A Leaner DSL Bill Introduced

Mansing writes: "A somewhat toned version of Billy "Baby Bell" Tauzin's Telecommunications Bill has been introduced in the U.S. Senate. It is the same bill without the long distance provisions. Better for the Baby Bells, not better for the independent DSL providers."

Comments

Abolishing FCC isn't the answer

[wberry]

I don't think completely doing away with the FCC is a good answer either. The FCC does some good things for consumers; for example, the requirements that electronics accept interference and not interfere with other devices. If it wasn't for the FCC, then 100MHz motherboards would drown out the 99X radio station (99.7 MHz) here in Atlanta, or maybe the vacuum cleaner would cause every other piece of electronics in my apartment to stop working, or something.

Granted, the free market could solve most of the problems that destroying the FCC would create. But some important problems it could not solve, like if the corporate office down the street had microwave transmitters at dangerous levels.

One thing I think is a good idea is for Congress to mandate opening up the AM, FM, UHF, and VHF bands to unrestricted status. If you want a transmitter, and you can afford to power the sucker (a 10KW radio transmitter would cost about $2500/month to power in Atlanta), go for it. Radio Anarchy baby. Or at the very least, open up UHF. I mean, how many people actually broadcast on UHF any more? Everybody uses cable now.

But even then, keeping the FCC around would be a good thing. Emergency services (police, fire, medical) should have some protected spectra to use for their radios, and it should be criminal to interfere with those bands in my opinion.