On the surface, at least, this does not augur well for blind folks - we'll see.

Peter






New F.C.C. Chief Would Curb Agency Reach

February 7, 2001

New F.C.C. Chief Would Curb Agency Reach

By STEPHEN LABATON

WASHINGTON, Feb. 6 - Signaling a marked departure from his Clinton
administration predecessors, the new Republican-appointed chairman of the
Federal Communications
Commission voiced skepticism today about a wide array of regulations
affecting broadcasters, telephone companies, cable operators and Internet
service
providers.

The regulations have been intended to keep the largest companies from
becoming much more powerful, to provide services to those who can least
afford them,
and to enable officials to supervise markets that they say continue to be
controlled by monopolies or lack sufficient competition.

But the new chairman, Michael K. Powell, speaking at his first news
conference since he was named two weeks ago, articulated a philosophy that
places greater
faith in the marketplace to correct possible problems and he emphasized a
sharply reduced role for his agency.

Clinton administration officials had maintained that many large
telecommunications companies like the regional Bell operating companies
should be deregulated
only after their markets were sufficiently competitive, but Mr. Powell
approached the subject from the opposite direction today.

"I do not believe," he said, that "deregulation is like a dessert that you
serve after people have fed on their vegetables and is a reward for the
creation
of competition. I believe that deregulation is instead a critical ingredient
to facilitating competition, not something to be handed out after there is
a substantial number of players in the market."

With two vacancies on the five-member commission and a third commissioner
likely to be replaced because her term has expired, Mr. Powell may have an
opportunity
to significantly reshape the agency and the government's telecommunications
policy. Unlike his two immediate predecessors at the F.C.C.'s helm, Mr.
Powell
enjoys cordial relations with House and Senate leaders. They have taken the
credit for promoting his career and for his latest appointment, at age 37.
Some of them have also indicated a willingness to defer to his deregulatory
approach.

Consumer groups said that Mr. Powell's comments reflected a deeper
ideological move to the right than they had expected and that a comment of
his belittling
the concerns over the growing technological gap between rich and poor was
unnecessarily inflammatory.

Gene Kimmelman, co-director of the Washington office of Consumers Union,
said after the Powell news conference: "It's hard to believe that the
average person
on the street that has no choice of cable operators and local telephone
services would be enamored with this kind of deregulation. He's not in touch
with
how average people feel about their phone companies and cable companies."

Mr. Powell - responding to a question about whether the agency had a role to
play in closing the gap between those who can afford new technology and
those
who cannot, something often described as the "digital divide" - said he
thought the commission should do what it could to "eliminate barriers in
every
segment of the population and its geography."

He then added that he thought "digital divide" was a dangerous phrase
because it could be used to justify government entitlement programs that
guaranteed
poor people cheaper access to new technology, like digital television sets
or computers.

"I think there is a Mercedes divide," he said. "I'd like to have one; I
can't afford one. I'm not meaning to be completely flip about this. I think
it's
an important social issue. But it shouldn't be used to justify the notion of
essentially the socialization of the deployment of the infrastructure."

Mr. Kimmelman said that Mr. Powell's remarks "were insensitive and elitist."

Others said they reflected an ivory tower view of the world.

"Chairman Powell thinks that opportunity grows on trees," said Andrew J.
Schwartzman, president of the Media Access Project, a nonpartisan group that
advocates
diversity of the airwaves. "It doesn't. It's fostered by private-sector and
public- sector policy makers. Ironically in his time in government, Michael
Powell seems to have become isolated from the realities of life for most
Americans."

In other areas, Mr. Powell questioned several agency assumptions that the
Democrats thought they had settled.

Mr. Powell said, for instance, that he had a difficult time providing a
proper definition for "public interest," a phrase salted throughout the
nation's
telecommunications laws as the standard that regulators are supposed to
apply when they consider merger and license transfers and allow broad
deregulation.
That phrase had been interpreted expansively under Democratic appointees to
justify imposing conditions on several large corporate mergers.

Mr. Powell said he was a "relative skeptic" of the notion that government
limitations on the size of broadcast companies actually promote diversity of
the
airwaves. The nation's largest broadcasters, notably Viacom, have lobbied to
sharply loosen the rule that prevents them from owning stations that reach
more than 35 percent of households in the country, a regulation that has
kept them from buying more stations.

"I am quite skeptical that anyone has any demonstrable case that such caps
actually inure to the benefit of consumers in the form of greater and more
diverse
product," he said. "That's almost a romantic notion at times and an
emotional one, and I think an important one, but that is more difficult to
demonstrate
objectively than to believe subjectively. As an institution of government,
we have to be able to justify on more than just a sentiment the continuation
of a regulatory intervention, and that's the way I feel about that cap."

While his predecessors have used the bully pulpit of the chairman's office
to be critical of some material shown on television, Mr. Powell said that
the
F.C.C. basically had no official role to play in controlling violence or
other content, or in seeking legislation that would require the broadcasters
to
provide free air-time for political candidates.

"I think there is a lot of garbage on television," he said. "There are a lot
of things children should not watch. But I don't believe that government
should
be your nanny."

He said he did not regard cable rates going up by more than 30 percent as a
sign of failure of the cable deregulation of the last few years.

He also said the agency had no role to play in the emerging debate about
whether to transfer to the states the $6 billion federal program that
provides
Internet service to public schools and libraries.

That program began as an initiative of a group of lawmakers, working with
the F.C.C. and former Vice President Al Gore. In recent days, Democrats have
raised
concerns that the program would die under Republican-floated proposals to
convert the program into block grants to the states.

"This is another issue everyone wants the F.C.C. to join," Mr. Powell said
today, "and I kind of won't."

Copyright 2001 The New York Times Company



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