NTCA throws support behind Adelstein

President Bush announced on Friday he would re-nominate Democratic commissioner Jonathan Adelstein for another five-year term at the Federal Communications Commission. Representatives for rural telecom providers are all smiles.

Dan Mitchell, vice president of legal and industry affairs at the National Telecommunications Cooperative Association (NTCA), said in a statement released the same day that the association was extremely pleased that Commissioner Adelstein has been nominated for another term.

“He was instrumental in helping to advance the agenda of rural telecom providers during his seven years as senior telecommunications aide to Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle (D-S.D.),” Mitchell said. “The NTCA worked closely with him on Capitol Hill and has furthered that relationship during his tenure at the FCC.”

The NTCA lobbied hard for Adelstein when he was first nominated in 2004 and consider him a leading voice on the commission for small communications providers.

"We look forward to many additional opportunities to work with Commissioner Adelstein as the FCC prepares to tackle critical issues including universal service and inter-carrier compensation reform as well as wireless and video matters,” Mitchell said.

Adelstein has led a recent wave of open criticism of FCC Chairman Kevin Martin, accusing him of burdening small cable operators with unnecessary regulation that does not similarly apply to the big cable or telecom players. He fought Martin’s proposal to ban cable providers from compressing the signals of digital TV stations that have mandatory carriage rights.

“We cannot achieve our goal of promoting rural broadband if the [FCC] forces small rural cable operators to use their limited capacity for uses other than what the market and their customers demand, including broadband,” Adelstein said in the most recent triennial report to Congress..

Many rural telcos also operate small cable companies.

The NTCA has accused Martin of manipulating data that would allow the commission to exert more regulatory control over cable companies. A rule in the Communications Act known as the 70/70 rule—based on 70% of consumers having access to cable and then 70% actually subscribing to it—calls for more FCC oversight once both criteria have been met.

Using data from Warren Communications that showed subscription rates at 71.4%, Martin declared the threshold reached and said the commission could increase cable regulation. The NTCA said other sources of data traditionally used by the FCC, which showed subscription rates to be well below 70%, were ignored.