The five-member commission, whose members were all appointed last year, has a full plate, including an inquiry into telecommunications privacy.
The Greens senator Scott Ludlam, who successfully moved a Senate inquiry into telecommunications interception late last year, said he was "reluctant to comment" until the government presented parliament with draft legislation.
But he and Mr. Baru, the newspaper editor, both said they were hopeful that Mr. Singh's agreement to hold an inquiry into a telecommunications scandal would usher in better governance.
And it is in this spirit that the FCC asks if it should focus its inquiry on "whether some form of advanced telecommunications capability, be it fixed or mobile, is being deployed to all Americans in a reasonable and timely fashion".
Meles made no substantive comment on inquiries regarding the liberalization of banking and telecommunications in Ethiopia.
But Jack Grubman, the firm's top telecommunications stock analyst, reiterated his optimism on WorldCom, brushing off an inquiry by securities regulators as not significant.
Sources at the FCC who spoke on the condititon of anonymity said the FCC inquiry focuses on the question of potential violations of telecommunications law.
Mr. Prince's appointment came as Salomon was immersed in lawsuits and government inquiries arising from its financing of Enron and now-ailing telecommunications companies like WorldCom.
He said the inquiry would focus on whether the company had breached the country's telecommunications interceptions act, which forbids gaining access to electronic communications other than for authorized purposes.
The inquiry covers the period from 2000 to 2005, when units of the Hungarian telecommunications company, Magyar Telekom, made €31 million, or about $40 million at current exchange rates, in improper payments to consulting companies and lobbying firms in Macedonia and Montenegro, according to Deutsche Telekom's own investigation.
