A new digital age Communications Act

[Commentary] As the House Commerce Committee begins a process to revamp US communications law, here are a few basic guideposts that, to my mind, are key to fashioning what I’ve called a new Digital Age Communications Act.

• First, the new law should get rid of the so-called “silo” regime in which differential regulatory requirements are tied to various service classifications, such as “cable” or “telephone” service. In today’s digital environment, the saying “a bit is a bit is a bit” is now a reality. This means that telephone companies, cable operators, wireless providers, satellite operators, and fiber firms all compete against each other, utilizing their own different broadband platforms, to provide consumers with various mixes of voice, video and data services.
• Second, the “public interest” standard, ubiquitous throughout the current statute, grants the Federal Communications Commission too much unconstrained discretion that enables too much regulatory micromanagement. A new law should replace this indeterminate, and, therefore, elastic delegation of authority with a competition standard grounded in antitrust-like jurisprudential principles.
• Third, under a new law, the FCC should be required to favor narrowly tailored remedial orders over broad proscriptions developed in anticipatory rule-making proceedings.

[May is president of the Free State Foundation, an independent free-market-oriented think tank]

[Dec 29]