Julius Will Not Be There at the End, But He Has Laid a Path

Chairman Julius Genachowski may have planned our Appian Way, but someone else will have to build it.

And while paying attention to Policy is a lot like being a product manager who must grass seed watch their product in action, there have been a number of activities at the FCC that warrant your attention.

Remember LightSquared, the $ 10B start-up that was going to blend Satellite with LTE, with spectrum - that might interfere with GPS solutions? Well now the commission has given permission for Lightsquared to bring shared spectrum strategies into the spectrum which will breathe life back into the company and its assets. 

How about Vonage 2.0? The commission is allowing them to be one of the first companies to experiment with direct access to telephone numbers. No longer being held back by the licensed carriers to get access to numbers and enabling them direct access into LNP databases.

These are not your, “lets keep the big guys happy trials.” This is, “let’s get some creative destruction going on here and see if we can’t improve upon what we have.”

In the commission’s press release about its NPRM on Access to Numbering, it becomes clear that we are going to have some interesting experiences. Geographic-based area code and numbers are on the table as something to eliminate for example, which will make it harder for states to collect their taxes.   

What if, for example, your home phone from the landline was transferred to a soft phone on your smart phone?   I bought a MiFi once and gave them the address of my mailbox and all of a sudden I started paying local jurisdictional taxes for a place that I never would use the device at.

It could be that non-geographic numbers accomplish the goal the FCC had for the 500 area code and perhaps that will be the first donation to the cause.

So kudos to Chairman Genachowski for his efforts and the commission for taking the initiatives seriously.

However the grass is still not grown, and trials usually set the precedent for more to come.

The sticking issues of rules and policy are not yet set. Under Chairman Genachowski we have had grand ideas set out in NPRM, but the orders have been few and far between.

I don’t blame them. It takes a lot to turn a century of policy into something for the future. And it may be that the trials help to make the change one rule at a time. But for those who have been saying “turn it off in 2018,” I have to warn POTS will still be there in plenty by 2020.