I appreciate that, within bounds, data can be subject to different interpretations, and that a regulator's philosophy and perspective, rightly, may affect the conclusions drawn from the data. There is nothing malign in this. But there are bounds. And when an agency acknowledges it lacks data to make an informed decision -- and initiates a process to collect such data -- but nevertheless decides to re-regulate in the meantime, it makes its pro-regulatory philosophy perfectly clear.

Along with the Section 706 report finding earlier this week, the Special Access report action shows that the present Commission, despite the increasingly competitive communications marketplace, is determined to expand the scope of regulation."

Randolph J. May, President of the Free State Foundation, is a former FCC Associate General Counsel and a former Chairman of the American Bar Association's Section of Administrative Law and Regulatory Practice. Mr. May is a nationally recognized expert in communications law, Internet law and policy, and administrative law and regulatory practice. He is the author of more than 150 scholarly articles and essays on communications law and policy, administrative law, and constitutional law. Mr. May is the author of A Call for a Radical New Communications Policy: Proposals for Free Market Reform. He is the editor of the book, New Directions in Communications Policy, and he is co-editor of other two books on communications law and policy: Net Neutrality or Net Neutering: Should Broadband Internet Services Be Regulated? and Communications Deregulation and FCC Reform.

For Mr. May's most recent Perspectives from FSF Scholars, "The FCC Should Conform to Rule of Law Norms," click here.