Inside The Beltway…
Commissioner Pai: Take The IP Transition Road Less Traveled
All U.S. operators, and particularly cablecos, have been making the move on their own to transition their networks to All-IP, but government regulations codifying this haven’t followed suit. Speaking to the Hudson Institute think tank earlier this week, FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai warned that if the agency takes what he called “the First Path,” an outdated tariffing model will almost inevitably chill competition and innovation. However, “the Second Path” embracing modern communications law would lead to “more capital investment, more fiber deployment, and more facilities-based competition,” he said. Pai supports an All-IP Pilot Program proposed by the FCC, and backed by operators and industry gurus alike. He cited National Broadband Plan author and former FCC chief of staff Blair Levin, who has pushed his old employer to “move forward with the experiments, saying they’re ‘worth a thousand pleadings.’” Paraphrasing a Robert Frost poem, Pai concluded, “Like Frost’s lone traveler, we should take the Second Path and embrace the IP transition.”