Sidecut Reports

Just saw that Susan Crawford and Kevin Werbach have been named to the Obama FCC “transition team,” a great thing and kudos to both Susan and Kevin, two of the bigger brains out there when it comes to matters telecom.

According to this story that means that Susan and Kevin will “lead the Obama FCC transition team with the responsibility of advising the incoming administration on policy, budget and personnel matters.” Now maybe we know why Susan was suspending her blog for a bit. Hah, good reason!

Can’t wait to see the team that gets assembled…

UPDATE: John Furrier also likes the news. As John says:

Meet the new guard - Kevin Werbach and Susan Crawford. Both are industry experts in the area of policy, technology, and innovation. More importantly they both have a global view. Both Kevin and Susan have long been proponents of ‘broadband everywhere’ and the impact to innovation and global leadership.

For policy wonks, the time between election and inauguration is sweet — kind of like a fantasy football draft, when everyone tries to figure out who’s going to score the most and the busts to avoid when putting together a new team from scratch. In the small world of things telecom, the hot stove league kicked off in fine fashion today with a BusinessWeek post detailing the short list of fine folks reportedly under consideration to lead Barack Obama’s FCC.

While I joined the conversation about the matter that is earnestly underway over at GigaOM, my further musings on the the subject are a bit more nuanced. As I went through the names and the arguments, it sort of occurred to me that things might be a whole lot different this time around, and so it might not matter as much who it is atop the FCC.

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