Texas Lawyer Warns ISPs About FCC NPR

Scott McCollough, of Stumpf, Craddock, Massey & Pulman, a Texas lawyer whose clients include TISPA, warns that the FCC just might pull the plug on all independent ISPs in the United States.

by Jim Wagner of internetnews.com [February 19, 2002]

It seems Michael Powell, chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, isn't happy with the current definition of an Internet service provider (ISP), and announced in a meeting Thursday afternoon his plans to define broadband ISPs as "an information service with a telecommunications component."

While the FCC's notice of proposed rulemaking (NPR) isn't even public yet, with those seven words Powell touched off a firestorm of debate between telephone companies, ISPs, competitive local exchange carriers (CLECs) and the organizations that represent each of them.

Scott McCollough, a telecommunications lawyer with Austin, TX-based Stumpf, Craddock, Massey & Pulman and future speaker at INT Media Group's ISP Business Expo 2002, said that while most NPRs never end up where they start, the tone set by the FCC is more than just a little troubling.

He cautioned the NPR hasn't been released yet so a definitive answer isn't available, but the wording used by Powell seems to suggest the FCC will try to strike out, among other things, the Telecommunications Act of 1996 provision that allows competitive access to the telephone company's unbundled network elements (UNE) for competitive local exchange carriers (CLECs).

With UNE's, CLECs are able to provide broadband services, like DSL, on their own. If that provision goes away, McCollough said, telephone company competitors might as well call it a day and go home.

"If that's what they're trying to do, then in one fell swoop, the FCC will have done two things: They have wiped out the independent ISPs and wiped out the CLECs," he said. "Way to go. Are we now going to reserve Internet services to the cable and telephone companies? And if so, what does that mean for customer choice and the usefulness and utility and benefit of the Internet? Trust me, they don't really care about John Q. Customer, only John Q's dollars."

While Verizon declined an interview request for information until after the NPR has been released, SBC Communications released a statement to the press shortly after the FCC meeting Thursday, congratulating FCC and vowing to work with it in the future to address these "challenging issues."

"The objective should be to ensure that providers of the same services are treated equally. Under the current patchwork system, the growth and availability of broadband services is threatened by the increasing regulatory disparity between providers of competitive broadband services," SBC's statement read. "Increased broadband investment would not only add much needed jobs and billions of dollars to the U.S. economy, but would mean new technologies to deliver more broadband services to more consumers, at better prices."

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