Powell Successful At His Own Agenda

I have to disagree with my esteemed colleague Paul Kapustka, who calls for the removal of FCC chairman Michael Powell.

Now don't get me wrong. I'm no apologist -- nor admirer -- of this administration. But if success is to be measured by accomplishing what you want to achieve, then Powell has been very successful. His only sin is that those who disagree with him don't share his agenda.

Powell's agenda, by his own admission, is minimalist. He does not espouse the ambition of previous chairmen to lead an activist regulatory agency. Quite the opposite. He is more partial to a Jeffersonian "he who governs least governs best" philosophy.

As exhibit A to the virtues of this world view, he gives us the Telecommunications Act of 1996, which, one could argue, was a legislative attempt to have regulators micro-manage one of the most dynamic industries the world has ever seen.

As Powell said in his Supercomm fireside chat, the Telecom Act has fallen far short of its objective to light the way to a golden information era. Not a few people believe that the substantial amount of progress that has been made in the near-decade since the Act came into being has occurred in spite of it -- not because of it.I tend to agree with Powell. The Act today is today too proscriptive, too detailed, too confusing -- but most of all too short-sighted. The regulators and legislators of yesteryear could not envision a VoIP environment. The wireless world in the early and mid '90s -- when much of the Act was being hammered out in the back rooms and corridors of power -- was in its infancy. And so was our understanding of what the telecom industry (or industries) would turn out to be.

Any major effort to predict the future today would meet an equally myopic fate. Neither the FCC, nor the Congress, or for that matter any of the attendees who filled the ballroom at Powell's Supercomm appearance know where this roller coaster ride is going to wind up.

When it comes to the telecommunications and networking industry regulation, less is truly more. That is what we got when Bush put Powell into the FCC. And in this country, you get what you elect.