Your blogger filed comments yesterday on the House Energy & Commerce Committee’s spectrum white paper.

The comments focused on FCC and NTIA reforms that might be accomplished with little or no new legislation - a likely necessity given our dysfunctional Congress now. They explained that not only is FCC slow in authorizing even noncontroversial new technology, it is slow in dealing with interference problems of major industries that need rulemaking action to resolve. They raise the hypothesis that FCC implicitly or explicitly tells even powerful regulatees that its spectrum policy resources are limited so they have to choose between getting new spectrum or getting help cleaning up existing spectrum. Shouldn’t FCC be able to do both?

But FCC probably can’t do both as long as it has only one job stream focused on the 8th Floor. Under Section 5 of the Communications Act FCC has great power to delegate authority to employees or boards of employees - as it did with the former Review Board.

The comments also raise the issue of Section 7 of the Communications Act and the 30 yeas that FCC has ignored it.

Tags: NTIA Reform, Section 7