The communications industry reacted to FCC Commissioner Kevin Martin’s appointment to chair the Federal Communications Commission with congratulatory announcements reflecting the industry’s comfort with Martin during his three year tenure as commissioner.
Chairman Martin, however, also has been criticized for positions taken in the past, with what appears to be some real imagination applied in glossing over the facts of his leadership role in deregulating broadband deployment. His critics contend that his deregulatory principles are somehow suspect.
We’ve heard all this before, though it always comes as somewhat of a surprise to those of us involved in the “Great Telco Sharing Obligations Shootout,” given that, as FCC commissioner, Kevin Martin voted for deregulatory treatment of broadband all the way down the line, in order to remove regulatory obstacles to deployment.
In fact, without Kevin Martin’s commitment to broadband, the big telephone companies might not have the cable companies squarely in their sights, focused on deploying fiber deeper in their networks to provide video programming, to go head to head with cable.
If anything is clear about the telecom policy debate over the past several years, investment in advanced services has been the key, with the surge in DSL deployment (at dropping prices) by telcos, and their spending on fiber optics and the gear to drive it was all unleashed by a deregulatory FCC vote on broadband slightly over 2 years ago.
That’s just one of the stories that gets lost in the mix, when hindsight conveniently isn’t always 20-20.
