A Faster, More Responsive FCC?

Establishing the FCC's new Enforcement Bureau marks an initial attempt at streamlining the agency's decision-making process to fit Chairman William Kennard's Strategic Plan for the 21st Century. But not everyone is convinced that the new structure will mean quicker decisions.

The new Enforcement Bureau is the primary enforcer for wireline and wireless. It consolidates the enforcement functions of the Common Carrier, Compliance and Information, Mass Media and Wireless Telecommunications bureaus. Consumer, market-disputes, technical and public-safety divisions operate separately under the enforcement umbrella.

Another new bureau, Consumer Information, consolidates the Gettysburg call center, Office of Public Services and Reference Operations. Ensuring commission compliance with disabilities laws under Sec. 504 of the Rehabilitation Act is its chief duty.

"All of these things were fairly strung out," said John Winston, Consumer Information Bureau assistant chief. "It's now more centrally focused on being fast and efficient by bringing all of our forces to bear on an issue."

Although restructuring FCC enforcement by functional tasks is welcomed industrywide, acceptance often is tempered with skepticism.

"The problem from a practical perspective is that they've created another layer of bureaucracy," said Rick Rubin, an FCC attorney-designate and co-chair at the telecom law firm Greenburg and Trauig.

FCC enforcement attorneys face a daunting array of issues with each case, and it's unclear if the restructuring will help, he said.

"Say one cellular carrier accuses an adjacent carrier of making inroads into its market," Rubin said. "The attorney from the enforcement division has to go running over to the commercial-wireless division to pull in the expertise to understand what the issue is before he sits down and works it out. My guess is that it's going to take even longer to resolve these things than it has in the past."

It's not uncommon for disputes to drag on for years. PCS paging companies, for example, filed complaints against wireline carriers over interconnection issues three years ago and still are waiting for a FCC decision, said Mary McDermott, PCIA senior vice president & chief of staff for government relations.

"That kind of delayed responsiveness might have been adequate when the wireless industry had many fewer players and was slower paced," McDermott said. "But (those) systems and level of personnel are inadequate with the literally thousands and thousands of licensees that we have today. For a small carrier or wireless start-up companies, time is literally money."

McDermott believes restructuring will force the FCC to craft policy containing precise implementation language and prevent enforcement gridlock from delaying FCC decision-making. She pointed to Sec. 255, which requires carriers to deploy disability-access technologies and services on a subjective "readily achievable" basis.

"Here, if they get a complaint that really questions whether their policies make sense or highlights a vacuum or a gap in policy, the enforcement bureau can get that aspect into the policy process and not be stymied because they're really being asked to make a policy decision." McDermott said.

Segregating the enforcement arm from the Wireless Telecommunications Bureau still makes CTIA uneasy, although it's skeptical that the restructuring will have much impact on the FCC's decision-making pace.

"You don't want to be making policy through case-by-case enforcement so that the enforcement arm isn't used as a back-door policy machine," said Lolita Smith, CTIA staff counsel. "Hopefully this will result in improvements on all counts and is not merely a shuffling around of deck chairs."