ASHINGTON, Feb. 6 — Signaling a marked departure from his Clinton administration predecessors, the new Republican-appointed chairman of the Federal Communications Commission voiced skepticism today about a wide array of regulations affecting broadcasters, telephone companies, cable operators and Internet service providers.
The regulations have been intended to keep the largest companies from becoming much more powerful, to provide services to those who can least afford them, and to enable officials to supervise markets that they say continue to be controlled by monopolies or lack sufficient competition.
But the new chairman, Michael K. Powell, speaking at his first news conference since he was named two weeks ago, articulated a philosophy that places greater faith in the marketplace to correct possible problems and he emphasized a sharply reduced role for his agency.
Clinton administration officials had maintained that many large telecommunications companies like the regional Bell operating companies should be deregulated only after their markets were sufficiently competitive, but Mr. Powell approached the subject from the opposite direction today.
"I do not believe," he said, that "deregulation is like a dessert that you serve after people have fed on their vegetables and is a reward for the creation of competition. I believe that deregulation is instead a critical ingredient to facilitating competition, not something to be handed out after there is a substantial number of players in the market."
With two vacancies on the five-member commission and a third commissioner likely to be replaced because her term has expired, Mr. Powell may have an opportunity to significantly reshape the agency and the government's telecommunications policy. Unlike his two immediate predecessors at the F.C.C.'s helm, Mr. Powell enjoys cordial relations with House and Senate leaders. They have taken the credit for promoting his career and for his latest appointment, at age 37. Some of them have also indicated a willingness to defer to his deregulatory approach.
Consumer groups said that Mr. Powell's comments reflected a deeper ideological move to the right than they had expected and that a comment of his belittling the concerns over the growing technological gap between rich and poor was unnecessarily inflammatory.
Gene Kimmelman, co-director of the Washington office of Consumers Union, said after the Powell news conference: "It's hard to believe that the average person on the street that has no choice of cable operators and local telephone services would be enamored with this kind of deregulation. He's not in touch with how average people feel about their phone companies and cable companies."
Mr. Powell — responding to a question about whether the agency had a role to play in closing the gap between those who can afford new technology and those who cannot, something often described as the "digital divide" — said he thought the commission should do what it could to "eliminate barriers in every segment of the population and its geography."
He then added that he thought "digital divide" was a dangerous phrase because it could be used to justify government entitlement programs that guaranteed poor people cheaper access to new technology, like digital television sets or computers.
