The FCC’s proposal for three trials of narrow...
The FCC’s proposal for three trials of narrow Internet Protocol transition issues is “more likely to discourage future investment in Internet infrastructure than to accelerate it,” said Fred Campbell, director of the Competitive Enterprise Institute’s Communications Liberty and Innovation Project,…
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in a blog post Monday (http://bit.ly/16vifm4). The commission Friday said its Technology Transitions Policy Task Force was seeking comments on potential trials relating to the transition from copper to fiber, wireline to wireless, and time-division multiplexing to IP (CD May 13 p1). But those trials “wouldn’t address the full range of issues raised by the IP transition,” Campbell said. The three “limited issues” addressed by the trial -- VoIP interconnection, next-generation 911, and wireless substitution -- “omit the most important issue of all,” he said: “The transition of the wireline network infrastructure itself.” The trials are unlikely to yield much data about the challenges of shutting down legacy technologies, he said. All three issues are already being examined in ongoing proceedings, he said. “I expect the FCC was unwilling to propose a comprehensive trial that could jeopardize its assertion of regulatory jurisdiction over the Internet, especially its potential authority to impose Title II regulations if it loses the net neutrality case pending in the DC Circuit.”