D. Mark Kennet

Kennet began working at the Pennsylvania Governor’s Energy Council in 1980. After completing his doctoral degree at Wisconsin, he began an academic career at the University of California, Santa Cruz economics department. Kennet began his collaboration with David Gabel during these years, a collaboration which continues to bear investigative fruit throughout Kennet’s career in economics and regulation. He spent several years afterward (1989–1992) at Tulane University’s economics department. Moving to Washington, Kennet worked for a number of years as a researcher at the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, and was seconded briefly to the U.S. Bureau of the Census to work as a researcher in the Center for Economic Studies. In 1997, Kennet accepted a position as senior economist at the Federal Communications Commission, where he was part of a group of economists and engineers who developed the Hybrid Cost Proxy Model (HCPM), a network simulation tool utilized for determining the forward-looking economic cost of telecommunications networks. HCPM was a logical extension of Kennet’s earlier work with David Gabel in the development of another network simulation tool, the Local Exchange Cost Optimization Model (LECOM). While at the FCC, Kennet taught graduate econometrics at Johns Hopkins University as an adjunct professor.

Kennet was invited to speak to the Peruvian Congress in November 2008 on the issue of numerical portability, and was interviewed by the Peruvian daily Expreso, and the Mexican television station Televisa. He was also interviewed by Peruvian Channel 7 on the possibility of implementing free internet in Peru.

Leaving the FCC, Kennet accepted a position as associate professor at the George Washington University in the graduate telecommunications program while working as an outside consultant to the World Bank (1999–2001). During this period, Kennet developed the early versions of the Wireless Cost Optimization Model (WICOM). In 2001, Kennet was offered a position as a special economic advisor to Osiptel, the Organismo Supervisor para la Inversión Privada en Telecomunicaciones, in Lima, Peru. In 2004, Kennet became an independent consultant, specializing in the economic analysis of regulated industries in general and telecommunications in particular, working both completely independently and as part of various groups and teams.

Kennet attended Carnegie Mellon University, where he obtained a B.S. in 1980 (economics and mathematics); and the University of Wisconsin, where he earned an M.S. in 1986 and a Ph.D. in 1988, both in economics. His dissertation advisor was John Rust.

David Mark Kennet (born February 10, 1957 in Erie, Pennsylvania, United States) is an independent economic consultant. He has previously served on the faculties of three universities and written a number of professional journal articles and has authored or co-authored two books.