Posted on 11/24/2016 2:46:48 AM PST by markomalley
A top advisor to Donald Trump on tech policy matters proposed all but abolishing the nation's telecom regulator last month, foreshadowing possible moves by the president-elect to sharply reduce the Federal Communications Commission's role as a consumer protection watchdog.
In an Oct. 21 blog post, Mark Jamison, who on Monday was named one of two members of Trump's tech policy transition team, laid out his ideal vision for the government's role in telecommunications, concluding there is little need for the agency to exist.
"Most of the original motivations for having an FCC have gone away," Jamison wrote. "Telecommunications network providers and [Internet service providers] are rarely, if ever, monopolies."
The FCC declined to comment for this story, but its current leadership has disagreed strongly with that analysis. Its Democratic chairman, Tom Wheeler, has spoken of an Internet service "duopoly" in much of the country that limits competition. And he has compared telecommunications to the rail and telegraph networks of the 19th century, calling for new rules of the road as the Internet becomes the dominant communications platform of the 21st century.
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
Great! Let’s buy cable and net from the provider we think provides the best service at the best price. Congress can take care of com monopolies.
My WAG is that you've just described ~65% of fedgov.
Haley was a great pick, as far as I’m concerned.
Now she’s no longer our governor here, and won’t be importing any more Islamists into the state.
And if she sucks as UN ambassador she can always be fired.
Another name for the list:
Dr. Ben Carson to head HUD
No it doesn't. This was shown in early radio and HF communications. And it was authorized by the Communications Act of 1934 - our US Congress. The one with the biggest transmitter ruled and at night their signals carried vast distances. Free market worked early on because the spectrum wasn't crowded but that quickly degenerated.
Further, de-confliction with foreign (international sources) wasn't possible either. The same thing with the microwave spectrum, AND the cellular and PCS spectrum, a HOST of commercial activities that would be falling all over themselves were it not for some kind of coordination.
How about de-confliction of frequency bands and separations on cell towers (some have 7-8 tiers of different vendor equipment and frequencies.). Even with the microwave relays that connect these towers to the regular comm system.
I've spent my adult life since my days in the military working in communications and radar and I can tell you that the "free market doesn't solve everything." It's a nice thing to say "get rid of all government functions" but there are some functions that if kept free from politics work.
[ “proposed all but abolishing”
This appears to be a severe trimming back of their mission back to its roots, which were as I recall for amateur radio licensing and technical accountability. Getting back to basics. ]
Agree, just need about 3-4 people with slide rulers in a room arguing about frequencies and a few bean counters managing the radio frequency spectrum licensing to ensure you don’t have 2 systems using the same frequencies.
That’s it.
Go Gators!
Regulation is needed when there is scarcity - frequency spectrum, airspace, roadway space.
When there is no scarcity - digital communications - the marketplace takes care of things nicely. Freedom of exit and entry and all that.
I’m still not sick of winning.
Nossir. It is a great idea. The FCC, first conceived to resulate airwaves, must return to that mission. Trump is smart; he won’t dissolve the agency (despite the LAT’s pearl-clutching). He’ll direct it to stop interfereing in the internet and cable TV, though.
They ever failed at reducing excessively loud TV commercials that was mandated by their failure counterparts in Congress.
Why?
At some point, those “digital communications” take to the RF spectrum unless you’re talking about full end point-to-endpoint cable or fiber optic communications. But you cannot guarantee the “digital communications” don’t hit the RF spectrum at some point. But you cannot.
Even on some of the last-mile links, they are in the Ka Band microwaves which still can conflict with other links unless they are planned and de-conflicted.
Actually, close scrutiny reveals Trump makes a statement, the Ministry of Propaganda Media inflates it beyond all recognition, and he corrects them.
The “watchdog” has morphed into Smaug.
Your case sounds like someone I know who got a job as a chemist supervisor or some such at a gov-co agency.
That person lasted about the same and left for reasons like yours.
A better bet is to break up the corporate oligarchy that controls the vast majority of the media.
Time Warner, Disney, Murdoch’s News Corporation, Bertelsmann of Germany and Viacom. That’s it. And just 15 billionaires own it all.
This is why news about our elections were so corrupted, that and the fact that almost all the major pollsters are “Friends of Bill and Hillary Clinton”.
So how do you break up the “big five”?
People thought it was impossible to break up the giant oil trust Standard Oil. Its controversial history as one of the world’s first and largest multinational corporations ended in 1911, when the United States Supreme Court ruled that it was an illegal monopoly.
It was based on The Sherman Antitrust Act (1890). It prohibits certain business activities that federal government regulators deem to be anti-competitive, and requires the federal government to investigate and pursue corporations that engage in them.
However, things change, so Sherman is seldom invoked, but the problems it was designed to address have evolved beyond it, avoiding those conditions that force the government to act.
So a new, anti-oligopoly act is needed. And while the MSM would be its primary targets, there are other industries that would also profit from having *their* oligopolies broken up.
The original motivation was controlling what the public could hear. Arch-Progressive Herbert Hoover was Commerce Secretary at the time and wanted to head off the progress the courts had already made through common law to establish and define property rights in electromagnetic spectrum.
Why do so many "posit" something w/o explaining? makes zero sense.
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