The FCC handed down orders last week on special access...
The FCC handed down orders last week on special access and the Verizon/cable deals that were almost completely at odds and raise questions about whether the commission is engaged in “fact-based” regulation, said Fred Campbell, director of the Competitive Enterprise…
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Institute’s Communications Liberty and Innovation Project, on the group’s blog (http://xrl.us/bnndz9). In the special access order, the FCC majority “found it was appropriate to re-impose monopoly price cap regulations developed over twenty years ago because the FCC lacked ‘reliable’ evidence that cable operators are competing in the special access market,” Campbell wrote. “The very next day, the FCC found cable companies are ‘well-positioned’ to compete in the special access market and are ‘increasingly successful’ competing in that market. ... It is impossible to reconcile these inconsistent findings.” Campbell, a former chief of the FCC’s Wireless Bureau, said the decisions raise real questions about the agency under Chairman Julius Genachowski. “During a hot summer week in August when Congress was out of session, the FCC’s facts and data changed on a daily basis as required to support the FCC’s preferred policy outcome,” he said. “That’s a data-driven approach of sorts -- cherry-picking data to arrive at a predetermined outcome that picks winners and losers rather than protects consumers."