Subject: [NEXTEL-1] Verizons's Barr Calls For Reduced Role For FCC

From: Marcelrf <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 18 Mar 2004 20:39:02 -0500

From TRDaily
March 18, 2004

Verizons's Barr Calls For Reduced Role For FCC

Calling the FCC's current regulatory regime "a cancer 
that is crippling the market," William P. Barr, Verizon 
Communications, Inc.'s executive vice president and 
general counsel, said Congress needed to make 
"fundamental changes" in the way the country is handling 
communications regulation and reduce the role of the FCC. 

During a CATO Institute Hill briefing today, Mr. Barr said 
the 1996 Telecommunications Act "was obsolete the day 
it was passed."  It doesn't match the realities of the 
telecom marketplace nor does it provide a coherent or 
sound platform for ongoing telecom policy, he added.

In addressing the prospect of new legislation, Mr. Barr said 
lawmakers needed to recognize the reality that "the market 
is naturally evolving in a direction that the regulators didn't 
anticipate and don't fully understand."  Any success stories 
in the telecommunications marketplace have occurred when 
regulators were kept at bay, he said.  

All players in the telecom market should be able to "duke it out on a 
level playing field" without the interference of regulations.  "This is
a 
confusing, messy business in which there are going to be winners and 
losers and be imperfections along the way," Mr. Barr said, "but that's 
what real competition is about."

He proposed that Congress establish a regulatory regime that would 
substantially decrease the role of the FCC so the federal agency could 
focus on what Mr. Barr said was the Commission's "true calling - 
keeping tabs on Janet Jackson's wardrobe and Howard Stern's mouth." 
- Margaret Boles, [email-masked]

http://www.tr.com/online/trd/2004/td031804/index.htm

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