[August 21, 2003]

Seven years ago, Congress enacted a sweeping reform of our telecommunications laws. In doing so, it sought to replace the heritage of monopoly with the vitality of competition. Today, we preserve essential tools to foster voice competition in the local market. We accord the states an enhanced role to ensure that voice competition continues to grow. These actions will help us secure lower prices and higher quality services for American consumers. This is the good news.

The bad news is that this decision plays fast and loose with the country's broadband future. Make no mistake about it, today's decision chokes off competition in broadband. Consumers, innovation, entrepreneurs and the Internet itself are going to suffer.

Instead of preserving, protecting and defending competition, the Commission has torn away access to the network architectures that undergird broadband competition. As a result, consumers, including our nation's small businesses-the engines of so much entrepreneurial activity and economic growth-may well be stuck without competitive choices and prices when it comes to critical broadband services. This is not a brave new world of broadband, but simply the old system of local monopoly dressed up in a digital cloak.

We may be headed in the direction of a broadband policy blackout from which we will not soon recover. Down the road are the dark consequences of a decision to reclassify broadband service and further close off access to essential facilities. At risk is our unfettered access to the information, content and technologies the Internet has to offer. If the Commission continues this course apace, Americans will find that broadband networks-the roads, bridges and canals of the 21st century-will be the province of the few instead of opportunity for the many.

When this item was adopted, I stated that the Commission needed to find ways to improve its internal processes. The half year it has taken us to release this decision makes this even clearer. The procedure followed here, and also in our media concentration proceeding, demonstrates the need for some attention to this area.

—FCC Commissioner Michael J. Copps