Minor nit: McDowell is a former two term commissioner, but was not a chairman. He is, however, a real standout in terms of understanding the Internet and has many of the most coherent comments of any commissioner since his appointment. He was a leader in the campaign to push back the attempts of the ITU to establish sovereignty over interconnection and to apply telecom tariffs to the Internet. It's worth noting that there was a time when Internet policy at the national level was not the ideological exercise that it has become. There was very little difference between Clinton's last FCC chairman (Kennard) and Bush 43's first chairman (Powell) on the general approach of the federal government to the Internet. Powell was, after all, the chairman who first articulated "Internet Freedom" goals in his famous "Four Freedoms" speech in Boulder in 2004; see: http://www.jthtl.org/content/articles/V3I1/JTHTLv3i1_Powell.PDF It's a shame that people can't discuss principles of network policy today without first signing a loyalty oath to one of the political parties. It seems to me that Kennard, Powell, Wheeler, McDowell, and current commissioner Pai have all articulated great ideas about Internet policy that stand on their own without regard to political affiliations. RB On 7/16/14, 7:50 AM, Fred Baker (fred) wrote:
Relevant article by former FCC Chair
http://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2014/07/14/this-is-why-the-g...
-- Richard Bennett Visiting Fellow, American Enterprise Institute Center for Internet, Communications, and Technology Policy Editor, High Tech Forum