Sometime back, I coined the term “Cassandrafreude.” A compound of “Cassandra” and “schadenfreude,” it means “the bitter pleasure derived from seeing someone else suffer in the way you predicted even though you are getting screwed yourself.”
I am experiencing a healthy dose of Cassandrefreude watching FCC Commissioners McDowell and Baker push the FCC to preempt state data collection of broadband deployment (statements here and here). The matter came up when the FCC issued a Declaratory Ruling findng that nothing in federal statutes or previous FCC orders stops states from collecting their own information about broadband deployment. The ruling expresses no opinion about whether state PUCs have existing authority (given that broadband is a Title I “information service”) or whether or not it would be a good idea for states to collect their own data. But even this specter that someone somewhere might do something carriers don’t like prompted Republicans McDowell and Baker to push for the FCC to preempt state authority to collect information. After all, as we all know, broadband providers are timid creatures and likely to be scared off by the least thing that could conceivably raise their cost of doing business — as the broadband providers themselves constantly remind us.
I’ll zip past the usually irony of Republicans who supposedly venerate federalism and demand record evidence before the FCC contemplates action to protect consumers sounding the alarm bell that unless the FCC rushes to preempt state governments, it will mean the end of broadband investment as we know it. Lets get right to the juicy part that fills me with such unbridled Cassandrafreude.
Under what authority, exactly, would the FCC preempt state collection of broadband data?