identify and eliminate barriers to infrastructure investment and facilitate the deployment of innovative new services in order to stay true to the vision laid out by Congress when it enacted the Telecom Act.

Technology has developed so rapidly, and continues to develop at such a frenetic pace, that policies developed as recently as five years ago “may represent exactly the wrong approach today,” she said.

“Rather than clinging to old paradigms, we should set those paradigms aside when they cease to be of use,” Abernathy said. “We can’t survive and remain relevant if we think of ourselves as a typewriter repair shop” in a computer world.

Abernathy acknowledged that the commission has been slow in conducting the various proceedings currently open before it, including the triennial review of the unbundled network element platform and the wireline and broadband rulemakings. She said she hopes that this work will be completed by December, but more realistically in early January.

“We’re not going to be getting any new information that’s meaningful at this point,” Abernathy said. “If we keep looking for the perfect answer, it will be another two years before we’re done, and the industry will have passed us by.”

She said the commission’s efforts have been hamstrung by its structure – “We’re not set up for efficiency” – and the vacancy created by the resignation of Commissioner Gloria Tristani more than a year ago. But she quickly added that she wasn’t making excuses. “We should have had these out,” she said.

Regardless of when the commission concludes the triennial review and the rulemakings, the work is just beginning, Abernathy added.

“No matter what we do, there will be a whole slew of future NPRMs (notices of proposed rulemaking) as we try to get our arms around a regulatory framework,” she said.

Abernathy defended the Telecom Act, which has come under attack largely because Congress failed to define data services when it drafted the legislation. Abernathy asserted that consumers have much more choice and are benefiting from considerably lower prices than in 1996, when the legislation was enacted. She also said Congress anticipated technologies would evolve and wisely included the biennial review process in order to give the commission an opportunity to react to these changes.

She said the FCC has had to adapt as well. Recently, the commission changed its review processes to make them more productive. Previously, staff made recommendations to the commissioners regarding what should be reviewed, and the FCC invited comment on those items, Abernathy said. Now, requests for comment go out for everything that might impact the public. This results in much more input that must be sifted and analyzed, but Abernathy believes the extra work will pay off.

“Hopefully, this will result in proceedings that have more teeth in them,” she said.