Chairman Walden: Defunding international telecom body 'last resort'

House Communications and Technology Subcommittee Chairman Greg Walden (R-OR) said that pulling funding from the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) should be a "last resort" if the body continues its push for Internet regulation.

"It's also a big club," he said at event hosted by the American Enterprise Institute. "You hope you can work these things out." Chairman Walden argued that the first step should be for the Senate to pass his bill declaring support for the current model of Internet governance free from government control. Chairman Walden also said he hopes to be able to agree on bipartisan Federal Communications Commission process reform legislation sometime in the fall. He wants to establish shot clocks, cost-benefit analyses and other FCC reforms, but has run into opposition from Democrats. He emphasized the need for major telecommunications regulation reform, but wasn't sure how that would be achieved, whether through a comprehensive telecom rewrite or in pieces. He suggested, though, that it could not all be accomplished in the reauthorization of STELA, the bill covering satellite and cable compulsory licenses. Chairman Walden said his subcommittee would hold a hearing next month on the fate of copper wire in a world of Internet delivery. The transition from traditional phone service to IP delivery is a hot topic in Washington as the FCC considers how to ease that transition and what, if any, legacy regulations -- interconnection requirements, for example -- should carry over. "The last thing we want to do is stifle the unprecedented innovation of the Internet by subjecting it to the complicated outdated government imposed rules of the plain old telephone network," Chairman Walden said.