As Luke noted in his earlier post, Michael Powell is out. Everyone is saying that current FCC commissioner Kevin Martin is the favourite candidate for the job. I have no knowledge one way or the other, just what I read in the trade press. Martin’s wife, Catherine, is a top aide to Dick Cheney.

A few nuggets from Martin:

I believe the Commission should forebear from applying … unbundling obligations on broadband facilities and investment. As you know, nearly a year ago, Verizon filed a petition for forbearance of the section 271 requirements for broadband. I believe we should act quickly on this petition.

I believe that government should commit itself to exercising self-restraint in placing additional financial burdens on the wireless market. Wireless service � particularly broadband wireless � is an economic driver. It enables people to stay connected while mobile, lowering the costs of doing business and making people more productive. As such, we ought to encourage wireless to flourish � to provide better service to more people. To do so, every level of government should be committed to minimizing such financial burdens.

I also wanted to call attention to another major transition in U.S. telecoms and media policy, which is the departure of Senator John McCain of Arizona as chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, a congressional body that oversees, among other things, the FCC. Under McCain, it was fair to say that the Senate fashioned (or blocked) most U.S. policies and certainly had enormous influence over the FCC and its leadership. The new chairman is Senator Ted Stevens of Alaska. By all accounts, his tenureship as chairman is expected to favor new entrants and stress universal service (Alaska is his constituency - no surprise there).

Powell’s legacy is clearly mixed. I did note one thing interesting in some of the trade press I was reading about him over the weekend: He blocked the only media merger in the last 30 years in the U.S. - the proposed combination of EchoStar (Dish Network) and DirecTV, leaving the U.S. with two satellite competitors and thus more competition in the multichannel video industry.