FCC in Holding Pattern, Though Not For Long
With election uncertainty overhanging the FCC and every other institution in Washington, there have been fewer ex parte meetings at the agency in the past month than what has become the norm, a review of filings showed. Eighth-floor officials confirmed this trend.
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In addition to the election, there’s an unusually long lag time between the October and November meetings, almost seven weeks, compared to three between the September and October meetings. Then too, the November meeting is expected to be dominated by votes on two spectrum proposals outlined by Chairman Julius Genachowski last month (CD Oct 21 p1), and industry, consumer and public interest groups tend to push harder when final rules rather than proposed rules are in play.
Just as important, key broadband issues are getting less industry attention, at least compared to the build up for the National Broadband Plan finalized in March and the fight over net neutrality and broadband reclassification, with FCC decisions likely pushed into the new year. Orders addressing recommendations in the plan have dominated recent commission meetings.
As one measurement of activity, a review of FCC records shows that groups and companies made 2,383 filings at the FCC, including comments and ex parte letters, in October and 2,445 in September. That compares to more than 8,000 in July and more than 10,000 each in May and June. With the exception of April, parties made in excess of 3,490 filings every other month this year. These numbers do not include brief comments.
It makes less sense to meet with commissioners and their legal advisors early in the process, under Genachowski, since the various bureaus play a much bigger role currently in developing orders before they hit the eighth floor, an industry lawyer said. “There just isn’t a lot to be done on the 8th floor,” the attorney said. “Genachowski’s office does little to set direction on items until the bureau makes a recommendation, and the other commissioners are essentially frozen out of the process until an order is circulated."
"Almost everything has been put on hold” because of the election, said Sanford Bernstein analyst Craig Moffett. “Washington is still a one-industry town. The FCC, at least, will turn its attention back to communications issue in short order. Congress is still a long shot. The only issue that’s going to occupy the new Congress in the short term is the expiry of the tax cuts."
"It may be a little bit slow but part of that is just by comparison,” said a former FCC official. “There was a lot of net neutrality activity over the spring and summer. That has fallen off.” The number of ex parte meetings may be down, “but I suspect that’s temporary,” said Paul Gallant, analyst at MF Global. “Net neutrality, USF and spectrum are all in flux and awfully important to many stakeholders, so the next lobbying wave isn’t far off."
"Although communications policy obviously isn’t driving the election, the results ought to cause the Genachowski FCC to rethink its approach -- just as much of official Washington will be rethinking what it is doing,” said Randolph May, president of the Free State Foundation. “For the FCC, this should mean showing that it understands that, as competition has taken root in all sectors of the communications marketplace, the need for government intervention has been substantially reduced.”