FCC chair wants one set of rules
for cable Net access
By Nancy Dillon
Cable companies worried that they might be forced to share
their broadband networks with competing Internet providers
got some good news this week. In a speech to the National
Cable Television Association in Chicago, Federal
Communications Commission Chairman William K.
Kennard said that it was in the nation's best interest to have
a single, national broadband policy monitored by the FCC,
rather than a smattering of policies dictated by local
governments.
Best of all for cable operators, Kennard said the national
policy should take a "deregulatory approach."
"The information superhighway will not work if there are
30,000 different technical standards and 30,000 different
regulatory structures for broadband," Kennard said. "The
market would be rocked with uncertainty. Investment would
be stymied. Consumers would be hurt."
It's not hard to understand the concerns of local
governments, which want to increase the number of
broadband service providers available to consumers,
Kennard said. But a deregulatory approach is the best way
to "let this nascent industry flourish," he said.
Kennard pointed to a recent federal court ruling against
AT&T Corp. as one example of dangerous regulation. Two
weeks ago, a U.S. District Court judge in Portland, Ore.,
compelled AT&T to open its cable system to competing
Internet service providers. AT&T has said it plans to appeal
the decision.
George Peabody, an analyst at Aberdeen Group Inc. in
Boston, said cable companies have spent money upgrading
their networks, but not that much. "They've spend a lot of
money acquiring each other, but they're just starting to
spend on the infrastructure," Peabody said.
"The fact is, this was coming," he said, and the only
difficulty for cable companies will be running multiple
Internet service providers over their networks. "This is a
nuisance, but there's a lot of nuisances in life," Peabody
added.
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