Rewriting Telecom Laws From The Outside

from the privatizing-legislation-writing? dept

A group of individuals made up of think tank employees, policy wonks, economists and former policy makers, with the support of a number of tech and telecom companies are trying to rewrite American telecom policy from scratch, under the heading of "The Digital Age Communications Act" (DACA). Basically, it sounds like they've realized that the FCC is unlikely to ever come out with a comprehensive policy plan on communications issues, even if people have been screaming for one for years. So they're going to create it for the FCC, and then hand it off to politicians on Capitol Hill in the hopes of getting it done. From the little information that is being said about it, it sounds like they're looking to push for deregulation by setting up a clear framework for how the telecom market for spectrum will work -- and then telling the FCC to pretty much stay out of it. Until there are more details, it's tough to determine whether or not what they're talking about makes much sense. While spectrum and telco policy clearly do need a major revamp, that doesn't mean just any revamp is going to make sense -- and the fear (especially if it's controlled by big companies) is that incumbents set things up in a way that favors their business models over what's best for the overall market. Either way, expect to hear plenty about this potential legislation over time -- but, also expect that whichever politicians pick it up will probably modify it in ways to make it less useful than whatever comes out of this group initially.