Harold Feld has deep background in telecommunication and broadband policy. His comments on recent Biden FCC and NTIA nominations and what it takes to bring change.
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One of the biggest mistakes that people keep making in policy and politics
is that you can just elect (or in this case, appoint) the right people and
go home to let them solve the problems. Then people get all disappointed
when things don’t work out. Incumbents are not going to simply surrender to
new policies, and political power has limits. This will be especially true
if Congress flips in 2022. So while this is definitely cause for
celebration, we are going to have to fight harder than ever to get the
policies we need to create the broadband (and media) we need — starting
with the fight to get them confirmed over the inevitable Republican
resistance.
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For policymakers to take political risks, they need to see evidence of
support. They also need to _have_ evidence to support their policies . . .
the FCC has a very limited capacity to gather knowledge on its own. At the
same time, it has lots of well-funded industry players constantly deluging
it with fancy studies with lots of math and cool graphs explaining how
everything with the status quo is awesome, and the thing that would make it
even better is more deregulation please. FCC staff are well aware that
these studies and reports are produced with a particular result in mind.
But unless there is offsetting input, this is all there is.
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