WASHINGTON, D.C. - The Federal Communications Commission hopes to emulate its U.K. counterpart and put at least half its resources into enforcing marketplace competition rather than writing telecom regulations, the agency's chief said.
"I'm trying to create an agency that is much more enforcement oriented," FCC Chairman William Kennard said at the Wall Street Journal Technology Summit 99. The agency will soon announce the creation of a new enforcement bureau that which will allow the agency to investigate and rule on complaints much faster than it has been able to in the past.
"Ninety days, soup to nuts, you'll get a decision from the FCC," Kennard said, about complaints that will be handled by the new enforcement bureau. Incumbent telecom companies have frequently used bureaucratic delays at the FCC to forestall competition.
The new bureau is part of a broader restructuring plan for the FCC intended to make it more responsive to the fast-moving markets that dominate the Internet age.
Kennard stressed that U.S. telecom industries need competition much more than regulation and vowed to evolve the regulatory agency accordingly.
"The marketplace is always a better protector of consumer well-being than regulators," he said.
Contrary to recent media reports of a rumored merger of the second- and third-largest U.S. long-distance telephone companies, MCI Worldcom and Sprint, Kennard hinted that such consolidation might not pass regulatory muster.
"Today American consumers are enjoying the lowest long-distance rates in history and the lowest Internet access costs in the world. And the reason is competition," he said. "And we can't turn back the clock on that."
The FCC is on the Web at http://www.fcc.gov/.
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