NATOA Members Say Silos Are Relics

Localities want to blow up silos created by the Telecom Act, a NATOA webinar heard Monday. The act didn’t anticipate how critical the internet would be or that companies would provide so many services over so many technologies, said NATOA General Counsel Nancy Werner. “Silos are causing a lot of the issues now.” The persistence of different technology buckets for wireline, cable and wireless “allows for a kind of arbitrage” in which companies try to choose which silo’s rules apply to their services, said Rick Ellrod, Communications Policy and Regulation Division director for Fairfax County, Virginia. “Silos don’t make sense anymore because of convergence,” agreed local government attorney Mike Bradley. He cautioned it could take eight years to change the act after “people get serious about it, and I’m not sure that anybody is serious about it yet.” Werner said policymakers’ desire to address issues like privacy or digital equity could lead to a broader discussion about the silos standing in the way of changes on those fronts. Since the original act included broadcast TV channels, it would make sense for a rewrite to include over-the-top streaming services like Netflix, said Bradley. Local authority protected by the 1996 act has eroded in the courts, panelists said. Section 253 is the “most litigated section” and might be its biggest failure, Bradley said. The section was meant to increase competition, said Ellrod, but now industry uses it as a weapon to prevent it.