Free Press Grades FCC Chairman's First Year

Free Press is celebrating the first anniversary of Julius Genachowski's chairmanship at the Federal Communications Commission by, what else, grading him.

Research Director S. Derek Turner said, "The Commission has appeared active, but very little of this activity has yet to produce actual policy changes that positively affect the public. At the one-year mark, Free Press is giving the chairman a grade of 'Incomplete, needs improvement' across the board. Genachowski needs to be willing to pursue critical policies that protect consumers, even if the largest telecommunications companies don't like those policies. Thus far, the agency has largely failed to adopt policy changes that are not widely supported by the industries it oversees. There have been no efforts to address the real problems of our broadband market -- high prices and slow service due to a lack of meaningful competition -- and instead the Commission has seemed preoccupied with focusing on policies that will benefit the major wired and wireless companies. The public needs a champion willing to challenge those entrenched interests."

Turner compares Chairman Genachowski to his predecessors: "The first-year contrast between Genachowski and his two Republican predecessors is stark. Former Chairmen Kevin Martin and Michael Powell quickly pursued the Bush administration's policy agendas during their first year in office. In Martin's first few months, he deregulated wireline broadband by classifying it as an information service, resulting in the FCC's current existential crisis, and approved the massive Verizon-MCI and SBC-AT&T mergers. Those misguided actions forever closed the door on the last vestige of the 1996 Telecommunications Act's promise of competition and changed the political dynamic in a way that has entrenched the cable and telecom industry's dominance over our broadband marketplace, leaving consumers with few choices, poor service and high prices. It's not too late to turn things around. Chairman Martin eventually pursued a few public interest strategies at the end of his term, including the white spaces order and the enforcement against Comcast's Internet blocking practices. To his credit, Genachowski has laid some of the groundwork needed to enact meaningful change, but now he must follow through with decisive action."