The Rumor Mill: A New FCC Org Chart?

Telecom Policy Report, July 25, 2005

With Washington, D.C. set to take its normal August siesta beginning next week, meaning there will be few honchos and staffers around to confirm or deny, the rumor mill has begun circulating reports that Federal Communications Commission Chairman Kevin Martin may be moving to restructure several of the agency's existing bureaus in a reorganization that could include the creation of a new "Competition Bureau" tasked with embracing pro-competition policies applicable to wireline and wireless carriers.

The FCC, of course, had no comment on these reports that, among other things, suggest Martin may be readying a potential move to disband or revamp the Wireless Telecommunications Bureau and the Wireline Competition Bureau under Chiefs Catherine W. Seidel and Thomas Navin, respectively.

Speculation indicates wireless licensing and other technology functions may be shifted to a new Spectrum Bureau as well as to the existing Office of Engineering and Technology, while a new Homeland Security Bureau would assume responsibilities for public-safety and critical infrastructure matters currently spread around the FCC as well as residing at its Office of Planning and Policy and the Consumer and Governmental Affairs Bureau.

Martin was named by the White House to head the agency in mid-March and, while some restructuring of the FCC by a new chairman is traditional, suggestions are that his current motivation was sparked in part by criticism that bureaus oriented by carrier classification are saddled with too many diverse functional responsibilities and that they also must handle too many conflicting industry interests.

More important, however, are the growing business, state-regulator and outside-expert complaints that U.S. telecom laws and FCC policy decisions don't take into account the merging or converging nature of telecom networks and service offerings by multiple types of providers. Instead, the commission has been charged with relying on an outmoded "silo" approach of separating regulations by operator categories against the trend of such companies moving into voice, data and video simultaneously across legacy and new IP networks (TPR, June 13).

Martin has suggested in the past the possibility of a FCC overhaul that would address the silo issue and reorganize some of the agency's fundamentals in order to level the playing field and to promote pro-competition decision making. It is uncertain, however, that all the talk of a congressional revamp of the 1996 Telecom Act - and the effect of such on the commission - was a catalyst for Martin's thought processes.

The only legislation that directly confronts current FCC structure in this session of the 109th Congress so far is H.R.2982, introduced June 17 by Rep. Albert R Wynn (D-Md.) without co-sponsors; the FCC Reorganization Act hasn't moved out of the House Energy and Commerce Committee's Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet, of which Wynn is a member.

H.R.2982's chances may be dubious due to a larger 1996 Act revamp, but it requires the FCC to reorganize bureaus the bill maintains are "based on an obsolete technology-oriented model no longer relevant in view of multiple services handled by carriers." The bill envisions the FCC consisting of a Spectrum Management Bureau, a Government Affairs and Consumer Education Bureau, an Economic Regulation Bureau, a Public Interest Bureau, a Broadcast Content Bureau, a Licensing Bureau, an Enforcement Bureau and an International Bureau.

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