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The Supreme's decision on indecency avoided the first amendment issues, which are profound. The case had been dismissed on grounds the FCC hadn't followed reasonable procedure. The Supremes decided the procedure was fine if not perfect. The ruling on procedure makes it much harder to challenge FCC rulings in court, where current cases often resemble Jarndyce and Jarndyce.

Any company rich enough to afford a federal case worth of lawyers threatens to go to court on any FCC ruling they don't like. Many do, tying things up for years. The FCC has often compromised the public interest in order to avoid a court case. The "moral hazard" of that was predictable. The U.S. now has a brutal load of cases, and "The American Disease" is spreading to other nations whose carriers copy U.S. tactics.

Traditionally, the courts show deference to the administration, only interfering on egregious malpractice. The D.C. Circuit, led by conservative activist Judge Harry Edwards, strongly believed in protecting business from government and moved the courts to a very anti-regulation stance. They repeatedly threw out reasonable rules and put their beliefs above the commission. The Supreme Court has now ruled that's not the law reads,

“We are a wireless company,” Randall Stephenson's first major public comment as AT&T CEO. He decided in 2003 to let the copper phone network slowly die.

Repeat: Randall in 2003 decided to let the copper phone network slowly die. AT&T is seriously disinvesting from the landline business, after cutting capital spending in half. I know that's hard to believe, but his cold equations are clear. Landline decline is inevitable, Randall now tells the WSJ, and there’s no point trying to fight it. “You could try to hold back the tide,” he said, “but that’s a very frustrating proposition. Or you could say, let’s get ahead of the market, let’s get ahead of the mobility curve. We have 77 million wireless customers and 30 million consumer phone lines. Which customer base would you rather work from?” He's losing 3M customers a year, almost ten percent of what's left.

Eircom is talking about not being able to pay its debts. Windstream went from junk to junker. Hawaiian Tel is bankrupt, and Fairpoint close. Nearly all the other U.S. RLECs fail without a wildly excessive subsidy. No copper network is unaffected, and not all are following Verizon's upgrade path.  I am not saying AT&T is going broke - the DSL and wireless part of the business has been increasing profits. I'm talking the PSTN - the public switched telephone network.

The failure of the USTA-TIA show SUPERCOMM may finally persuade the Bells to fire Walt McCormick, which they have been discussing at least since 2006. The latest debacle is cancelling SUPERCOMM just three months before, after much of the industry made plans and some have bought non-refundable tickets. No surprise they are hopping mad. The SUPERCOMM name will pass on to the private companies, Reed Exhibitions and E.J. Krause. They've moved the dates to Oct. 21-22 in the hope of selling a viable number of booths.

SUPERCOMM had been the crucial support for USTA and TIA and extraordinarily profitable. In 2006, McCormick destroyed it in hopes of making more from his TelecomNext show, which flopped miserably. They lost more than half the exhibitors and attendees from the prior year and were stood up at the last minute by the AT&T CEO keynoter. He twice insulted the Chairman of the FCC in public to no useful purpose.

Since that show, the Bells who control Walt's $1.5M paycheck have been talking about replacing him. In 2009, a partisan Republican who refuses to accept the principles of the new administration has few supporters.

Few reporters will miss Walt, and not just because he was generally unavailable for questions and said little of substance if you could catch him.  He attacked Jim Granelli of the LA Times because Granelli broke an important story on how Bill Daley and USTA were pressuring the manufacturers for lobbying money. Granelli's job was threatened because he did good reporting. As a practical matter, the Bells have been ignoring USTA and doing their own lobbying. The Bells are working many other angles to get influence with the Dems, (CETF, Hollis, Clyburn at the DNC, CWA, etc.) because USTA is not effective.

Back in 2007, when Barack was a long shot and most "liberals" were backing Clinton, 40 tech leaders committed themselves to Obama. When he was elected, he reached out to many of the same extremely able people for guidance. Obama staffer Larry Strickling worked on this, and is expected to soon be nominated the "Broadband Czar" as I write in early March. Julius Genachowski is now the FCC nominee. Don Gips, Reed Hundt, Blair Levin, Beth Noveck, Phil Weiser, Andrew McLaughlin,  and Kevin Werbach played key roles in the transition, and Bill Kennard is thought a key advisor.

There's no reason to think this is any more than Obama and team looking to people who had earned their confidence. I know many of them quite well, and they are exceptional in skill and dedication and superb choices for leadership. If I were asked, I would have been honored to be among them. Several are friends. Nearly all have little opportunity to seek favors from government, the usual reason for campaign contributions. It's an interesting list, however. I've used it for guidance on the direction the administration will take.

Tim Wu, Deborah Lathen, Larry Lessig, Jeff Pulver, and Rob Glaser are also well known to us in telecom. Tim is a Columbia Law Professor and probably won't move to D.C., although would surely be exceptional in any policy role. Jeff Pulver, an entrepreneur and technologist, would be an inspired choice as an FCC commissioner. Government at that level desperately needs people who understand technology and the industry. Susan Crawford, a Michigan professor who also served on the transition, would also be an exceptional choice for any policy position.  Here's the 2007 endorsement list:

Blair Levin would have made an excellent FCC chairman, but I'm also glad he's returning to his work as an analyst at Stifel, Nicholas and can address issues more freely than a Chairman can. Best of luck to him in four years if Jules follows precedent and moves on. At the Columbia event, I got a chance to talk with Blair about what I think is the toughest question facing D.C. policymakers: What do you do if competition is unlikely to solve key problems? His comments are OTR. I note nearly everyone in industry and financial circles believes the industry will continue consolidating, less competition rather than more. Nearly everyone in Washington thinks they will “incent” more competition and thereby reach their goals. One or the other is wrong.

The Werblog is back as Kevin Werbach returns to the University of Pennsylvania from the transition.  Kevin's in the middle of Joi Ito's picture, flanked by Andrew McLaughlin (also on the transition) and the legendary Yochai Benkler, the inspiration for nearly all of us. His first posting on his return was "Last summer, I criticized the FCC’s Comcast P2P decision for actually hurting the cause of network neutrality that it supposedly advanced.  One of my arguments was that the FCC reviewing broadband discrimination complaints on a case-by-case basis would relieve the pressure in Congress for legislation." I believe a great Internet affordable for all Americans should take higher priority for a wonderful reason: we (mostly) won in the U.S. Details remain essential to get right, and the telcos are fighting a disingenuous rear guard action on wireless, but most of the abusive behavior we feared is now unthinkable in D.C.

Jules pulled his old friends from early Clinton days together for the transition team, NTIA, and presumably the FCC.  Besides Blair and Kevin, that includes Reed Hundt,  Bill Kennard,  Phil Weiser, Don Gips, and as well as some not officially part of the transition team. (?Larry, Larry, Anna, ...). Most are getting very rich in their old jobs, so probably won't go back to government. The one standout on the transition team who doesn't go back to Clinton days is  Susan Crawford,  probably headed back to teach at Michigan.

It's pretty easy to guess what's coming by reading these folks. Kevin has slews of papers, including several on why and how the FCC will free bandwidth.  I have books from Hundt and Weiser; Susan Crawford is profilic on the net. They all have been very accessible for years at events like VON and we all know each other.  They really are the best and the brightest.