Michael Powell isn’t the general in his family. That would be his father, Colin Powell, the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and current Secretary of State.

But Michael Powell, chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, is fond of saying he’s overseeing a revolution: the information revolution.

The revolution’s next stop is Lawrence. On Friday Powell will be at Kansas University to tour KU’s Information and Telecommunications Technology Center and give the keynote address at a summit on broadband technologies and communication issues.

Powell is expected to talk about ways to extend broadband Internet access to rural areas of the country.

“That’s an issue that’s very important to him,” said David Fiske, an FCC spokesman. “He very much believes that the Internet should provide the same benefits and the same educational opportunities regardless of where you live.

“He calls it an information revolution and he thinks everybody should have access to it.”

Kansas connection

Powell will be giving the keynote address at 2 p.m. at the Kansas Rural Stakeholder Summit at the Dole Institute of Politics. The event is by invitation only and is not open to the public.

Douglas County Rep. Tom Sloan, R-Lawrence, organized the conference and invited Powell to attend. Gov. Kathleen Sebelius, Sen. Sam Brownback, Rep. Jerry Moran and regional and state telecommunications and cable executives are expected to attend.

Sloan said he organized the conference with the hope that it would spur new ideas on how broadband technology could be spread to rural areas of the state.

“What it will do is allow us to have in one location all the people in the state who can actually make broadband deployment occur,” Sloan said.

Sloan said he also hoped the trip would make it more likely that the FCC would look to Kansas for pilot projects as it deals with the issue of deploying high speed Internet.

“I’m trying to bring Washington decision-makers to interact with our people and create dialogues that last far beyond the days they spend with us,” Sloan said.

Growing influence

Powell definitely has the opportunity to affect a multitude of decisions. As chairman of the FCC, he oversees everything from licenses for television and radio stations to regulations for the Internet and telecommunications industry.

Since being appointed by President Bush in January 2001, Powell has overseen a full slate of controversial and headline-grabbing issues. It was on his watch that rules were relaxed to allow greater consolidation among media companies, that the telecommunications world was rocked by the WorldCom scandal, and that the federal do-not-call registry was implemented.

Powell, a Republican who was first appointed to serve as a commissioner by President Clinton in 1997, has been a frequent political target by those who think he too strongly favors deregulation of the media and communications industries.

“You don’t care about these regulations,” former South Carolina Sen. Ernest Hollings once told Powell during a Senate hearing, the New Yorker magazine reported. “You don’t care about the law or what Congress sets down. I think you would be a wonderful executive vice president of a chamber of commerce, but not a chairman of a regulatory commission at the government level.”

But Powell, who couldn’t be reached for this story, is unapologetic about his philosophy that less government regulation is usually for the better.

Fiske said Powell viewed the growth in wireless Internet technology as one of his greatest accomplishments as chairman. Fiske said the growth was possible because Powell pushed for businesses to have relatively unfettered access to the airwaves needed to make wireless Internet technology possible.

“What he says is to let something develop and find out what you absolutely need in terms of regulations and then make those regulations,” Fiske said. “But he doesn’t believe in going the other direction and smothering it from the very beginning.”