When you espouse a particular philosophy, but reason, that little voice in the back of your head, says this philosophy doesn’t fly, and your practices run counter to the school of thought you subscribe to, you’ve met a necessary condition for cognitive dissonance. The Federal Communications Commission is at that crossroad, staring at the signs, and wondering which fork in the road it should follow.

FCC chairman Julius Genachowski’s statements yesterday on proposed municipal broadband legislation sent that red flag up; the sign that the agency’s voices in its head were out of sync with the actions it prefers. On the one hand, Mr. Genachowski says the following:

“High-speed broadband is vitally important to our global competitiveness and the continued
growth of our economy, and we must keep pushing for faster speeds and greater capacity through new
investments in broadband networks. This investment has and will come overwhelmingly from the private
sector, which is why it’s vital that we continue to focus on policies to incentivize private investment and
remove barriers to broadband build-out.”

But then Mr. Genachowski starts to sing the benefits of government owned networks (GON):

“If a community can’t gain access to broadband services that meet its needs, then it should be able
to serve its own residents directly. Proposals that would tie the hands of innovative communities that want
to build their own high-speed networks will slow progress to our nation’s broadband goals and will hurt
economic development and job creation in those areas.”

What Mr. Genachowski failed to stress is that GONs, armed with cash from tax revenues, will have access to an interest free source of funding from which to wage broadband war against traditional broadband providers. Also, these GONs may choose, unless prohibited by the very same statutes Mr. Genachowski opposes, to compete in areas where there is already significant service. The robust competition that Mr. Genachowski has spoken about for almost four years would be picked away at if not totally eroded.

The FCC should choose a philosophy on market intervention and stick with it. Either it promotes commerce by allowing the market to determine how resources are going to move or it goes all out and promotes a publicly-owned network that may be more immune to regulation than a privately owned counterpart.

The Hillicon Valley reported last Thursday about Senator Al Franken’s displeasure with the settlement agreement between Verizon and the U.S. Department of Justice. The Minnesota Democrat reportedly believes that the Obama Administration via the DOJ has not gone far enough to ensure competition in the video distribution industry.

No wonder Democrats get accused of choosing winners and losers. Mr. Franken is advocating for government forcing companies to compete with each other.

It’s one thing to accuse a company of practices that keep another company out of a market, but just because Verizon knows how to provide video distribution services doesn’t mean it should be compelled to do so versus cross selling the services of another competitor.

If a third party wants to take advantage of the opening Verizon is providing by not providing video distribution services, let them step in and do so.

During a Senate antitrust review Wednesday, Senate antitrust committee chairman Herb Kohl (D-WI) said the following: “Having won the battle for competition by blocking last year’s AT&T/T-Mobile merger, are we now in danger of losing the war?” Mr. Kohl asked.

That’s the problem, Senator Kohl. Had you, your congressional colleagues, the FCC, and DOJ not looked at the AT&T/T-Mobile deal from the standpoint as a war against “the big companies”, you wouldn’t have AT&T and Verizon buying spectrum from cable. We should be mindful of the corners we back industry into with poor public policy.

Andrew Breitbart passed away today. The conservative blogger impacted politics by targeting Democrats and liberals, particularly by posting provocative videos and pictures.

Mr. Breitbart’s most infamous posting was that of former U.S. Department of Agriculture official Shirley Sharrod making allegedly racist statements about individuals she assigned to help some years ago. It was quickly determined that his posts blatantly distorted the true context and message of Mrs. Sharrod’s statements.

Yes, political warfare in cyberspace can be bloody and is usually anonymous, however, the true thought drivers are more than willing to step out there and express their thoughts and opinions, and an increasing number of Americans via the use of social networks are willing to engage these conversationalists.

Cable television will for a long time be the primary distributor of political news and opinion. Social networks, however, provide the ability for the everyday citizen to engage. This is another reason why broadband adoption is important. Policy makers should ensure onerous rules do not drive up the costs for the unserved and the underserved to get online via high-speed broadband.

Policy makers should avoid creating unnecessary barriers to market entry; barriers that would keep 21st century journalists like Andrew Breitbart from bringing their opinions and perspectives to the marketplace of ideas.

Comcast Cable Communications wants the Federal Communications Commission to find that its franchise areas in Aberdeen, Maryland; Bel Air, Maryland; and Havre de Grace, Maryland are subject to effective competition. See Comcast’s filing here.

A franchise area is said to subject to effective competition when two conditions are met.
First, the franchise area is served by at least two unaffiliated multichannel video programming distributors, each of which offers comparable programming to at least 50% of the households in the franchise area.

Second, the number of households subscribing to multichannel video programming other than the largest MVPD exceeds 15% of the households in the franchise area.

If the FCC says that the areas are indeed effectively competitive, rates for basic tier services in these areas would no longer be subjected to rate review by the local franchise authority.