Companies that buy telecom services have “a healthy skepticism” about...

the federal government doesn’t need to regulate the markets anymore as mere “marketing.” Businesses require someone to make sure that infrastructure monopolies don’t drive up prices, she said on a panel at Wiley Rein Thursday. “It’s just a new transmission technique,” she told us later. AT&T Vice President Hank Hultquist, who was more sanguine about the transition away from the PSTN, said policymakers, industry and customers ought to do “a gap analysis” to try to figure out what regulations, finances and technology will be needed as telephony moves to IP. “We need a lot of work by experts and not necessarily the regulatory experts,” Hultquist said. Boothby agreed, saying, “The role of Congress is to give the FCC enough money so they can hire more engineers and fewer lawyers.” But Boothby and tw telecom outside counsel Thomas Jones clashed with Hultquist over whether the Telecom Acts of 1934 and 1996 need to be overhauled. Jones and Boothby said current law is “sufficient” to protect customers and markets. “The extent to which people talk about the need for a new statute, what they mean is the FCC should have less authority,” Jones said. Boothby said that even in IP traffic, there are appearances of competition, but businesses often find that most of the vendors in a given market are merely reselling access from a monopoly. Hultquist, who is active in the USTelecom-led talks to come up with an industry-wide universal service reform package, said he has learned from his involvement that “there are smart lawyers in this town who say the FCC can’t do it.” He and his company agree, but it at least demonstrates that there are gaps in the law, Hultquist said.