WASHINGTON, DC — Outgoing Federal Communications Commission Chairman Kevin J. Martin may have tabled his plan for a porn-free, fee-free nationwide wireless broadband service, but evidently congresscritters haven’t.In fact, two Democrats in the House of Representatives are demanding the Democrats on the commission return the matter to the table posthaste.
“Given the promising opportunity afforded by the [Advanced Wireless Services 3 spectrum] auction and given that a prominent, minority-owned firm is directly involved in the proceedings, we are troubled by the cumbersome obstacles that this particular auction has faced over the years,” Bobby Rush [D-IL] and Adolphus Towns [D-NY] wrote to the commissioners after the FCC’s scheduled December 18th vote on the issue was cancelled.
The firm to which Rush and Towns referred is M2Z Networks, which first brought the proposal to the FCC. Its owners are African-American, as are Rush and Towns.
Rush and Towns find themselves at odds with other key Washington Democrats who view the proposal with skepticism. Rep. Henry Waxman [D-CA] and Sen. Jay Rockefeller [D-WV], who will chair the House and Senate Commerce Committees, respectively, beginning next year, urged the FCC not to consider any new initiatives that might present headaches to the incoming Obama administration. Instead, they suggested, the FCC would do well to focus on more pressing, short-term objectives like the digital television transition that must be completed by February.
“It would be counterproductive for the FCC to consider unrelated items, especially complex and controversial items that the new congress and new administration will have an interest in reviewing,” Waxman and Rockefeller wrote to the FCC prior to the broadband tabling. “We strongly urge you to concentrate the commission’s attention and resources only on matters that require action under the law.”
The commission complied by removing the broadband proposal, six other items and the meeting itself from its agenda.
According to Rush and Towns, however, the broadband initiative does require action under the law. Invoking section 7(b) of the Communications Act, they contend a decision on the broadband matter, which they said was launched by the FCC in September 2007, already is three months overdue.
According to section 7(b), “If the commission initiates its own proceeding for a new technology or service, such proceeding shall be completed within 12 months after it is initiated.”
Although none of the matters on the December 18th agenda have been rescheduled for decision before the end of the year, FCC spokesperson Rob Kenny told Ars Technica that some of the items remain active and “any of the commissioners can act on those at any time.” It is more likely, however, that nothing new will occur until the next regularly scheduled meeting in January.
