FCC Faces Tasks Around Spectrum, IP Transition in 2013, Say Current, Ex-Commissioners

Spectrum availability and ensuring that a regulatory framework supports use of broadband will continue to take top priority at the FCC, said commissioners Mignon Clyburn and Ajit Pai Thursday at the Minority Media & Telecom Council conference. They said FCC action from last year helped advance the goal of fostering broadband availability. In 2012, the commission took up universal service reform, Clyburn said, and everyone recognized that the communications ecosystem continues to change at exponential speed and that “we needed a framework that had the capacity to keep up with the times,” she said. Clyburn said she’s proudest of having moved that along on a bipartisan basis.

Pai commended the FCC for taking action on spectrum, including the approval of Dish Network’s terrestrial use of the AWS 4 band, which he hopes will allow 40 MHz of spectrum to get into the mobile broadband space, he said. The commission approved rules to free up WCS spectrum, and “we kicked off the notice of proposed rulemaking for the incentive auction proceeding, which will be one of the most important tasks that we have in the context of spectrum,” he said. The commission also was tasked with taking a comprehensive look “at some of our cable and satellite rules to sort of nudge them toward the 21st century,” Pai said. “We took a long overdue look at those."

The commissioners said they're looking forward to updating media rules and ensuring that all communities can benefit from broadband services. The FCC is going to be proactive in 2013 and “establish a regulatory framework that makes the communications industry work for all Americans, in particular minorities and women,” Pai said. “When it comes to broadband, one size doesn’t necessarily fit all.” In minority communities in particular, there’s more adoption of mobile broadband, he said. “That heightens the importance of the FCC taking prompt action to bring more spectrum into the commercial marketplace for mobile broadband.” Minority communities “are sort of the harbinger of where I expect broadband to be in the future, which is mobile,” he added.

It’s important to take a very broad view of broadband, Pai said. “It’s not just the old view of ‘if you have a thick pipe … connected to the home, you can sit there with your desktop and surf at your desk,'” he said. “That’s not the way that all Americans are going to surf in the future."

To recognize current trends, the FCC allocated additional funds for both fixed and mobile broadband deployment, Clyburn said. The commission recognizes that often families with fixed incomes will be forced to choose one device, she said. “They'll choose the device that will give them the most bang for their buck and the most for their overall engagement.” Ninety-nine times out of 100, “mobile’s going to come in first,” she said. The nation needs a regulatory and legislative framework that’s in sync with that, Clyburn added.

Clyburn and Pai said they expect Congress to take a look at the Communications Act. “The approach of classifying services by title is impossible for the commission to administer the act in a coherent way, given that we are in an era of convergence,” said Pai. “I'd hope Congress would be mindful of the fact that this industry changes very quickly. And that whatever statutory guidelines it prescribes for us would be flexible and technologically neutral, so they wouldn’t place upon the cable industry regulations that they wouldn’t place upon the telecom industry to the extent those two industries are providing the same service.” Clyburn said there are some outdated well-meaning laws that are on the books. The one-size-fits-all concept lends itself to inefficiencies, she said. “Where things are fuzzy by way of clarity or laws … there are a whole host of opportunities in terms of voluntary initiatives."

A transition to Internet Protocol services is inevitable, said former FCC commissioners during a later panel. A transition to an all-IP network is going to happen, said Richard Wiley, former FCC chairman who is a communications lawyer at the Wiley Rein law firm. Customers are increasingly demanding IP-enabled services, “and the only way they're going to get those is through an all-IP network,” he said. The demise of the public switched telephone network is inevitable, he said. As a result, the commission will have to deal holistically with a number of difficult regulatory issues and do it in a comprehensive manner, he added.

Two thirds of consumers today “are selecting either wireless telephones as their principle form of voice communications or some VoIP-oriented services, said Michael Powell, a former FCC chairman who now leads NCTA. In cable, “as we think about trying to get the video experience onto the wizardry of what Apple makes … or what an Android platform makes possible, the way to do that is you have to get content into the language that is received by those devices,” he said.

Former FCC commissioner Michael Copps said he’s worried about making the transition in the current environment. “The environment is inadequately competitive,” said Copps, now affiliated with Common Cause and other nonprofit groups. “We have to go into this very carefully.” Technology “takes us in that direction, [and] we should be going in that direction, but you've got to create an environment in which that transition can be done to the advantage of the American people,” he said.

Some former commissioners disagreed on the matter of media consolidation. Current commissioners are also divided on media ownership rules, with a vote possibly taking place soon. (See separate story above in this issue.) Newspaper/broadcast cross-ownership rules are outmoded, very counterproductive and are leading to the decline and, in some cases, demise of newspapers, Wiley said. Why restrict the investment of newspapers and broadcast stations and “prevent newspapers from providing some journalistic coverage for radio?” he said. It’s time for change in this area, and “I don’t think it’s going to affect minorities,” he said. “We need to put the brakes on consolidation,” Copps said. “We've lost tens of thousands of journalists” and closed lots of newsrooms because of media consolidation, he said: The U.S. needs a news and information system “that informs our people and delivers to them the news and information they need to be intelligent citizens of this country.” Most news comes from the TV newsroom and newspaper newsroom, he said. “New media doesn’t have a model to sustain that kind of infrastructure that the country so badly needs."

Ex-FCC members also weighed in on the Telecom Act. “At its core, the Telecommunications Act of 1996 envisioned more competition than we ended up with,” Copps said. “I see the role of big money in this town more influential than it was back in 1996, making it even harder to get a consumer-oriented telecommunications bill passed.” A new law coming out of the current Congress probably “would be worse than the one we have right now,” he said. “If the judiciary says the FCC doesn’t have the jurisdiction to write a rule … then Congress needs to pass a law telling the courts that they're wrong,” said former Chairman Reed Hundt, CEO of the Coalition for Green Capital. “If that doesn’t happen … and the courts say you have the jurisdiction, there’s no need for a new law,” he said.