The Hill.com reported yesterday on a letter sent to the Federal Communications Commission from a number of Democrats on the House Energy and Commerce Committee asking the FCC to look at implementing policy that would lead to the reduction of rates for special access lines.

Special access lines are typically used to connect a customer directly to a long distance provider, avoiding a central office or other portions of the public telephone network. They can also be used to connect various customer locations.

The Democrats aim is to allegedly increase innovation and investment for special access customers. If the Democrats want to increase innovation and investment, they should encourage these customers to generate products, services, and content that stimulates consumer demand for them.

This surprisingly supply-side approach by Democrats won’t work. Special access rates have historically been set higher than other access line rates because of their non-shared nature. It’s just the economics of the network.

The Federal Communications Commission’s wireless bureau chief has some questions for Verizon. Specifically, they want to know why Verizon went to all that trouble bidding on spectrum in the 700MHz block only to consider putting it up for sale contingent on the closing of a deal to buy AWS band spectrum from Spectrum, Co.

Business plans change, FCC. It sounds like Verizon has weighed the cost of having the terms reduced on their 700 MHz band holdings post sale vs. holding the frequencies and not providing additional services. If they can provide better quality service in the AWS band (both bands support 3G and 4G services, then so what?

Verizon has until 22 May 2012 to respond to the FCC’s query.

Public Knowledge, one of the Dark Lords of the Progressive Sith, filed a petition with the Federal Communications Commission asking the agency to deny confidential treatment of a joint operating agreement between Verizon and SpectrumCo and Verizon and Cox. Verizon wants to purchase spectrum from these two entities in exchange for the cross selling of each other’s services.

Public Knowledge believes that the FCC should not apply confidential treatment to information about the companies’ governance structure under their joint agreement. Public Knowledge argues that the information does not consist of trade secrets or any other information that if released would harm either of the companies’ competitive positions.

My take is, how does removing confidential treatment help the FCC make a better decision about the optimal use of a natural resource. Public Knowledge argues that keeping the information confidential may stifle innovation, and stifling innovation threatens of the public interest. Public Knowledge is probably taking some comfort in hiding behind a concept, the public interest, that has successfully avoid a concrete definition for decades if not the past couple centuries.

This comfort is more apparent when you consider that Public Knowledge, the group bringing the assertion, brings no quantitative analysis to justify its position. How do we know that keeping a joint operations agreement confidential will drive up costs for consumers? Will making its details public increase the likelihood of broadband adoption?

So quick is Public Knowledge to cite the Freedom of Information Act, it feels like they are simply happy to forego the consumer welfare analysis good public policy requires. First address quantitatively or qualitatively the consume harm. Then move to analyzing any barriers to market entry failure to act may cause or help maintain. Jumping to a FOIA analysis, though acceptable by jurisprudential warriors, only tells me that Public Knowledge is more interested in being overly nosey.

DISH Network’s Charlie Ergen would like to see the Federal Communications Commission approve the use of the company’s satellite spectrum for terrestrial mobile broadband. Unfortunately the FCC is also considering rules for the use of satellite spectrum for the entire satellite sector.

I guess I can see the FCC’s dilemma. Cut DISH a waiver now, and the FCC would have to justify why other satellite company’s and wireless carriers couldn’t get the same exception. The rule would be gutted before it was even released in final form.

On the other hand, wait until a final rule is issued and add to the delay in getting spectrum into the hands of wireless carriers who need it in order to meet well documented consumer demand.

Hate to say it, but I have to side with the FCC on this one. Cutting DISH a waive now will only create regulatory gridlock down the road.

Jamal Simmons’ piece in today’s The Podium raises two important issues. First, we should not take for granted how much the private sector has invested in meeting the increasing demand for broadband services. According to his piece, broadband providers have invested tens of billions of dollars last year in broadband deployment. I remember when the fiber deployments of AT&T and Verizon started up back in 2005. The companies were investing upwards of $30 billion a year to compete with entrenched cable monopolies and provide the competition not only for cable programming but higher broadband speeds.

That was private investment. No government subsidies were being provided. No universal service. Ironically the impediment to broadband deployment was onerous franchise agreements that AT&T and Verizon, new to the cable franchise game, had to face. They could have slowed down or worse yet yanked their deployment plans off the board. Instead they marched ahead with the intent of meeting consumer demand, again without subsidies.

Second, there is the issue of flow of capital. Mr. Simmons’ piece is a reminder that as regulator of commerce, the federal government should be willing to avoid applying unnecessary regulations that would discourage investment in the private sector in general and the broadband sector in particular. I saw a number of cable firms that may have ended up providing competitive broadband services had not entry fees and other franchise requirements kept them out of certain markets.

These requirements didn’t even have anything to do with consumer protection, but more so with localities extracting onerous obligations such as cable TV studios and I-Nets; items that municipalities should have funded from their own general funds. Now these same municipalities complain about a lack of competition in their local franchise areas. Go figure.