Should we want a bipartisan FCC?

[Commentary] The short answer is, “No!” In an independent regulatory agency like the Federal Communications Commission, political alliances should be left at the door. That has not been the case the past few years and now is the time for change.

Politics isn’t the only thing to blame for the wide swings in FCC regulatory decision-making. The agency has also lost its way. Originally designed to regulate monopoly telephone companies, oversee broadcasters who had exclusive rights, and manage scarce radio spectrum, the FCC’s authorizing statues are badly outdated, despite having been updated in the Telecommunications Act of 1996. Now that competition is the norm, industry players seek to use the agency’s authority for ex ante regulations to hinder rivals, to the detriment of customers. A statutory change should direct the agency to focus on managing radio spectrum and, if needed, subsidies for broadband in rural, high cost areas where affordability is an issue. It should restrict the agency from engaging in ex ante regulation except in the case of actual monopoly, and when a rigorous cost-benefit analysis, followed up with evaluations, demonstrates that ex ante regulation improves outcomes for customers. Absent a statutory change, the commission itself can use its authority to forebear from regulation wherever there is competition and means test its subsidies.

[Mark Jamison is part of the FCC transition team for President Trump. He is the Gunter Professor of the Public Utility Research Center at the University of Florida]