commerce committee

As Cord mentioned earlier, Henry Waxman has been named incoming Chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, of which the Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet is a part. In his role, Waxman is likely to play an influential role in future tech policy fights involving issues such as universal broadband access and network neutrality. While Waxman has laudably defended civil liberties on many occasions, his record on telecommunications lawmaking is quite troubling.

Waxman has embraced forced openness for privately-owned networks, even threatening to cut off USF funding for telecom companies unwilling to open up their networks for device roaming. Though the USF itself is unneeded, and in some cases even counter-productive (as Cord argues), any government subsidies of rural telecommunications services should strive to minimize costs rather than reshape markets to suit political whims. Because mandatory access is often at odds with the bottom line, demanding that carriers grant access to any device often leads to a reduction in infrastructure investment. America’s rural areas would be better served by a competitive marketplace in which companies are free to experiment with all kinds of pricing plans and service offerings to suit evolving consumer demands.

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