FCC to look at communications entry barriers

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FCCA scholarly look at the difficulties faced breaking into the communications field and its impact on meeting information needs will get an airing at the FCC on 6/26/12.


The meeting will convene to check out a draft version of the report from a group of scholars brought together by the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School of Communication and Journalism.

The meeting will be held from 9:30 AM to 12:00 noon.

The Commission said the effort is to satisfy its obligation, required once every three years, to “(1) efforts to identify and eliminate market entry barriers in the provision and ownership of telecommunications services and information services, or in the provision of parts or services to providers of telecommunications services and information services by entrepreneurs or other small businesses, and (2) proposals to eliminate statutory barriers to market entry by those entities, consistent with the public interest, convenience and necessity.”

RBR-TVBR observation: This is a tough problem to resolve. It is devilishly difficult to define a class of citizen deserving of a boost into the communications field that will get by the courts. And at the same time, one cannot simply go up to an existing license holder and demand that it be turned over to a new owner in the interests of furthering diversity of ownership.

Indefatigable diversity watchdog MMTC has been taking a shotgun approach to chipping away at the problem, offering a multitude of suggestions that could have an incremental affect on diversity numbers. We will be interested to see if these scholars have any new additions.