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>> this week on "the communicators," an update on the federal communications commission's efforts on a national broadband plan plus other issues. our guest is fcc commissioner robert mcdowell. >> host: fcc commissioner robert mcdowell is the senior republican on the federal communications commission, and he is our guest this week on "the communicators." commissioner mcdowell, we're about a month away from a national broadband plan being delivered -- >> guest: h 3 days. >> host: 43 days at this taping, being delivered from the fcc. can you give us an update on what is in that plan, what you've seen and how it's developing? >> >> guest: what we've had since the middle of the last year a team that have been brought in from the outside, others are internal. the commission has done a terrific job of having numerous hearings and workshops and

issuing public notices to solicit opinion and facts and analyses on just about every possible angle you can think of regarding how broadband might affect america and what can we do as a country to make broadband more ubiquitous and more available for folks all throughout the country? so fatter and faster pipes for more americans. our broadband team has given us a number of briefings over the past few months, and it's really going to boil down to, i think, a matter of supply and demand. as simple as that. so what can we do to make sure there's adequate supply of fatter and faster pipes, what can we do to make the existing pipes that serve those broadband connections, i call them pipes, what can we do to the make them fatter and faster for americans, to make it more affordable, and what can we do can to help americans want to subscribe more to broadband. and that really involves just a plethora of issues.

so we haven't yet seen the draft detailed plan, we've only seen outlines from our broadband plan team and looking forward to seeing more. in advance of what will probably be a vote or a meeting at least where it's presented on february the 11th. >> host: and what happens then on february the 11th or february the 17th when it gets delivered? does congress have to the approve it? it was part of the stimulus act from last year. >> guest: right. actually it's a little unclear. as part of the stimulus act, by the way, congress can wants us to look at all these issues from national defense to the environment to all these other purposes, education, lit as six things of that nature, health care. so we will have it formally presented to us february the 11th. it is due to congress february the 17th. it is not self-executing. this the plan is not anything that's a rule. there's really no legal effect of this plan. it's something that's presented to congress, ideas and

discussions that are presented to congress. and then i imagine the commission will have a number of spin-off, what i'll call spin-off proceedings, things such as reforming our universal service subsidy program and things of that nature. so congress may want to address other issues. i hope we look at things or that congress will look at things that we might suggest from the commission such as tax incentives to help spur things such as adoption, telecommuting, for instance, has many benefits that effect productivity in a positive way, but that could also help spur broadband adoption. so in any case can, there will be a lot of ideas, i think, that this plan will spawn, and we'll see as o to how detilled it is -- detailed it is. >> host: cecilia kang is also joining us on that it thers.

>> host: thank you so much. does that mean the commission has to vote on the plan before it's presented to congress? does it mean it's approved before the commission? >> guest: excellent question. we did say vote, and i don't know that that will happen. that could mean a number of things. the broadband plan team could be presenting it to the commission and then it's deliver today the hill. so there are a number of ways historically that the commission has delivered reports and other dock can units -- documents of significance to congress, and unless it specifically says the commission shall vote and all five commissioners shall vote, i think it allows us to not do it that way. the longer we don't have more specificity, there's an argument to be made that maybe it won't be a formal vote. again, it's not anything that has a legal effect, so a vote probably isn't really required. >> host: is there a chance there could be a republican dissent from the broadband plan that's

put together? >> guest: i guess there's always a chance there could be a democrat dissent as well on any vote. we are five independent commissioners, and whatever gets teed up for a vote, it's possible there could be concurrences on any item. >> host: you know, so close, too, the presentation of this plan to congress can i find it sort of interesting that there is this lack of clarity on the process given that there is, there has been so much attention by the commission and the chairman on making sure the process works well and that it's transparent and clear. what are your thoughts on the process just given what we talked about and the lack of clarity on what happens on february 11th, what happens on february 17th? >> guest: i think the commission has done a terrific job of being absorbent on this broadband plan, and at several monthly meetings this past fall and in december as well the broadband plan team was presenting to us

and to the world an open meeting their ideas, the it might look like, but we haven't actually seen the details yet. so that will come to us, i guess, as part of the normal commission process. traditionally, internal rules say we should get these documents 21 days before we have to vote on them, and there comes that question regarding whether or not there'll be a vote. so it'll go through that process. we don't know if there'll be a vote and, you know, i think the process would speak for itself. >> host: commissioner mcdowell, begin the fact -- given the fact that broadband is in many ways ubiquitous throughout the u.s., there are areas that don't have it, and it's been around for a long time now is there a purpose in a broadband plan for 2010? >> guest: you know, we'll have, you'd have to read the statute of the stimulus act to see what the purpose would be from congress' perspective, and that, i think, really speaks to the fact that broadband can affect

every aspect of life here in america or throughout the world. but you're absolutely right, there is up to depending on what study you want to read 95 percent some sort of broadband penetration. people can argue whether those speeds are fast enough and the bandwidth is big enough to accommodate the software that runs through those pipes. 92% be of the country is penetrated by cable, cable, for instance. that can be upgraded to, maybe, 100megs per second merely by a software upgrade, but it's more than that. there's a lot of technical issues socialed with that. -- associated with that. so we could get the country wired up to 92% anyway just through that. but we want to see more competition. i think since i've come to the commission i've really tried to focus on the construction of new delivery platforms be it fiber,

co-ak or wireless and other technologies as well. and i think where there's the most promise right now is in broadband. it's the fast thest-growing segment of the broadband market, it's what consumers are saying they want, therefore, they also want the reliability of fiber, though, or of other broadband technologies, co-ax, etc., because of the speed and reliability. so to fill in the gap of that last 5 or 8%, whatever the number is, will be difficult. earlier in 2009 i went to alaska in the winter, early march, where it's 55 below. we're recording this on a very cold day in washington, we're complaining when it's 20-some degrees, but it was very cold there. and they have a lot of challenges when it comes to broadband. really satellite is their only option due to the harsh weather condition. it's very difficult to make a landing there. it's a coastal town right on the

beautiful arctic ocean. but so satellite for some fills in that gap. i want to the make sure we don't forget about satellite because there are parts of america that just get nothing else but that. and it has limitations, satellite technology does, but we need to look at what we can do to make that better for consumers who are, have that as their only option as well. >> host: your comments actually echo some comments made by the white house and the obama administration yesterday in comments filed to the fcc through the department of justice as well as from the ntia in a letter where the administration basically said that there is more need for competition, and you're talking about competition. i would love to hear you talk a little bit more as what you see as the competitive landscape today if there's not enough, and your thoughts on wireless. you mentioned something that was very much stressed by the administration yesterday and how the commission should consider the fact that the biggest wireless players are also the

biggest distributer of fixed wire internet access, at&t and verizon. >> guest: well, you can't have enough competition. at some point markets could become saturated with competition, but i don't think that's going to the happen with broadband. really a priority of mine has been to look for ways to create more competition, and that obviates the need for regulation. on so many different levels. because if you have one player acting in an anticompetitive way or o some sort of inefficient way from the consumer's perspective, then presumably consumers would have more choices. so certainly there's been discussion of spectrum audits, that could be a great idea as long as we understand and manage our expectations ahead of time. so, for instance, it's very difficult to pinpoint a point on the map at a point in time and determine exactly who is using

that spectrum and for what purpose. so we have to manage those expectations if a spectrum audit is conducted, action on capitol hill about this. the end product might not give can us full enlightenment and turn on all sorts of lightbulbs in our head. it's going to raise as many questions, probably, as it answers. but government uses about a third of all available spectrum, and spectrum is finite. we talk about spectrum for the folks at home, we're talking about the airwaves, the radio waves and different pieces of the spectrum, different frequencies are better for different purposes. some frequencies the signals can penetrate the buildings like the television spectrum. others travel short distances and are better for medical devices, things of that nature. so it's a complex, very complicated area, but i do think we are on the early edge of what i'll call the golden age of

wireless. i'm very, very optimistic about wireless' future. i was recently speaking to the inventer of the cell phone who is, we all know who the invenner of the wire line phone s alexander graham bell. do we know -- we should all know -- [inaudible] >> guest: his name is marty cooper. 99.9% of americans don't know him. he's in his 80s now, and you should have him on this program at some point. but his, he has a theory, and i'll give him a lot of deference because he invented the cell phone. his theory, cooper's law as it's known is that our spectral efficiency doubles every two-and-a-half years. that means how much information can we squeeze over the same bit of the airwaves? that doubles every two-and-a-half years, so since the radio was first invented, we are over two trillion times more spectrally efficient today than when the radio because first

invented. so i think it's important to understand that that trend should continue at least for our lifetimes. so when we talk about or hear about spectrum shortages, yes, we need to do what we can to get more spectrum out to the marketplace, but that can be measured in years before that can happen, before the commission can find that or congress can help us with this too. to get that spectrum cleared, get it to auction and actually get it built out you're talking maybe better part of a decade before that happens. so what do we do in the meantime? smart phones such as the iphone as people like to point out are consuming more and more of the airwaves to convey these wonderful new technologies to consumers. well, this sort of tension actually helps create an incentive to use the airwaves more efficiently. and if you continue to think of the spectrum as real estate and you think of the best spectrum maybe of, let's say manhattan, is us efficient to build a one-story gas station or a 30-story apartment building or a

100-story office building? so just the way we want to have incentives for the use of land, we want to have incentive for the use of the spectrum as well. so that might be an unintended, maybe, benefit to having a bit of a spectrum shortage while we work on this as quickly as we can to get more spectrum to the marketplace. so there can be an upside. >> host: one issue with the spectrum is what they call white space, and google just recently applied to be an administrator of white spaces. if you could briefly tell us what these white spaces are and what google's role potentially could be. >> guest: sure. so -- i'm delighted you brought that up because i've been a proponent of use in this area. so the television white spaces are those unused the channels in a market. and sort of gaps in the spectrum. and in urban and suburban areas the sort of contour map, the configuration that it would look like on a map might be sort of salamander shaped, so these aren't nice and neat, clean

areas. so you need to -- they are more amenable to unlicensed use than licensed use because of that. so back in november of 2008 the commission took both sort of a baby step and a giant leap all at the same time to sort of approve of unlicensed use of this part of the spectrum. so some call it wi-fi on steroids, others who are more technical have issues with that, but for the folks watching right now, i think that's a good analogy to say it's wi-fi on steroids. it is wireless broadband signals that can travel a long distance that can penetrate buildings and carry a lot of information with them. so there's a lot of activity and noise and discussion leading up to our vote there in november of '08, and the commission did a very good job, i think, of trying to test new technologies to make sure this was viable and that it would not harmfully interfere with television broadcasters. so the paradigm, the basic

prototype worked. since then, though, we have seen less activity, at least less discussion on the outside of the use of white spaces, and i think white space use really solves a lot of policy usage, we'll probably talk about it in a minute, but this is a terrific way to get new powerful devices into the hands of consumers. the role i think you're talking about for google, and google's just one of many parties probably interested in this, is there would have to be a nationwide database of where you are on the map, where are there licensed users of those same frequencies on the map? so each hand held device, to get a little technical here, would be able to tell you where that consumer is on the map and if there's a licensee using that frequency for that given spot. if the so, then that device has to switch to a different channel, a different frequency. as well as the device would have to be able to detect if there's some other use of that frequency

is licensed or unlicensed or not so that these devices don't cancel each other out and sort of shout each other out and not be able to work as a result. so it gets very technical, but you need to have administrators of this, and the idea was set up to have a neutral third party administrator for some of these aspects of it and that, i think s what you're talking about with google or other ap applicants as well. >> host: do you think that a neutral third party can be a player that has this interest in communications? >> guest: excellent point, and that's something that needs to be examined further. historically, for things such as the administration of phone numbers if you want to use that as an analogy, that has been add administered by a neutral third party that does not have communications interests, so that's an excellent point. >> host: this is c-span's communicator program. our best is robert mcdowel, cecilia kang is with "the

washington post." next topic. >> host: ayed like to talk -- i'd like to talk to you about network neutrality. love to hear your thoughts on how white space, as you said, could solve policy issues with net neutrality. you have said you've agreed to, for the proceeding of the rulemaking process. but you've also said that you don't think there is necessarily a need for new policy. is there a net neutrality policy or final rule that you could be comfortable with, and what would that look like? >> guest: well, first, we are about to have our initial round of comments due at the fcc on january 14th, so we're taping this on the 5th, so i guess next week. and the first thing i think we need to do is examine whether or not there is systemic market failure. the government in 2007 twice looked at this issue to examine the market, the broadband market. and this is the federal trade commission as well as the federal communications commission. the federal trade commission

actually took this to a vote. it was a 5-0 unanimous, bipartisan vote that strongly said there was no indication of systemic market failure that would necessitate net neutrality rules. net neutrality has been up until this proceeding at the fcc sort of what i call a rorschach term, it was undefined. but now we do have proposed rules that gives us a framework for debate, which i think is a good thing. the first thing we need to the address i would like for potential commenters is to, please, give us hard evidence of systemic market failure that, in other words, the concern is for the proponents of net neutrality regulation is that network owners and operators, phone companies, cable companies, wireless companies might somehow discriminate against content applications in an anticompetitive way to favor their own wiz interests --

business interests. thus far there has not been proof of systemic market failure. there have been three, four, five maybe examples of some sort of nefarious behavior, but they've all been isolated. once spotlighted, they were corrected either settled through government action or through consent decrees at the fcc so i think that's important to note as well. so what is the ultimate cure for any anticompetitive conduct in any industry? that's more competition. so when the average american consumer has a choice of five wireless carriers, when there's a cable company, maybe a cable overbuilder in that market and a phone company as well, i think that's important to note that you might have eight, eight providers. we have more technologies coming over the horizon. what we called our 700 megahertz auction that came about as a result to the transmission to digital television. we auctioned that off a couple years ago now, and we are not

even seeing the fruits of the new entrants that will come into certain markets for that. there's wi-max technology, companies like clearwire. there's still the fruits of our advanced wireless services auctions from 2006 we haven't seen the fruits of and many, many more. and then white spaces which we've talked about before. that all could be helpful because, as i said before, if there is a last mile internet onramp, the last mile to the consumer, if there's a licensee or a market player that's acting in an anticompetitive way to somehow frustrate the consumers' will by discriminating against the content or application that consumer wants to see or use, then if you have enough competition in the marketplace, the consumer can fire that last mile provider and hire a new one. and i think that's the ultimate way to go. i'm always concerned about the potential unforeseen consequences, unintended consequences of new regulations. new regulations or regulations

of any kind act as a tax, and when you tax or regulate something, you tend to get less of it, you tend to diminish it, you tend to make it harder to produce that thing or that service that you're taxing. and, you know, president reagan -- i might have said this on one of these earlier shows a couple years ago, but president reagan said there are those who if they see something moving, they want to tax it. if it keeps moving, they regulate it. and if it stops moving, they subsidize it. i want to make sure we don't do that with the internet. >> host: the term internet technology, adam rather recently wrote an op-ed in "the new york times" about search neutrality. will that be part of any net neutrality plan or has that been raised at the fcc? >> guest: the proposed rules, i guess, speak for themselves, and they place all the regulations on the network operators and not on the application providers. so i would just ask folks to look at those proposed rules and

decide for themselves, but i think the notice of proposed rulemaking that we voted on in october actually discusses this a little bit, so i would welcome comment from the public as to whether or not there should be search neutrality, but also does the fcc even have jurisdiction or authority to impose any of these rules to begin with, let alone search neutrality? >> host: and do you think the fcc does have jurisdiction? >> guest: i question that. it's a question i'm asking folks to help me out with. in the context of an item from 2008 called the comcast ruling that is being litigated, actually, on january the 8th will be oral arguments at the d.c. circuit can, i dissented in that because i questioned whether or not congress has given the fcc the proper authority to exercise what's essentially old-style phone or common carrier regulation on information services that historically have been lightly regulated or deregulated altogether.

if congress wanted us to regulate these services, it would say so explicitly in the statute. so that's a question i want folks to help me out with, but i do question whether or not we do have the authority to do that. >> host: do you think along the lines of competition being one solution for net neutrality or the idea of openness on the internet how does the comcast merger with nbc universal, a consolidation that you might see in the media space through that merger, play into net neutrality just broadly in the communications media landscape? >> guest: first of all, my lawyers tell me i should not -- >> host: pretend it's another company. [laughter] >> guest: that frustrates reporters when i say that, but happy to talk about the market in general. by the way, we haven't received the application yet, hopefully later in january we will. so, you know, what's interesting is that transaction sort of bucks the trend of the past few years. in the past few years, really

since i've been on the fcc, we've seen a move more towards media deconsolidation, divestiture. large companies such as disney or cbs and others actually selling off traditional media assets and even what was interesting just last year we saw time warner and time warner cable break apart, sort of get a divorce, if you will, and now comcast and nbc universal are getting married. it was it would be a lot of fun to debate what the two strategies are. so this transaction sort of bucks that trend in recent years, and i think actually consume isers, to answer your question more directly, are awash in more media choices now than ever before in the history of humanity, and i think that's a good thing if we manage that properly. >> host: do you think -- along those lines with video and entertainment and media, that consumers may be awash in more

options, but there's a big transition taking place from fixed cable and fixed satellite delivery of video entertainment to the internet. and i'd love to hear your thoughts on competition in the video space. there was a complaint filed by some public interest groups to the justice department and do federal trade -- the federal trade commission saying they're afraid that a strategy called tv everywhere could be anticompetitive. and in your jurisdiction at the fcc looking at video competition and consumers' benefit, the public interest, what are your thoughts on the transition and any potential cracks in the foundation of competition going forward as more media goes onto the internet? >> guest: excellent series of questions there. [laughter] so we could keep this going all day with those. it's a fascinating, exciting area to watch, and comscore which is a ratings agency for

online activity i think their november figures for october show that americans downloaded 28 billion online videos in the month of october alone. there were 167 americans doing that. and those numbers have been growing at double-digit percentage rates for quite some time. so i think what we see is a vibrant video market right now. and, you know, this is more than just the mentos and the pepsi bottle that we saw in the early days of youtube. these are full-length movies and tv shows as well as user-generated content of all stripes, so we couldn't even imagine maybe just five years ago. so i think it's a very competitive marketplace, it's very chaotic. i try to get out into the real world outside of washington, d.c. as much as possible to speak with entrepreneurs and people who are trying to figure out how do you pay for all this.

it's, consumers still want quality scripted programming, and that costs a lot of money to produce. and the, there are two ways to fund that: advertising and subscriptions. and thus far the market hasn't figured out another way to fund that. so if consumers continue to want that, it's going to be interesting to see how the market evolves. nobody really knows how the story's going to end up. we're sort of in the adolescence of video competition and internet, the online world in terms of what kind of services and content will be available there. so in adolescence it can be an awkward, quirky time. you're not sure if that person's going to grow up to be a beautiful swan or an ugly duckling, and i think a lot of folks in this space are trying to figure that out. what we should do from a government policy perspective is allow as much freedom as possible for them to experiment.