NCTA's Assey: Time to Rethink Regulations

At a Free State Foundation discussion on Federal Communications Commission reform, the National Cable & Telecommunications Association's James Assey said regulatory reform can be tough, but that the government needs to "disenthrall itself" from the way things have always been done.

A call for reform, he said, is not a criticism of the FCC, but instead is an opportunity to recognize that the world has changes since statutes were enacted and regulations adopted. He called it a celebration of the marketplace having become able to maximize consumer benefits. [All hail the marketplace!] Assey said it was important to have a "strong regulatory screen" that counsels against intervention, particularly where the marketplace is developing rapidly. In the lumpiness and bumpiness of progress and innovation," he said, "there is tremendous consumer benefits."

FCC Chief of Staff Edward Lazarus said it is certainly not status quo at the FCC and that it is not "remotely focused" on the things it was focused on in 1999 when then FCC Chairman Bill Kennard proposed FCC reforms. He said its agenda is forward-looking and "relentlessly focused" on broadband deployment and adoption. but he conceded the FCC's organizational chart is antiquated and does not "recognize fully" the conversion taking place. He said within the FCC, however, and in the way it operates, a lot has changed notwithstanding the categories visible from the outside.