FCC, Phoenix Center trade barbs on jobs study

But the report ignores the FCC’s record with policies that “both catalyze investment and create jobs,” he said, noting the agency approving White Spaces order, approving the Harbinger and Verizon-Frontier transactions, and cutting costs around pole attachments.

“Instead, the Phoenix Center arbitrarily assumes that the FCC’s actions will reduce investment and concludes that employment will fall.  In this challenging economy, we need solutions, not spin,” he said.

George Ford, the chief economist at the Phoenix Center, responded in defense of the study.

“We appreciate the FCC’s amazingly rapid analysis of a very complex econometric study that took us some months to complete.  Although no errors are identified, the FCC faults our study for failing to give them credit for various past actions which they identify as job creators,” he said.

Ford said the Phoenix Center recognizes and commends the FCC for efforts to promote investments, including its proposal for lower rates on pole attachments.

“In fact, the FCC’s specifically relied upon our research on this very topic in its National Broadband Plan,” Ford notes.

But he says the FCC has also proposed “heavy-handed” regulation in its net-neutrality proceeding and its proposal to place broadband services under telephone strictures.

“We wholeheartedly agree with Mr. de Sa, consistent with our own statistical analysis, that investment in communications creates jobs; however, the converse is equally true:  policies that destroy incentives for broadband investment will cost the U.S. economy jobs,” Ford said.  “These lost jobs are relatively high paying, and disproportionately union, jobs.  That is fact, not spin.”

The Phoenix Center does not disclose its donors but has come under scrutiny in the past from groups who say it receives money from major phone companies.