Communications Innovation Needs to be Set Free Now

[SOURCE: The Hill 10/20, AUTHOR: Sen. John Ensign (R-NV)]
[Commentary] As Congress sets about the important work of updating the nation’s nearly-decade-old telecom policy, lawmakers need to empower consumers to choose the best products at the best prices. A 21st-century communications policy should strive for elegant simplicity, embracing the market- based principles espoused by our forefathers that have made our economy the strongest in the world. Specifically, the four pillars of a 21st-century communications framework are: 1) Let consumers pick winners and losers, 2) Eliminate the patchwork quilt of regulations, 3) Focus on services, not technologies and 4) Ensure fair government competition with private industry. Comprehensive telecom reform will be a tall order in Washington, but one we can’t afford to shy away from as our nation shifts from an industrial to an information economy. Unfortunately, opponents of such reform may still prefer the past to the future. They continue to insist on the monolithic notion that only cable companies can compete with other cable companies for video customers and the same in the wireless and landline worlds, despite well-rounded competition across today’s technology landscape. At the other end of the spectrum are those who would have the government only protect new technologies, leaving legacy networks upon which many depend on mired in regulations that stifle investment to the detriment of consumers. The choices emerging today across the communications landscape were not granted by government fiat but by American ingenuity. They are choices the government should not make for consumers, but rather encourage across the board with a light federal regulatory touch and the tacit acknowledgement that sometimes the best leadership is the least intrusive.
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