Former FCC member Deborah Tate opposes a resolution favoring a...
Former FCC member Deborah Tate opposes a resolution favoring a “fourth way” to regulate broadband providers that’s under consideration by state utility commissioners at their summer meeting this week in Sacramento, Calif. The draft resolution being weighed by the National…
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Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners (NARUC) and titled as a play on FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski’s “third way” approach, endorses the FCC and the 50 state utility commissions sharing authority to regulate Internet traffic. “The `third way’ is Genachowski’s latest attempt to put a moderate face on what, in effect, would be unprecedented new regulatory mandates governing Internet providers and the management of their broadband networks,” Tate wrote in an op-ed piece in Sunday’s editions of The Sacramento Bee. Adding oversight usually boosts consumers’ costs and it could drive out investment capital even as demand for broadband booms, she warned. Spreading regulatory authority broadly would intensify the flow of capital elsewhere, perhaps even overseas, Tate predicted. “The state public utility commissioners’ proposal is unsound because, if adopted, it would place yet another layer of regulatory oversight on top of one that is itself unnecessary and counterproductive, and at least according to one federal court: not legally sustainable,” she said. “Of course, state utility commissions and consumer protection offices still have important roles to play in the digital age. For example, the FCC has invited the states’ participation regarding reform of the arcane universal service system intended to increase access to communications networks by persons with disabilities or low income. But having 50 states asserting authority to engage in public utility-like regulation of broadband Internet services in this truly global communications environment is not only beyond their legal jurisdiction, it would certainly deter much-needed investment and innovation. This doesn’t make sense at a time of continuing severe economic distress when their states -- and this country -- desperately need the jobs that more investment and innovation can mean.” Invoking the deregulatory path of the 1996 Telecommunications Act, Tate urged NARUC and the FCC to “say `no way’ to a `third way’ or `fourth way’ and focus on the incredible successes of the deregulatory way."