Category Archives: FCC Reform

2014 Year in Review…

Posted on by

2014 provided fertile soil for those interested in policy research. So with New Years rapidly approaching, I want to uphold tradition and use our last blog post of the year to highlight what we at the Phoenix Center thought to be the most interesting policy issues of 2014 and to provide some select examples of where we believed we added constructively to the debate. Spectrum Availability and Allocation While spectrum policy is always complex, the debate again boiled down to the fundamental questions: how do we free up more spectrum; and once we do, how do we allocate it? For Continue Reading »

A Fresh Analytical Start at the FCC…

Posted on by

The Federal Communications Commission is at a crossroads.  Burdened with implementing laws designed for a market structure of a bygone era—and with little prospect of a comprehensive legislative update on the horizon—incoming FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler faces a daunting task to adapt and modernize the agency’s approach to regulation so that we can remove, in President Obama’s words, those rules which have “outlived their usefulness.”  Equally as important, Mr. Wheeler has the related and no less daunting task of re-establishing the FCC’s credibility with the industry, Capitol Hill, the courts and (most importantly) the public as the “expert” agency which Continue Reading »

It’s Time for FCC/DOJ Inter-Agency Cooperation to Come into the Sunlight…

Posted on by

Over the past several years, there have been numerous efforts to improve the practices and procedures used at the Federal Commissions Commission.  However, of all of the potential improvements bandied about, I submit that there is one improvement that has been entirely overlooked and needs immediately implementation:  that is, the repeal of Section § 1.1204(6) of the FCC’s ex parte rules, which provides that the Commission and the Department of Justice (“DOJ”) can meet in secret as often as they like—without having to file anything into the record about the date of the meeting, who attended the meeting and what Continue Reading »

Curbing the FCC’s Ability to Impose “Voluntary” Merger Commitments…

Posted on by

Over my eighteen years in the telecommunications business, one of my biggest pet peeves has been the politicization of the Federal Communication Commission’s merger review process.  As I noted in a paper entitled Separating Politics from Policy in FCC Merger Reviews: A Basic Legal Primer of the “Public Interest” Standard I authored with my former colleague Tom Koutsky back in 2007 and subsequently published in an academic journal in 2010, my issue is not that the concept of the “public interest” is vague (it is not), but that both sides of the aisle conveniently ignore the relevant caselaw when it Continue Reading »