Paul Kapustka's Blog
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February 20, 2006
More delayed blogging from Silicon Flatirons -- Michael Powell, take 2
Giving up here again for the night (no hope trying to blog when the Olympic Giant Slalom is on, and then your host finds Pulp Fiction on the dish). More tomorrow (after a skiing break!) on Michael Powell's Monday "fireside chat" with Phil Weiser. While David Isenberg and Susan Crawford have already filtered out some highlights, I liked the former-chmn's take on the FCC as being a place where huge battles are fought that everyone knows will have no real consequence or outcome.
"Having battles at the FCC is a business unto itself," said Powell. And even though there are huge battles at the FCC, he said that all the participants "know nothing is going to come out of it." And companies, Powell added, "spend fortunes in the fight. Ink untold, flows in newspapers [ed. note: or, digital "ink" in blogs, anyway]," but because everyone knows how the law works -- and how the FCC process interferes, nothing happens of note.
Powell also bemoaned the fact that even if the FCC does try to do something, it takes at a minimum four years for all the entrenched-position battles to work out. (Think he misses the job?) "It [the process] invites that the FCC is always open for business to the idea that it can make a rule, to change the way a business (operates)," Powell said. More tomorrow! Plus video when I get around to producing a segment for CMP's The News Show, which you should watch anyway. I highly recommend the "VoIP Line" segments.
PS -- Powell's remarks from his Monday keynote should not be confused with the private interview I conducted with Powell Sunday, which I wrote about here.
Posted by paul at February 20, 2006 10:12 PM
Comments
I can't speak to the overall characterization of FCC conflict, but it's not true that nothing happens as a result of FCC decisions. Ask anyone at the scads of CLECs that went out of business at the stroke of a pen when Mike Powell did away with UNE-P.
Posted by: Jess Austin at February 21, 2006 10:03 AM