I really like Michael Powell. He has appeared on Kudlow & Cramer several times and impressed me as a clear-headed and reliable foe of regulation. He has drawn attacks from the libertarian right for posting large fines in the aftermath of the Janet Jackson Super Bowl contretemps, and he has chased Howard Stern off the open airways onto Sirius satellite.
I am ambivalent on smut-freedom. I don't yearn for more government control -- yet I hardly think that the airwaves are somehow too restricted. Not the stuff I see on TV.
Either way, the regulatory side of telecom is a thousand times more important, and Colin's son is getting that right, time after time.
Telecom Turnaround (paid Wall Street Journal site, sorry!)The Bush Administration got off to a poky start on telecom policy, but Federal Communications Commission Chairman Michael Powell seems to be revving things up. The latest example is an Internet vote he won yesterday that has the potential to reshape the industry from the ground up.
At issue is a new technology known as Voice Over Internet Protocol, or VOIP. Put simply, VOIP allows consumers to place telephone calls over the Internet -- and it's growing like gangbusters. One of the leading providers, Vonage, requested that the FCC declare its product an "interstate service," and Mr. Powell won the votes to do exactly that. Yesterday's ruling is the first time the FCC has exempted an Internet voice service from state regulation.
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More broadly, yesterday's vote also advances Mr. Powell's deregulatory agenda. The FCC chief has long argued that true competition was never going to come from giving consumers a choice between a Bell and a Bell look-alike, but from giving them a choice among different technologies -- cell phones, traditional land lines, cable telephony, VOIP.The phony "competition" that came out of the 1996 Telecom Act -- which forced local phone companies to unbundle their networks and lease them to competitors at artificially low rates -- was plagued by fights over rates and infrastructure, and led to an investment coma. Contrast this with VOIP, where cable providers have been only too happy to work with companies like Vonage that want to offer Internet phone services over their lines, and where real competition and investment are already thriving.
The vote will also assist the spread of broadband. Americans have been looking for a reason to make the switch to high-speed cable or DSL, and the promise of $25-a-month unlimited phone service (as VOIP provides) is proving to be a killer incentive. Meanwhile, the emergence of such rivals has spurred the Bells to more quickly upgrade their own equipment for broadband so that they too can offer VOIP.