Disagreements Surface as Full FCC Meets for the First Time

The innovation NoI seeks to identify “concrete steps” the FCC can take to support and encourage innovation and investment in the wireless market. It asks wide-ranging questions about how innovation is occurring across the wireless market, on what has gone wrong and what are the shortfalls. The NoI also asks what other countries are doing to promote innovation and ways to improve spectrum management practices.

A second NoI, poses a series of questions about how the FCC can better get a clear snapshot of the wireless marketplace. In the interest of clarity, the FCC will no longer call this the CMRS competition report, but the mobile wireless competition report. Third, the FCC is releasing a notice on consumer disclosure, examining how the commission can better protect consumers by ensuring they have information they need when buying communications services. None of the NoIs were available at our deadline, but are expected to be released shortly.

“Where we go from here is not clear, but where we have been is clear,” McDowell said, commenting on the wireless innovation inquiry, the most controversial of the three. “The commission’s long-standing policy to allow competitive forces rather than command and control regulations has fostered the development of and investment in wireless networks.”

The agency should “proceed with care” and not take steps that would “deter” investment, McDowell said. “Even at present, in the worst economy in decades ... the communications sector, which includes wireless technologies and services, intends to plow as much as $80 billion this year alone into capital expenditures.” McDowell also questioned whether the comment period, with comments due 30 days after the NoI is released, provides enough time for interested parties to formulate comments.

Baker, at her first meeting as a commissioner, said the FCC must be “wary” of imposing any policies that would “benchmark innovation” and hinder competition. “Any future action that arises out of this notice should ensure that capital investment not be deterred and that innovation continues to flourish,” she said. “I would like to raise the issue of the potential burden on interested parties. We are releasing this inquiry concurrently with our important inquiry on wireless competition. I question whether the stakeholders will have the ability to submit substantive responses in both proceedings.”

Chairman Julius Genachowski declined to answer directly questions on whether the inquiries could lead to further wireless regulation, during an abbreviated news conference. “This FCC will have a relentless focus on innovation and investment, on competition and the consumers,” he said. “In pursuing those objectives ... there will be times, I'm sure, when the right answer is to get out of the way and let the market work ... There will be times when the right answer is to take steps to promote innovation and investment, to promote competition, to protect and empower consumers.”

Commissioner Michael Copps enthusiastically endorsed all three NoIs. “These notices are good news,” he said. “By issuing them, we endeavor to become the more pro-consumer agency that we were originally conceived to be -- and must yet become.” Copps said work remains to be done. “These notices represent only the beginning of the process,” he said. “NoIs begin proceedings; NPRMs breathe direction into them; commission orders bring the change. I hope, and I believe, that this commission will act with a sense of urgency in getting from NoIs to final orders.”

The NoIs seek to protect consumers in three ways, “by searching out new ways for the commission to facilitate wireless innovation and investment; by improving our ability to promote wireless competition; and by ensuring that consumers of wireless and other services have the information they need to make intelligent choices,” Copps said.

The wireless innovation NoI is “long overdue,” said Media Access Project President Andrew Schwartzman. “The country’s four major wireless providers have enjoyed the fruits of market power for too many years, at the expense of the public’s ability to gain widespread access to low-cost mobile broadband services.”

“The wireless ecosystem -- from carriers, to handset manufacturers, to network providers, to operating system providers, to application developers -- is evolving before our eyes and this is not the same market that it was even three years ago,” CTIA said. Mobile Future Chairman Jonathan Spalter said: “With a new FCC in place and rapid innovation underway in the marketplace, now is a good time for a fresh, thorough and open-minded look at how we can best advance innovation and consumer choice in the wireless sector.”