Subject: [NEXTEL-1] [NEXTEL1] FCC COMMISH ADMITS SHAKE-DOWNS, Extortions..... (Dated)

From: Marcelrf <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 08 Mar 2004 01:28:27 -0500

Scanning the achieves found this article from 1999 which is more
relevant today than ever. It is worth a read.

-------- Original Message --------
From: marcelrf <[email-masked]>
Subject: [NEXTEL1] FCC COMMISH ADMITS SHAKE-DOWNS extortions, and things
that fall outside the formal regulatory
To: "[email-masked]" <[email-masked]>

From: marcelrf <[email-masked]>

The Seedy Side of the FCC
by Declan McCullagh

12:15 p.m.  28.Sep.99.PDT

GRAND TETON NATIONAL PARK,
Wyoming -- Americans often
seem to view the US Federal
Communications Commission as
something between a benign
nuisance and an antediluvian
bureaucracy.

But is the FCC really a group of
modern-day Don Corleones who
run a protection racket complete
with threats to kowtow to
government demands or else?

That's how one FCC commissioner
views his colleagues. "They are
engaged in shakedowns,
extortions, and things that fall
outside the formal regulatory
process," Harold Furchtgott-Roth
said Tuesday at a Hudson
Institute conference in Jackson
Hole, Wyoming.

"The commission has been very
effective in shaking down
companies [and deciding] which
communities get served first,
which communities get served
last, [and] who the assets get
spun off to," he said.

Furchtgott-Roth, a Clinton
appointee who is the sole
economist among the agency's
four other
lawyers-turned-commissioners, is
frequently the lone dissenting
voice when the FCC considers
new regulations. Under US law,
the FCC has broad regulatory
authority over
telecommunications companies.

He criticized the conditions the
FCC required before approving
the SBC-Ameritech merger, and
pointed at "the conditions which
SBC has 'voluntarily' submitted
with a gun pointed at its head.

"Somehow, all the conditions
have nothing to do with wireless
licenses, but a lot of other
things."

Furchtgott-Roth also slammed
the so-called "Gore tax," or
e-rate fee that the FCC devised
to wire schools and libraries to
the Net. "There we have a
situation where the commission
has invented a tax to fund
programs at schools and libraries
across America purportedly to
bring broadband. At first blush
this seems like a good thing."

But, he said, Department of
Education statistics published in
January 1998 -- before the e-rate
checks began to flow -- showed
about 70 percent of schools
already had access.

"This is just preposterous. Most
schools and libraries were hooked
up to the Internet before a nickel
of this multibillion dollar tax was
imposed on Americans. There's
hardly a politician who's willing
to stand up and say this is an
incredible fraud," Furchtgott-Roth
said.

Martin Irvine, a Georgetown
University professor who spoke
Monday, said his experience
suggested otherwise. "I can't
believe that so many schools are
connected," he said.

Irvine also said that the FCC
should not refrain from regulation
of the Net and
telecommunications businesses,
saying that some forms of control
over what companies and
individuals can do are better than
others. "Regulation does not
equal regulation does not equal
regulation," he said.

Glenn Woroch, a research
economist at GTE Laboratories,
said he believed that the FCC
needed to intervene in the
telecom industry -- and the
Internet business too. "I also
think there's room for agencies
like the FCC to help the industry
move out of certain conventions.
There are a lot of pricing
conventions in the industry that
are distortionary and do not
contain good incentives for
investment," Woroch said.

He pointed to Internet peering
arrangements as one area where
the FCC could intervene with
regulations or standards-setting.
"There's something that cannot
continue. But there's great
difficulty in coordinating the
industry from that pricing system
to one that's based on cost," he
said.

Furchtgott-Roth predicted that
differences in regulation between
the Internet and more tightly
controlled media like cable and
broadcast will make for some
nasty fights. "It's going to be a
very slow process and it's going
to create a lot of problems," he
said.

http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,31559,00.html

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