Telecommunications Policy

SPOTLIGHT: McCain gets (an ex-) FCC Chairman

Doug Mohney — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 13:57:14 -0400

Senator John McCain had trailed Senator Barack Obama in the number of former Federal Communication Commission (FCC) chairs supporting his campaign by a count of two to zero. This week, his re-energized campaign has managed to garner the support of former FCC Chairman and professed Best Buy lover Michael K. Powell.

Powell represented McCain on Monday in an online discussion conducted over Skype entitled "The Next President, the Internet, and the Disconnected City"; he faced off against Obama surrogate Gigi Sohn, President of Public Knowledge. Powell, son of General and former Secretary of State Colin Powell, likely gets extra brownie points in McCain circles for his Army service.

After departing the FCC, Powell has kept a low public profile. During his time as chairman, Powell outlined principles for what has become known as Net Neutrality and was a geek favorite for his love of TiVo, VoIP and whatever other cool gizmos he found.

However, McCain has an uphill battle in the telecommunications adviser count. Obama counts a (very embittered) Bill Kinnard and Reed Hundt among his former FCC chair head count; both have contributed cash and advice to the Democratic candidate's campaign.

Google VoIPing for White Spaces

Doug Mohney — Sun, 07 Sep 2008 17:50:22 -0400

Google has tapped into the power of Cause Caller and its underlying Asterisk technology to lobby Congress.

Cause Caller is one of a couple of services floating around mixing IP telephony with political activism. For Google's campaign, Cause Caller allows a user to enter a phone number and then uses the information to setup a VoIP call to a randomized list of Congressional representatives focusing on telecom issues. GigaOm says as of Friday afternoon, a whole 11 calls had been made on behalf of Google's White Spaces lobbying push.

Cost per call is "less than 3 cents per minute" and the infrastructure is a combination of Amazon's EC2 server service and Asterisk handling the PBX functionality.

While Cause Caller is a "hobby" for the operator, there are other folks out there combining Asterisk and politics for profit. Popvox, run by David Troy, has been working with various Democratic political causes since 2005. During the 2006 election cycle, Popvox logged over a million voter-to-voter phone calls for 25 Democratic campaigns. Volunteers would use a website to make calls to potential voters, preserving privacy by not displaying a volunteer's phone number, while at the same time providing call monitoring information to the campaign.

For more:
- GigaOm reports on Google's use of VoIP service Cause Caller. Article

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McCain Issues Tech Policy

Doug Mohney — Sun, 17 Aug 2008 17:24:41 -0400

While the world focuses on the Olympics and Georgia, Republican Presidential candidate John McCain issued a 3,000 word technology policy statement with a right turn on net neutrality.

McCain describes network neutrality as "prescriptive regulation" and instead believes an open marketplace with a variety of consumer choices is the "best deterrent" against unfair practices. McCain says that his administration would focus on open networks that would allow consumers to attach devices and use services of their choice, so long as the twain do no harm to the network. (So the difference between net neutrality and open networks is...?)

McCain is promoting his "People Connect Program," which would give tax write-offs to companies that offer broadband Internet access services to low-income customers. McCain's policy also is heavy on tax credits and more H1B skilled worker visas.

Way back in October 2007, Democratic candidate Barack Obama pledged to impose network neutrality mandates on broadband providers if he made it into the White House. He also said he would appoint a Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman who supported network neutrality, as well as a CTO for his administration.

More recently, McCain came under fire by former FCC Chairman Bill Kennard for not having a telecom policy.

For more
- eWeek dissects McCain's technology policy

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Ex-FCC Chairman: McCain has no Telecom Policy

Ex-FCC Chairman: McCain has no Telecom Policy

Doug Mohney — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 15:45:40 -0400

Barack Obama policy advisor and former Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman Bill Kennard has no great love for Republican presidential candidate John McCain--especially on telecommunications policy.

Speaking at an event Wednesday sponsored by the Media Access Project, Kennard quickly challenged the idea that McCain's six-year track record serving as Chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee--responsible for telecommunications policy--was an asset. "It's stunning how little he's accomplished," said Kennard. "He doesn't have one [legislative] achievement [in] the telecom sector... there's nothing. Where's the beef?"

Kennard, FCC Chairman from 1997 through 2001, often had to go before the Commerce Committee to testify on telecommunications and media policy issues and seemed especially embittered when it came to a discussion of the Universal Service Fund and E-Rate program. "[McCain] sought to kill [E-Rate], then turned around and took credit for it ... he opposed it, didn't want it to happen ... he would bully government agencies."

In contrast, Kennard cited Obama's policy paper on telecommunications and technology posted on the candidate's website. McCain had no information and therefore "he just doesn't have" a policy.

McCain representative John Kneuer managed to score some points when the topic turned to media consolidation. Kennard said including the "nascent" Internet as a form of competitive media didn't make sense given its relative new nature but Kneuer pointed out Kennard spent time citing Obama's Internet assets, including 1.5 million online donors, 8,000 affiliate groups on the candidate's website and another million unpaid online volunteers.

Skeptical observers may have also taken issue with Kennard's portrait of Obama being outside of traditional Washington D.C. politics at a forum held in the offices of a downtown law firm. And if there was an "outsider" at the event, it was Kneuer, a former assistant secretary at NTIA. Of the four speakers participating in the event, Kneuer was the only one who had not served at the FCC, unlike Kennard, Skype's Director for Government and Regulatory Affairs Christopher Libertelli, and AT&T's Chief Privacy Officer Dorothy Attwood.

It should also be noted that Kennard departed the event to have lunch with former FCC chief of staff Blair Levin. Now at Stifel Nicolaus, Levin's name pops up on the short list for FCC Chairman in an Obama administration.

Related articles:
Obama's ex-FCC Backers ...
Telecom execs don't have a read on McCain, Obama