Sidecut Reports

If you needed any more evidence that this isn’t your grandfather’s FCC, look no farther than this great one-on-one interview between my old boss Om Malik and new FCC chairman Julius Genachowski.

Though Genachowski dances a bit around Om’s pointed questions that is understandable, since he hasn’t been chairman long enough to get much of anything done. But the simple fact that this chairman is reaching out to individual, influential voices in the blogosphere means that the door is now open to let telecom policy makers and regulators hear what’s being said and what’s being thought outside the insular walls of Washington D.C.

The money quote from Genachowski: “we [the FCC under Genachowski] want to be fact-based and data-driven.” Knowing as we do that our good friend Blair Levin is leading the FCC’s development of a new overall national broadband plan (which, we have been told, will probably be more far-reaching and influential than the historic 1996 Telecom Act), it’s pretty easy to guess that whatever happens going forward is going to have to pass the tests of openness and public scrutiny — a far better way to make sausage, as our pal Harold Feld might say, than previous regimes. And that is change we can believe in, from a telecom policy point of view.

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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We now have an official “starting date” for round two of the net neutrality debate: Aug. 1, when the details of the FCC’s order against Comcast should be made public. News reports Thursday said that FCC chairman Kevin Martin is expected to announce on that date some form of penalties and punishment for the cable operator’s now-infamous blocking actions of peer-to-peer traffic on its broadband networks; but instead of putting a close to the matter, the FCC order is widely expected to just be the start of a fresh round of net neutrality gymnastics, which likely won’t reach a conclusion until after the November elections and into 2009, when the FCC will likely have a new cast of commissioners.

Though Martin said Friday he wouldn’t seek any fines against Comcast, the devil will be in the details of the order, especially the specifics about how Martin interprets how Comcast might have violated the FCC’s 2005 Internet policy principles order. The most immediate question after the order is released is whether or not Comcast will file a lawsuit against the FCC, challenging the agency’s jurisdiction over cable operators; as our analyst friends at Stifel, Nicolaus said in a note today, such legal actions may not be the best move for Comcast, since if the company was victorious in having the order revoked, it could spur Congress into taking more direct net neutrality action, passing legislation giving the FCC clear authority over cable operators.

There are also questions about how the order might affect operators of wireless networks, and how a new President and new Congress will deal with the issue going forward. To quote the conclusion of the Stifel, Nicolaus report today, no doubt penned in part by our good friend Blair Levin:

We see the real significance in how the order and the subsequent court decision sets the stage for how the new Congress and the new FCC may wish to address the wider network neutrality issue.

Sounds like a perfect time for a Sidecut Report on net neutrality, giving you all the background info on the issue as well as in-depth interviews with major players on both sides of the debate, along with analysis on how the topic will affect businesses, entrepreneurs and investors in entities that will be affected by new communications legislation or regulation. If you’d like an email notification when our report is ready, drop me a line at kaps at sidecutreports.com and I will ping you personally.