Welcome Julius Genachowski! Now Get to Work!

June 26th, 2009 by · 3 Comments

Congratulations on finally being confirmed as FCC Chairman!  Now ignore the cameras, roll up those sleeves, and get started already!  You’re already more than 8 years behind on intercarrier compensation, the bickering over special access is getting downright mean, and and there are six trucks from Verizon, AT&T, and Comcast waiting at the loading dock ready to unload this month’s paperwork designed to slow you down.  And oh yes we’re all still waiting for that stimulus money we keep hearing about, you wouldn’t happen to know where it is would you?

At least it won’t take much to be more effective than the last few commissioners, all you need is a decent website developer to rewrite the labyrinth they call fcc.gov.  For homework, the  NoChokePoints Coalition filed a letter a few days ago with the FCC regarding the special access market.  Your task, should you choose to accept it, is to go to www.fcc.gov and try to find that filing by using only your mouse to click on links and your keyboard for filling in search fields where appropriate.  You must imagine that you don’t know the ‘Docket Number’ is nor what a ‘Proceeding’ or ‘DA/FCC Number’ might be.  If it takes more than two searches and 5 clicks, the site sucks.

As far as I can tell, even Google’s spiders haven’t found this document on the FCC site so far.    Hey that’s it, just let Google run it – look what they did with patents.  If I tell you that Robert Powell (that’s me) was an inventor on an otherwise obscure patent having something to with interactive tutorials but which wasn’t actually named that, I’ll bet that on Google’s site you could find it in one search and one click.  That’s how a real website works.  Make the FCC site work like that and you will instantly have achieved transparency many levels above what we have today.  Then you can get started on the hard stuff.

Yes, I’m being a tad impertinent, even annoying.  Why?  Because unlike most people who dream of a functional FCC, I don’t have business before the commission and I therefore am not worried about the effects of annoying anybody.  Trust me, the guys who do have to work with the FCC are much less polite when nobody is looking.  I know the current disaster of a commission is not your fault, and I don’t blame you for it.  But just fix it, ok?  Please?  A little bit at a time is fine, just leave the photoshoots for later and put on some hip boots – you’ll need them.

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Categories: Government Regulations

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3 Comments So Far


  • Anonymous says:

    Thanks for making me laugh!

  • The_highwayman says:

    LOL funny Rob, While you are at, maybe you should ask The Chairman why Don Gips is heading to South Africa instead of 12th Street

  • carlk says:

    Your patent filing is interesting Rob. Does it relate to the “streaming videos” that one of my children is receiving in order to enhance their skills from Kaplan online learning centers regarding SAT prep? Do you receive specific royalties from this idea across all computer enabled “interactive” tutorials?

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