No FCC Broadband Czar Necessary, Levin Says on Last Day

The departing head of FCC’s broadband work crew said the agency doesn’t need a permanent czar to ensure that the commission stays focused on high-speed Internet service even after execution of the National Broadband Plan wraps up. Blair Levin sees changes to the Universal Service Fund and intercarrier compensation as linked and thinks they need to be done together, he said in an exit interview Friday. He remains confused why broadcasters are publicly resisting the plan’s recommendation to create a market for other uses of TV spectrum and said that, despite much speculation about what he'll do next, he himself doesn’t know.

"I actually don’t think that my job should be a permanent position,” Levin told our affiliated newsletter Communications Daily on his last day as executive director of the Omnibus Broadband Initiative. On “the question of institutional structure, I'm not sure there’s a permanent lesson other than every chairman basically ought to come in, take a look at it, see what needs to be done from a three-to-five year perspective,” he said. “I don’t particularly think there needs to be an institutional/structural change.”

On broadcasters’ concerns they could be forced off the air by reclamation of 120 MHz of TV spectrum, as the plan seeks, “there’s certainly nothing that we've ever proposed that would end broadcasting,” Levin said. “This is actually a very curious thing and I find it to be an interesting strategy, what the broadcast lobby is attacking is not the proposal for change but the status quo.” When NAB President Gordon Smith “says he’s disturbed by certain language in the plan, that is the language which ascribes the current law,” Levin said.

"The change that we seek in the law is the ability to share auction proceeds with broadcasters,” Levin continued. “I cannot conceive of an argument by broadcasters against allowing the FCC to share proceeds when broadcasters voluntarily want to realign their asset base and take money for spectrum. There’s no industry in the world that would not want the right to realign their asset base based upon changes in the marketplace and changes in technology. … That’s a very illogical argument.” Smith and others in the industry contend “`its our spectrum,'” but “it’s actually not under the law their spectrum,” Levin said. He acknowledged “legitimate disagreement” over spectrum fees, which he thinks are a good idea and broadcasters don’t. An FCC paper is forthcoming on the technical aspects of some of what the plan proposes that can be done by the agency and doesn’t need legislation, Levin said. “I'm sure the technical paper on spectrum will lay out a bunch of different options."

The NAB takes FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski “at his word” that any auction “truly is voluntary,” said a spokesman for the group. “Perhaps Blair is not aware that broadcasters are evolving right before his very eyes. Perhaps he was not aware that we will soon be offering live local television on handheld devices, laptops and the backseats of cars, which will usher in a renaissance for broadcast television stations.”

The schedule for USF and intercarrier compensation reform is ambitious and detailed yet “practical and achievable,” Levin said. The proposals were designed in a way that wouldn’t require legislation, but they are not “legislation-proof,” he said. “It’s not in any way an anti-congressional effort.” If legislation passes, “the FCC would course-correct in whatever way is necessary to be consistent with that legislation,” he said: The plan is “very complementary to the existing legislative efforts."

Reforms to USF and intercarrier compensation must be done together, Levin said. Intercarrier compensation “creates distortions in the marketplace for the entire country, and it’s really important we move on reforming that as well because once we eliminate those distortions, we think there’s going to be a lot of economic activity that'll be really valuable."

When asked about the fate of investment and tax incentives under Genachowski’s proposed partial use of Title II for broadband transport, Levin said tax credits are unrelated to the proposed regime and “it’s unclear that they incent investment. They can put the government’s thumb on a technology decision” and “they can have a competitive impact which is counterproductive.” The broadband plan doesn’t include recommendations for credits, but supports research and development expansion. “When you think about Title I and Title II and various people’s reactions to it, there’s a short-term reaction, but the important thing is what’s in the long-term,” he said. “Some analysts got it right, some analysts got it wrong."

Some ideas that surfaced in the early stages of the plan fell by the wayside, but nothing in the process was left unfinished, Levin said. “There’s nothing where I say to myself now, ‘boy I really wish we'd done that’ and nothing has come in since we've done the plan.” Finishing the overall broadband plan is not a job just for the FCC, but for the entire country, he said. “America as an economy has reinvented itself a number of times. There’s lots of reasons to be optimistic that America is going to reinvent itself to take advantage of the broadband opportunity."

The video content industry, having seen what happened with music online, is trying like many other sectors to figure out how to proceed, Levin said. The video distribution industry is “saying there are some things we don’t want to happen but we can’t quite figure out what we do want to happen,” he continued. “That’s going to be worked out in the private sector, though there are a lot of policy implications.” His message last month on over-the-top video at the American Cable Association convention (CED April 21 p3) is such online video viewed on TV sets “increases the need for bandwidth” and “as far as we can tell in the near term and the mid term is that cable will have a significant bandwidth advantage over telco broadband providers in a significant part of the country,” Levin said. “That could change."

Levin has spent time counseling other FCC broadband staffers whose time at the agency is coming to an end about what they should do, he said he was “Working with other people here to help them figure out their futures.” But Levin “can’t really think about my future while I'm sitting here,” he said. “I'm constantly amused by the rumors” about what he'll do.