more on Powell: Don't Rewrite Telecom Act

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

------ Forwarded Message
From: "David S.Isenberg" <isen () isen com>
Date: Wed, 16 Feb 2005 15:03:36 -0500
To: David Farber <dave () farber net>
Cc: Bob Frankston <Bob_Frankston () frankston com>, Dewayne Hendricks
<dewayne () warpspeed com>, Kevin Werbach <kevin () werbach com>
Subject: Re: [IP] more on Powell: Don't Rewrite Telecom Act

Dave,

[for IP, per your editorial judgement]

I too was present at the Silicon Flatirons Digital Migration event for
Chairman Powell's noteworthy remarks on rewriting the Telecom Act, and
I think Bob Frankston captured their spirit with more fidelity than
Wireless Week, when he wrote, ³[Powell¹s] point is that a simple
statute presuming IP is a positive step and the only viable choice.² 

I took some fairly close notes; below I try to render them into prose
that captures more of Powell¹s meaning. 

Powell asked rhetorically, can the solution be worse than the current
broken Act? Answer: definitely. An act as complex as the current
Telecom Act is subject to constant re-interpretation and
litigation. Not only would rewriting the Act from Page One be
incredibly difficult and subject to the same failings as the current
Act, but in the seven or eight years it takes to write it, Wall Street
will hold back on new network investment until it gets an impression of
who the winners and losers will be.

So, Powell said, we should not completely rewrite the Act. Instead, we
should write a small, light IP statute, 25 pages, max. Not the
2500-page Telecom Act at all; the IP Act of 2005. Powell¹s vision is
that as IP networks and applications grow and older, more vertically
integrated applications shrink, such an act will replace the older
Telecom Acts, resulting in what he calls, ³Self-executing
deregulation.² He used this term at least twice; self-executing.

This idea of a small self-executing IP act is remarkably close to Rick
Whitt¹s proposal for new legislation, ³A Horizontal Leap Forward,²
http://tinyurl.com/625ro which proposes that all IP apps should be
regulated lightly, and that physical connectivity should be regulated
differently than applications, according to the Internet¹s layered
model. Of course, there are many ways to regulate network connectivity;
the key point is that the new Act should start where the new technology
is, not attempt to recapitulate the old technology or regulatory model.

David I -- http://freedom-to-connect.net
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