The next FCC chairmanship, FYI

[rumpel]

http://news.com.com/Handicapping+the+race+for+FCC+chairmanship/2010-1037_3-5576920.html?tag=nefd.ac

snip
The person whose name pops up most often is Kevin Martin, a onetime lawyer for the Bush-Cheney campaign who's been an FCC commissioner since 2001. One benefit of elevating Martin to the chairmanship, the thinking goes, is that the promotion won't require Senate approval.

But Martin's voting record has made him an unreliable ally of deregulation and the high-tech industry. That's why some advocacy groups are backing a dark-horse candidate as a worthy heir to Powell: Peter Pitsch, who's currently an Intel lobbyist.

snip
Ed Feulner, Heritage's president, has written a letter to Bush endorsing Pitsch as FCC chairman. That should carry some weight: Heritage is the most influential conservative think tank around, and it boasts close ties with many White House aides (often former Heritage staffers themselves).

Pitsch writes comments at an organization called Progress & Freedom
http://www.pff.org/about/

his comments
http://www.pff.org/issues-pubs/pubs_search_results.asp

[CAcyclist]

1. One report by Pitsch

http://www.ncpa.org/pd/regulat/pdreg/pdreg11.html

Cato Study: Choice In Rural
Telephone Service (Summary)


The 1996 Telecommunications Act will eventually open local telephone markets to
competition, but some analysts are wondering how telephone customers in
high-cost, usually rural, service areas will be protected against higher rates for
service.

The act maintained universal service subsidies for customers in high-cost areas.
These subsidies, from long distance phone companies, have been going to local
monopoly phone companies. But how will the subsidies be distributed to local
competing phone companies?

One suggestion is

a "competitive bidding" system whereby companies bid against one another to serve
a single market at the lowest price.

Hudson Institute analyst Peter Pitsch, however, is suggesting an alternative: a
"consumer choice" plan.

Pitsch contends that the competitive bidding system is actually
anti-competitive because it confers special advantages on one company in an
area -- rather than allowing true competition.

Under the consumer choice alternative, companies would be subsidized per
customer -- allowing customers to move from one company to another and
carry their subsidies with them.

Such a system would have the advantages of being competitively neutral, he
argues, and pressures would be generated for low prices as well as high
quality service.

In all likelihood, rates would be reasonably comparable in all areas, urban as
well as rural.

Other advantages of a consumer choice plan would be greater ease of
administration and lower entry costs. Moreover, he contends, subsidies could be
more easily phased down under the consumer choice system.

Source: Peter Pitsch, "Reforming Universal Service: Competitive Bidding or
Consumer Choice?" Briefing Paper No. 29, May 7, 1997, Cato Institute, 1000
Massachusetts Ave., N.W., Washington, D.C. 20001, [phone].

For the full text of this Cato study http://www.cato.org/pubs/briefs/bp-029es.html

*******************************************************

Of course "choice" only works if there is actually a choice. We've seen with our telephone companies that we have no real choice and costs are going through the roof.And I'm not in a rural area, either

[CAcyclist]

2. An article on the future of radio spectrum policy Pitsch wrote

Does this mean that Intel will own and operate all wi-fi systems?


http://www.intel.com/update/contents/st02041.htm

Intel's ultimate vision for wireless technology, called Radio Free Intel, embodies
radio technology that will require new spectrum policies. Radio Free Intel
envisions the integration of all wireless functions and protocols into one set of
Intel¨ chips, so that a smart radio can be capable of adapting to whatever radio
environment and protocol is most appropriate at the moment.
**********************************
edited to add:(some url)Wouldn't this be a clear conflict of interest is Pitsch becomes head of the FCC at the same time that Intel is lobbying for this change? On it's face this looks like a positive change, but not if Intel corners the market on the chips that allow this technology.

Pitsch:

For example, Intel is proposing that the FCC consider allowing smart radios to overlay the TV broadcast spectrum, primarily
channels 21 through 51. In any one area, not all of those channels are being utilized. These "vacant channels" represent
a substantial amount of spectrum that could be detected and utilized by smart radios for two-way data and other
applications. This kind of radio service would be very attractive for Internet access because the TV spectrum has
outstanding propagation characteristics. Intel is working to demonstrate to the FCC that this kind of usage is achievable
and practical.

[rumpel]

3. and we know what happened with energy deregulation here in CA

[CAcyclist]

4. An interview with Reed Hundt including remarks about Pitsch

http://www.courttv.com/archive/legaldocs/government/hundt.html
LEGAL TIMES SEPTEMBER 4, 1995

INTERVIEW

Reed Hundt Picks His Battles

Juggling the deregulatory zeal of the Republican-dominated 104th Congress and the ongoing, massive convergence of telecommunications technologies and companies, Reed Hundt,
chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, faces an unusual balancing act.

With influential Washington think tanks such as the Progress & Freedom Foundation clamoring for the agency's abolition, Hundt has the unenviable task of explaining why federal
regulation of the industry is still necessary.
>snip<


Legal Times: I want to go back to your point about the public interest. One of the comments that Peter Pitsch Foundation's report] made was that he really didn't believe in the public interest. . . . He thought that the term was so vague as to be meaningless.



Hundt: Peter Pitsch helped make it vague. Peter Pitsch was here at the FCC when the public interest was gutted of all meaning and the law was distorted into a play on words, in
which my friend and former colleague, Mark Fowler said, "The public interest isn't anything other than whatever interests the public." And then he went on
to suggest that if the public watches what's on TV, then that demonstrates that what's on TV is in the public interest. It's a circularity that was elevated by the FCC to a principle of
law and regulatory philosophy. But I don't agree with that, and I don't think that's the law.

This is a principal difference between me and those administrations. My view is that the problem with the phrase, public interest, convenience, and necessity, the 1934
Communications Act is not that it inevitably has no meaning, but rather that for 60 years, the commission has done everything it can to strip that phrase of all the potential meaning
that it could have.