NAB, NCTA Back FCC Reform Bills

The National Association of Broadcasters and the National Cable & Telecommunications Association both supported full House Commerce Committee consideration of Federal Communications Commission reform bills that have already passed out of the Communications Subcommittee.

H.R. 3309, the Federal Communications Commission Process Reform Act of 2011, would among other things, require the commission to 1) survey the marketplace via a Notice of Inquiry before initiating any new rulemakings; 2) identify a market failure, consumer harm, or regulatory investment barrier before adopting any "economically significant" regulations; demonstrate that the benefits of any regulation outweigh the costs, 3) requiring any conditions imposed on transactions to be within the Commission's existing authority and not tailored to remedy any transaction-specific harms.

H.R.3310, the Federal Communications Commission Consolidated Reporting Act of 2011, would require the FCC to conduct a biennial survey of the state of competition in the marketplace that it publishes online and submits to Congress. The FCC already conducts a quadrennial (originally biennial) regulations review. But unlike that process, in this review, the FCC would be required to take into account competition from the Internet.