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Michael K. Powell (born March 23, 1963) is an American politician and a Republican. He was appointed to the Federal Communications Commission by President Bill Clinton on 3 November 1997. President George W. Bush designated him chairman of the commission on 22 January 2001. Powell is the son of Secretary of State Colin Powell.
Powell was an armored cavalry officer in the United States Army, but was unable to serve after sustaining an injury during a training mission, for which he spent a year in the hospital. He also served as an expert advisor to the Secretary of Defense.
After graduating from the Georgetown University Law Center, Powell worked as a private attorney as well as in the antitrust division of the justice department.
As the chairman of the FCC, Powell has led from his long-stated philosophy of less government regulation of telecom. Powell sees excessive regulation as stifling to technology innovation, and has led the charge to open up markets in VoIP, Wi-Fi, and Broadband over Powerline (BPL). While the FCC has recently stepped up efforts to enforce pre-existing decency rules (prompted in large part by an incident during the halftime of the 2004 Super Bowl in which Janet Jackson's bare nipple was exposed on live-broadcast television), Powell himself has been careful to distance himself from those wishing to strongly regulate content. Powell has spoken publicly about the differences between the commission members' stances on indecency, underscoring the sensitivity of the issue during 2004's Jackson hysteria.
Powell announced, in January 2005, his intention to step down as chairman of the FCC "some time in March."
Powell resigned as Chairman of the FCC on January 21st, 2005. He said that he was glad to spend more time with his wife.
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