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| Editorial: End FCC Technical Impoverishment |
| Thursday, 29 April 2010 19:28 |
 One of the many unreported scandals at the FCC is that the Technology Advisory Committee has been prevented from meeting for years. FCC Chairmen Martin canceled the last scheduled meeting in October 2006, while Julius Genachowski continues the ignorance policy despite an official notice in 2009. There's still a link on the FCC site to http://www.fcc.gov/oet/tac/ but following it yields a "404 Page not found" message. The TAC members are an extraordinary group that the FCC chair should be listening to. Bill Smith at BellSouth rebuilt New Orleans after Katrina. Dick Green created Cablelabs and defined the standards for cable modems; his CableLabs sucessor, Paul Liao, also is a member and was a leader at Bell Labs. There's the CTO of HBO and the Fox Network as well as Internet pioneers including Vint Cerf and Dave Farber. These aren't radical troublemakers, just very good engineers who wouldn't be afraid to call the FCC Chairman an Emperor Without Clothes.
In December, 2008 two of the FCC transition team members told me one of the new Commissioners needed to have a technical background to balance the lawyers on the FCC. It didn't work out that way; Julius is a very sharp business lawyer with experience at Home Shopping Network and Clyburn is a newspaper publisher with strong community roots. Chief of Staff Ed Lazarus is a brilliant Constitutional lawyer (I've read his work.) Julius surrounded himself with people of similar skills, mostly brilliant lawyers.
There's no reason a lawyer or policy person can't learn tech and networks; Dr. Pepper's degree is political science if I remember right. But these folks haven't taken the time to come up to speed and policy is the worse for it.
The FCC needs lawyers, politicians, and economists. They also need engineers, network experts, and folks who understand the business.
Julius needs to take a break from graciously receiving awards and smiling at lobbyists bringing CEOs for meet and greets. He instead should spend the time to come up to speed on the networks he's in charge of. A good first step is to bring back to the FCC the experts who can teach him.
In addition, the FCC is looking to hire an engineer to be a chief broadband advisor. The pay is $105K to $155K; you'd work for the Office of Engineering and Technology. Your superiors would be Julius Knapp and Walter Johnston, two decent guys who worked hard on the broadband plan. The formal requirements include an engineering degree and modest related experience, but they are looking for someone with as much experience as practical. The kicker is the application deadline is midnight Friday April 30 and unfortunately I just found out about the job. I've sent a note to the relevant people asking if they can extend into next week because this publicity might draw an applicant with strong experience from industry, but given government rules I'm not optimistic.
The FCC definitely needs more good engineers and I believe there are other positions opening soon. If you are experienced in broadband. drop me a note and a resume and I'll pass them directly to the people who can help you.
"TECHNOLOGICAL ADVISORY COUNCIL (“TAC”) POSTPONES MEETING SCHEDULED FOR WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 25, 2006 Rapid advances in technology have resulted in innovations in how telecommunications services are provided to, and are accessed by, users of those services. Many of these advances are increasing the rate of convergence among categories of services that have traditionally been viewed as distinct, such as cable television services, telephony, data services, and internet services. Regulations must be examined in light of these technology advances, and the Federal Communications Commission ("FCC") must remain abreast of new developments in technology so that it can effectively fulfill its responsibilities under the Communications Act. The purpose of the TAC is to provide technical advice to the Federal Communications Commission and to make recommendations on the issues and questions presented to it by the FCC. The TAC will address questions referred to it by the FCC Chairman, or by the FCC Chief Technologist or Chief Engineer. The questions referred to the TAC will be directed to technological and technical issues in the field of communications. The TAC web page is located at http://www.fcc.gov/oet/tac/. Click on the link and you'll get "Page Not Found" |