>> host: well, julius genachowski has been chairman of the federal communications commission for nearly five months now, and some would say he has outlined an ambitious regulatory agenda for the commission including new or altered regulations on net

neutrality, broadband deployment and indecency. and this week he's our guest on "the communicators." mr. chairman, given some of those items we just listed, would you kind of outline for us your basic philosophy when it comes to the fcc and regulation? >> guest: sure. it's such an important time with respect to communications. our communications infrastructure is increasingly essential to the daily lives of every american, and it's how we communicate with each other, it's how we work in our businesses, it's how we participate in our government. it's how we create jobs and contribute to economic growth. i see our communications infrastructure as our platform for innovation and opportunity for the 21st century, and that's what really drives what we're trying to accomplish at the fcc because, of course, the fcc is the federal agency that has to deal with this landscape. at the highest level, our goals

are, one, to promote investment throughout the communications ecosystem. two, to promote innovation and thereby promote global competitiveness of the united states. three, to promote competition because that's how we'll get the most innovation and investment. and fourth, to protect and empower consumers. >> host: well, before we get into some specific issues, there are two things that i've noticed from reading your speeches. number one, the use of the word ecosystem. [laughter] and the use of the word robust. could you talk about those a little bit? >> guest: it's interesting that you've noticed those because i don't think i did that deliberately, but on ecosystem, it's an important concept because there are so many different pieces of this communication landscape, our communications infrastructure. take our networks, our kind of wired networks over which communications travel or our

wireless networks too. we need ongoing investment in those networks, we need those networks to get more robust, we need them to get smarter. there's been literally billions of dollars of private investment in those networks over the last number of years. that is essential, and it's essential that it continue. that's part of the ecosystem. another part of the ecosystem is the innovation and investment that occurs at the edge of the network. so where applications and content are being developed travel over the wires or through the spectrum, and what we need is a country for that whole ecosystem to be growing, to be innovating, to be creating jobs and contributing to the economic growth of our country. >> host: and robust. >> guest: and robust. it, you know, we see every day in what we want out of our communications infrastructure. when we go to the internet, we want it to be faster. when we go to our mobile phones,

we want that to be faster especially as we use it to connect to the internet. that's what we mean by robust in terms of the quality of the services. i think when i think about robust, i also mean robust in terms of competition because in this country that's what we rely on more than anything else to generate investment and innovation. and robust also as a source of information flow. it's also information that travels over these networks. i couldn't believe more strongly in the first amendment principles on which our country is founded and the benefits of the marketplace of ideas. well, there's still, of course, a marketplace of ideas offline, but increasingly online on our communications networks is where we'll have the marketplace ideas for the future that's so beneficial to the country, and there's an extraordinary opportunity to have that be as robust as possible and really drive a vibrant marketplace, vibrant and robust marketplace

of ideas. >> host: chairman genachowski, if you could given what we've already talked about, give us an update on the national broadband plan and where you see that going. >> guest: congress in the recovery act, i guess about more than a half a year ago at this point, identified broadband as an important strategic priority for the country. the goal of universal broadband having all americans have access to broadband on the internet for the future, and it recognized that the u.s. is lagging in many respects behind other countries. and so congress and the president did two things. they set aside some near-term money, about $7 billion in grants to, as a first step to move the country forward on broadband, the commerce department and the agriculture department are distributing those funds. and they also asked the fcc to draft a national broadband strategy for the country that

looks at this issue and lays out a plan for medium term and long term success of broadband. there are some real challenges when it comes to broadband. congress asked us to look at three sets of issues. first, the deployment issue. we've seen in our work that while much of the country does have access to broadband, there is, there are parts of the country that don't, there are parts of the country, particularly rural america, where if you want to sign up for broadband, there are literally no options at all. we see that at about 10% of the country, and that is a gap, an issue that we'll be trying to address as part of this plan. second, there is an adoption challenge. so in the bulk of the country that does have access to broadband, the percentage of americans that, that don't use it is too high. generally, across the country it's about 40% of americans who

don't use broadband, who don't sign up for broadband, and even more troublingly, in certain communities that percentage is much higher, closer to 60 or even 65%. among low-income americans, among the elderly, in rural america, among our seniors. and that's the reasonable challenge. we can come back and talk about why, if you'd like, but the costs of not being on our broadband infrastructure are growing in our digital economy. the third thing that congress and the president asked us to look at is what the statute calls national purposes. making sure that we have a strategy so that broadband helps us succeed on a whole series of national priorities that are important to our country. education, health care, energy, public safety. in each of these making sure that we have the right levels of connectivity, broadband

connectivity is essential to meeting our goals as a country for addressing these issues. and so in our broadband plan which is due in february, we'll be tackling each of these issues and seeking to lay out a plan that, of course, will be pursued after that for achieving ultimately the goal of universal broadband. >> host: you talked a little bit about the cost of not having broadband. there are estimates anywhere from 20 to 350 billion to get this country on universal broadband. who do you foresee paying for that? >> guest: well, the private sector has invested substantial money in broadband, and that will have to be the key to the success of broadband going forward. and what we'll be looking at are a variety of ways to make sure that we're incentivizing the broadest possible investment in broadband networks and leveraging off of that. that primarily the investment in

our broadband networks will have to come from there. >> host: primarily. >> guest: yes. >> host: where does the rest come from? >> guest: well, that's something that we're looking at. and i think at this point we're about 90 days away from our plan. we're certainly cognizant of the difficult economic times that the country is in, and we're very focused on what we can suggest, what we can recommend to make sure that our broadband infrastructure, that our internet infrastructure becomes an enduring platform for job creation and economic growth in this country. and we've already, where we've seen opportunities to move forward and accelerate broadband and create jobs sooner rather than later, we're moving forward. and so last week, for example, at our commission meeting we as a unanimous commission adopted a rule to speed up tower siting for mobile broadband. a lot of applications to build out the towers that are necessary for our mobile networks get stuck, and we

identified some ways at our last commission meeting where we can accelerate the buildout of towers while respecting state and local governments and their right to manage local zoning issues. but we moved on that right away because we see that as something that can contribute to near-term job creation because, of course, when companies can move forward and put up towers and roll out mobile networks, that employs people. and then the networks themselves, the networks themselves will contribute to economic growth, economic activity and job creation. >> host: chairman general caw sky -- genachowski, where does the universal service fund fall in this? you've been quoted as saying it's a little flawed and outdated because it only applied to telephones and not to broadband. do you see it being used to deploy broadband? >> guest: you know, the universal service fund has been a great achievement for the country. it's a fund that has, for a long time, supported the goal of

universal telephone service around the country. we live in a very large country, as you know. in some areas our population is very dispersed. in areas where population isn't dense, it just costs a lot more per person to build out a telephone network. and over the years we've developed a fund to support the buildout and the provision of telephone service in those areas, the universal service fund also supports low-income people who can't afford telephone service, and there's a portion of it that supports connecting every classroom in the country to our communications network. that's the good news. the bad news is the program is struggling given the changes in the marketplace. as the contribution base for the program shrinks, there are other issues that are creating

stresses on the program, and there a wide -- there's a wide group, bipartisan, that has sought reform of the universal service fund for quite some time. the last element of the program that needs reform is that, as you said, it's targeted at the kind of communications service that we had when we were growing up, ordinary telephones. still, of course, very important. but what we need to do is reorient the universal service fund to support the next generation of communications services broadband. that's something that's widely recognized as desirable. there are a lot of hard questions in figuring out how we get from here to there. it's something we'll be looking at as part of our broadband plan. it's going to take a while to devise a way to reform universal service and to implement it, but there's wide spread agreement that we need to reorient the universal service fund to broadband for our communications infrastructure in the 21st century. >> host: do you foresee, perchance, an increase in the

usf or a tax on broadband providers to pay for universal deployment? >> guest: we have to find a way to reform universal service in a way that wrings out efficiencies, that saves money and that doesn't increase the burden on consumers. we need to find a way to promote universal service, universal service for all americans so that as a country our communications platform serves everyone. but to do it without it being a burden on ordinary consumers. >> host: and finally, one more question about broadband deployment and then we'll move on, but wanted to get your response to senator rockefeller. recently, according to congress daily, warns the fcc over direction of broadband plan. it said that the senator, who have chairman of the commerce committee, is worried the fcc has been lowering expectations about the plan by signaling it could be a work in progress with additional details to be filled in as more data becomes available. >> guest: senator rockefeller is a hero in this area.

senator rockefeller and senator snowe pushed through the e-rate program that i mentioned before. senator rockefeller is very focused on making sure that our communications infrastructure serves all americans, and, you know, we welcome the push by senator rockefeller to make sure that we have a plan that really pushes the ball forward in a significant way on meeting congress' goals and meeting the president's goals on universal service. i think everyone understands that in a changing landscape the last thing that we want is to have a plan that's written and that is interesting that gets put in a drawer and that's looked at a few years later. what we want to do and what i know we have senator rockefeller's support on is develop a living, breathing plan that makes progress, that sets milestones and that has mechanisms built in to continually improve the plan as technology changes and as we learn what works and what doesn't work to promote universal broadband in america. >> host: this is "the

communicators" program on c-span, our guest is the federal communications commissions chairman, julius genachowski. and we are in the fcc's hearing room, in fact, as we tape this. moving on to another topic, mr. chairman, this is a recent cover of information week. i'm sure you saw this. spectrum cry us. -- crisis. now, you were not quoted in this article, but you were featured on the front, and the opening line in the article says that julius genachowski is scared about a spectrum shortage. is that a correct statement? >> guest: we have a looming issue in this country, a looming crisis when it comes to spectrum. we all increasingly use mobile phones, a number of mobile phones in this country is very high, and the rate of increase in the adoption of smart phones, iphone and blackberry and pre and destroyed is increasing very fast as are the air cards, the card that you plug into your computer to give

you mobile broadband connection. that's increasing too. well, all of those devices use our spectrum, and it's an extraordinary technology. it's magic how it works that you can be carrying around your laptop or looking at your smart phone and get internet access. we all know when we do that, we want that access to be fast the. it's getting the technology that's allowing it to get faster and faster increasingly to support the use of video on that on spectrum, on mobile devices. it's very important for the country that this work. this is one of our main areas for economic growth and job creation in the united states for the next decade and beyond that, and it's essential to global competitiveness. but here's the challenge, we have coming online spectrum that represents about a three times increase to what's available now for mobile broadband.

that actually sound like a lot, three times as much as is available now, and this is spectrum 700 megahertz spectrum, the details don't matter as much, but three times. the challenge is that when you look at the demand charts that predict mobile broadband usage based on smart phones and mobile internet, it's a 30-time increase in capacity that we can expect in the years ahead. so that difference, that gap between three times as much spectrum coming online and demand increasing by 30x is the gap that i'm worried about and something that we need to tackle. now, we're going to need to do some long-range planning for the country here. it takes a long time to make changes when it comes to spectrum policy. we're going to need to look at the spectrum chart on the commercial side and on the government side to see where we can find additional spectrum.

there are no easy pickings on the spectrum chart and hard choices to make. we're going to need to find ways to look at spectrum policy to encourage more efficient use of spectrum. there are policies like potentially secondary licensing of spectrum, more spectrum flexibility that will, will encourage the private market and lead to more efficient use of spectrum, and we need to see what, if anything, we can do to encourage greater efficiency in devices, in our smart phones and other mobile devices so that we can get more out of our spectrum to meet this demand that we see coming. it's essential that we meet it for job creation and for the global competitiveness of our country. >> host: what happened to the idea that was floated about taking some of the broadcasters' spectrum and turning it over to the wireless industry? >> guest: there are a lot of ideas on what we can do to meet the spectrum challenge. we haven't said anything about

which ideas are the best, and we're just at the beginning of the process. these processes take a long time historically at the fcc in terms of spectrum recovery. i'm told that the average from the time the fcc starts a proceeding in this area to actually recovering spectrum is 6-13 years. so this is a long-term planning issue for the country. we know the problem is coming. it's not coming next week, it's not coming next month, it's not coming next year, but it is coming. we snead to standard -- need to start our work now so we can have a smart policy for the country. >> host: mr. chairman, what's the status of spectrum dedicated to public safety? >> guest: that's a great question. you know, we don't stop and think about this very much, but when our first responders, our police officers and firefighters show up at a scene to do their work, there's almost nothing more important to them than the ability to communicate with each other, and that's all mobile.

so there are a couple of challenges that are very important to the country. one is as we saw from 9/11 and as the 9/11 commission report pointed out we're not where we should be as a country when it comes to interoperability, the ability of a firefighter and a police officer to get to a scene and communicate with each other. and that's an important issue that we need to tackle. when it comes to broadband, we all want our first responders to have says to -- access to 21st century communications tools. we want them to be able to have says to mobile broadband, to use video. when an ambulance shows up on the road at the scene of an accident, we want them to have every communications tool imaginable to be able to communicate back to the emergency room including at some point in the future mobile video to communicate directly with an emergency room doctor. we know this will save lives. it's a real challenge because it

costs money to do, there are challenges to it, it's something that we're looking at as part of the broadband plan and in general it's something that we're focused on because it's so important for the country. >> host: chairman genachowski, cliff sterns, the ranking republican on the internet subcommittee in the house, told us he was surprised that you brought net neutrality to the forefront of the issues facing the fcc because you hadn't talked to him about it before. what was it that got you ginned up for net neutrality? to look at that issue? >> guest: well, the fcc has been focused on open internet issues for quite some time. in 1995 the fcc announced open internet principles that are designed to preserve a free and open internet. i'll come back and talk about what that means in a minute. those principles were applied as conditions to mergers, they were

enforced last year. all of this was done in a way that didn't rely on typical commission procedures notice and comment rulemaking and has left some confusion about rules regarding preservation of a free and open internet. as we are in this period where the future of the internet is unfolding so fast before us, i think it's important that we make sure that we preserve a free and open internet and that there's no confusion that this, that the internet will remain free and open. it's been such an extraordinary success in terms of being a platform for innovation, a platform for economic activity, a platform for free flow of information and for civic engagement. that success is tied directly to the open architecture of the internet, and it's essential that we preserve it. it's essential that we preserve the internet as a vibrant

marketplace of ideas, it's essential that we preserve the internet as a vibrant marketplace for products and services. and what we're looking to do at the fcc is adopt high-level rules that, high-level rules of the road that make it clear that the internet has to remain free and open, a marketplace for competition, for businesses and for ideas as well. >> host: well, you mentioned the four freedoms that have been encoded in many ways in the fcc, but you've added two to that that you would like to see passed as rules. what were they? >> guest: well, one of them is what we call a transparency principle. this is a principle that would make sure that network management practices adopted by internet service providers are clearer to people. there's no question that companies that are managing internet networks whether it's

wired networks and certainly wireless networks which presents some very challenging congestion issue, that those companies need to be able to manage their networks in a reasonable way. and the rules that the fcc proposed recognized the necessity of having reasonable network management. part of the landscape that we think will help on this issue is a landscape that includes transparency. we think that if consumers, if ctos of new businesses that want to start on the internet understand what the network management practices are, that more often than not they'll be able to adjust to them, an issue that might otherwise come to the fcc will get resolved earlier. so that's the transparency principle. the other principle is a nondiscrimination principle. this is a principle that's also been a core notion of the internet from the time that it started. it was implicit in what the fcc

has been doing in this area including in its enforcement action last year, and what we think is essential to do to increase predictability and reduce confusion is to make it clear that there is a nondiscrimination principle subject, as i said, to reasonable network management so there's no question that the internet will remain free and open and also that companies that are managing networks can engage in reasonable network management practices so that together we can create a climate and a set of incentives for ongoing investment in the network to make it robust and smarter and that also generates investment and innovation on the edge of the network so that any entrepreneur can come up with an idea and put it out on the internet and have a chance to compete and to make a business. this is a real issue, for example, for small businesses who in the internet have the opportunity to either grow existing small businesses or to start new ones.

it's a real opportunity, also, for speakers, content creators of all sorts because the internet is a platform where you can develop an idea and reach a very broad audience. that's the internet that everyone understands, and our core goal is to make sure that we preserve that for the next generation of the internet. >> host: we're in the middle of the network management or net neutrality comment period. what kind of comments are you getting? and your use of the phrase or the fcc's use of the phrase, "reasonable network management," caught the eye of several different consumer groups lately, too, who have made comments. >> guest: well, in terms of comments, we're in the middle in the sense that the first comments are still due, so we haven't gotten formal comments yet. we will soon. we'll be starting soon some open workshops on this topic. i think this is a topic where if we can get all the interested parties participating in the

process -- engineers, business folks, public interest groups -- that there is a lot of common ground here. i think there's a common national desire to preserve a free and open internet, to let consumers and the marketplace pick winners and losers. and i think, hopefully, the process that will run, an open and participatory process, will narrow the issues and create a path where we can do the right thing to make sure that we preserve a free and open internet in the united states. >> host: don't know if you had a chance to see this yet, this is from the washington examiner from this morning, in fact. net neutrality studies by fcc also tainted by google. it's a commentary by tim carney, conservative writer, and he says the study done at harvard had microsoft and google funding it in part. >> guest: well, this is an area where there are a lot of studies coming in from a lot of people. we'll have a very open process that will look at all the information that comes in. we have a great staff here of

experienced engineers and economists who are approaching this with no bias other than doing the right thing for the american people. and it's also important to understand that this issue, it's not about google or other large companies that can take care of themselves, this is about the next generation of entrepreneurs, of small businesses of new speakers. this is about making sure that the internet continues to be a place where companies that we haven't heard of yet can have a chance to start to launch their businesses on a robust and open platform that can reach the widest possible audience. expwhrs two final areas, mr. chairman, number one, indecency has come up recently at the fcc under your tenure. will you give us an update on any plans that you have to pursue indecency in the media? >> guest: well, there's a law, as you know. the commission has an obligation to enforce the law, and we'll do that. it's in litigation now in the courts. the supreme court upheld the fcc

a few months ago but sent back elements of it to lower courts, so this is in litigation. the important thing to understand about this area is that parents have concerns about what their kids are exposed to, and they want to make sure that they're empowered to do what they think is best for their children. i'm an optimist in this area because i think that with new it technologies we'll find solutions to empower parents to protect kids that are completely consistent with the first amendment, and that will, i hope, make some of the harder elements of this issue go away. parents don't want our first amendment undermined, they just want to be able to exercise their responsibility as parents to protect their kids, and that's what i hope we'll see coming out of the marketplace in the period ahead. >> host: do you have a guiding philosophy when it comes to me