>> this week on "the communicators," a discussion about the federal government's role in establishing high-speed internet in the united states.

our guest is larry cohen, president of the communication cans workers of america. this program was taped in december 2009. >> host: and this week on "the communicators" larry cohen who is the president of the communication workers of america. also here to join in the questioning, lynn stanton, senior editor with telecommunications reports. mr. cohen, if you could very briefly, give us a snapshot of the communication workers of america. >> guest: cwia, as we call it, is 700,000 women and men most of whom work in the communications field, could be broadcasting, could be journalism, could be the largest group works on networks. and we also have several hundred thousand retired members who remain active in many ways. so we're in every state, we're 10,000 in canada including the canadian broadcasting company. active members. interested in their world. >> host: what sort of

organizations or what companies do they work for, do your members work for? >> about a thousand different companies, largest are companies like at&t and general electric and verizon and comcast and "the new york times" and, you know, many of the newspapers, all the news agencies. >> host: so when it comes to policy matters, mr. cohen, what are some of the major areas of concern that you concentrate on with cwa? >> guest: obviously, communications policy is huge, so future of the internet is huge for us. right now given what's going on health care policy has become huge because no matter where our members work, there's great concern about what will the future be? we, obviously, support health care reform, but the question is what does that mean? bargaining and organizing rights is a big problem in the united states and great concern to our members is their ability to have a voice on the job. those the would probably be three of the big -- the global economy.

we're very involved globally as well, and lots of the work our members do is affected by what's going on around the world, so we try to build alliances that are global. >> host: let's obviously focus on the telecommunications policy issues. one of the big issues currently move anything this country with regard to telecommunications is broadband deployment. what is your position on the broadband plan being developed by the fcc and overall broadband deployment in the u.s.? >> guest: well, yeah. first, you know, we applaud the focus the fcc has on broadband deployment. that is exactly the frame we would use. in the last 25 years, we've dropped from, you know, the lead in terms of the global economy and broadband take-up and speeds to 15th now in terms of broadband penetration. of the 30 oecd economies. and we're actually near the bottom in terms of speed. so we've been running a campaign called speed matters for the last two years across the country, get people aware of speed and why it matters and,

obviously, bring that message to the fcc and to congress as well that, you know, we are dropping, dropping, dropping, and we would say that communications is part of infrastructure in the same way electricity, like a new grid or, you know, water, even roads, obviously. and in terms of economic development in the 21st century, it's critical that we have # 1st century -- 21st century internet, not 20th century. >> host: your speed matters project shows the u.s. in terms of speed that's 5 megabits per second versus 20 in south korea. does that really make a difference once you get up to a certain speed? if you can view streaming video, do you really need to have that at home? >> guest: yeah. it makes a big difference, particularly on the check side as well as in the residence. and also we'd stress it's upstream, not just downstream, and people want to be participants in this society.

we talk about education as well as garage band practicing on their own, you need to be able to upstream speed matters as well as downstream. but, you know, there's lots of examples of why it matters. i mean, for a high-def video connection you need about 6 or 7 megs just for that. things like c-span itself are not just entertainment. you know, as we look forward to where we're headed, you know, that's going to be the global standard. but more importantly than in the residence, it's also many the community. so if we look at a state like west virginia where we're very concerned about speed and broadband deployment, high-speed internet the connection cans, it affects the entire economy of the state when there's no high-speed connections in most of the town, for example, in west virginia in term thes of economic development. so just as companies in the past would have looked at, you know, what are the roads through this

town, now the road is the internet as well as, you know, the road the truck arrives on. >> host: and why is the cwa endorsing or, you know, supporting high-speed? >> guest: well, again, the biggest group of our members do work on the network itself. and, you know, so, number one, it's their jobs. so we're looking at an economy now with, you know, a minimum of 10% official unemployment and when you look at underemployment, it's 20. so the job creation for people who work on the network, number one. number two, the job creation, the spin-offs of, you know, catching up in terms of the world economy and the economic development that goes along with it. to the extent we're worried, which obviously we are, about job flight out of the u.s., about folks in the u.s. turning into consumers -- you can't really be a consumer without working, at least most of us can't. so it's a combination of the two. where our members work, you know, several hundred thousand of them actually work on the

network, and they're concerned about their futures. and also, i mean, we promote among our own members constant training, upgrading of skills, look to the future, don't look to the technologies of the past. so our members are really into this. when we talk about the speed matters campaign which we started in iowa because of the political interest, it was our members in iowa who sort of took it up, who met with candidates, who talked about libraries, schools, hospitals, clinics in iowa not having high-speed connections and what that means. so to our members it helps say that our organization is not just about, important as it is, the standard of living, but it's also about, obviously, you know, where will our employment come from, what are the skill cans you need, and how do you ntribute in a meaningful way to this country? it's not just to go to work, you want to feel like your work is meaningful. >> host: one of the ways that the fcc is looking at trying to shift some resources to deploying more broadband is by taking it away from traditional

narrow band voice services that are supported by the universal service fund. what do you think of that approach? >> guest: great. i mean, in one word, great. yes. the universal service fund was focused on plain old television or simple service voice. we see it going forward as a software application, and we need to move -- the universal service fund depends on $7 or $8 billion a year that could be used to stimulate, provide incentives for private sector investment in low-density areas or underserved areas. i think that's exactly right. we need -- and congress, you know, needs to get involved in that as well to actually shift what it's there for. but we, you know, we need about $350 billion to upgrade our internet to, like, the standard of korea which is ironic to most americans that we're way behind korea, let alone trail cra -- australia, japan, sweden, as you know, the whole list of oecd

economies. >> pan is in front of -- japan is in front of us with a huge take-up as well, but, you know, the universal service fund can provide incentive, and you can match it and leverage the private sector investment. most of that $350 billion that is got to come from the private sector. but when you have 8 billion a year and to set goals for the rural or you urban america, i tk that's the way, we can sort of get ourselves there. use the universal service fund for new purposes. >> host: you've mentioned some specific dollar amounts there, and the amount the universal service fund every year that could potentially be shifted at least on the same level as that 7.2 billion that was in the recovery act earlier this year. >> guest: right. >> host: and then you mentioned the 350 billion that the fcc has said is what we need to get to those really high speed services throughout the country. >> guest: right.

>> host: you said leveraging, but what can you do with such a small amount of money that's really going to make a difference? >> guest: first of all, phase i, and this is where speed matters originally started, we do these state maps where people can go in there and see what their speeds are, and then we publish the results by state. people joke, well, why do we need to spend $7 billion? you guys have already done it. well, we've done it on a voluntary basis creating maps based on going to the site. but phase i of the stimulus fund is going to provide better maps that, you know, the maps i have in here state by tate state. that would then allow you to take the usf money and pinpoint it just as they were pinpointed to provide services on the voice front in areas that weren't going to get them, you know, just through norm market forces. so in a similar way, you know, you would leverage those funds

against the underserved areas, and then you would, you know, essentially you would do some form of reverse auction kind of thing. pinpointing this is the speeds we -- big thing we're stressing is speed matters. we push to get the fcc to raise the speed. they raised it to, like, meg -- one meg in each direct. in japan the goal they set five years ago was 100 meg service across japan. we need to set goals that keep us, you know, at pace with the rest of the world, and then i think we need to take whatever funds we have, right, whether it's the usf or stimulus money or whatever and match it in some kind of way to get the privacy sector investment we need as well. >> host: could you see an increase in the usf? >> guest: you could do an increase, i mean, it's fund thed by all of us. >> host: right. i mean, in the level of. >> guest: yeah. well, to get more fund anything the usf, essentially it's an

indirect tax on people who use services. i mean, we're in a recession, so i don't advocate increasing taxes, but i think the first thing is to map out where we need to go, and then do some version of an auction like they do for spectrum, but this is an auction to get speed where we need it. you can do can accelerated depreciation. again, that's really a tax expenditure that somehow people are more comfortable with than budget expenditures. you could do accelerated depreciation to get that investment out faster. you know, we also need to do more to create demand, so parts of our proposal are to have sort of digital ambassadors in underserved areas. it could be high school kids working with other kids, it could be working with -- brazil has a project called pc conectado to get computers across brazil. so to drive up demand, you also

need to work in underserved areas, you know, to get people to, you know, get on the internet and to be using these services. so i think it's a whole approach. it's the nonprofit sector the, it's the private sector the, and it's the public sector. not only the fcc, but the congress, local government has played a key role in this. >> host: well, along with the broadband deployment, mr. cohen, the fcc is also looking at net neutrality the. >> guest: right. >> host: and adding rules to net neutrality. you recently sent a letter to julius genachowski and the other commissioners. what was the essence of that letter? >> guest: well, first that we support an open internet, it's one of the principles we've had from the beginning in speed matters. but at the same time, you know, we have to the look at some kind of reasonable network management. again, it's part of the incentives with the people who are investing and building these networks. in other words, if you had total net neutrality, it would mean that there would be no

prioritization or no precious for any of the data births on the -- bytes on the internet. voip, voice over the internet, or otherwise you're going to get, you know, latency issues, you're going to get drops, and it isn't going to work. similarly, with video you need to be sure there's some kind of priority to keeping the bytes together. so we call that managing the services, but it should be reasonable network management. if there's discrimination based on one site versus another, absolutely those network providers need to be targeted. so there's a little bit of nuance in that letter. we're not exactly the same as some of the folks who would probably say what do we need reasonable network management for, and we would be saying, again, get all parties in the room with my friend julius genachowski and the other commissioners and figure this out. because if we don't figure it out, you get a freeze-up in

investment, and this whole kind of problem of what kind of infrastructure are we going to have only gets worse. we believe in no discrimination, but at the same time reasonable network management, some managed services that a network provider can manage that's their own services so that, again, you're providing some incentives for them to spend the billions of dollars to build out. >> host: you just distinguished your position on this from the sort of strong advocates who don't want any management. would you distinguish your position at all from those of the carriers and the broadband providers? a lot of your members work for them, obviously, but also for content providers who would be more on the open internet side of the argument. >> guest: right. yeah, i mean, again, we would distinguish ourselves in that we think that the fcc does need to sort of police the open internet and make sure there's not any discrimination. there have been, you know, very few examples, but there have been a couple, and, yeah, we think there needs to be a cop

there who's able to say when there's a complaint, hey, you know, you screwed up, you're going to pay fines, there's going to be some kind of penalty for that. we're not saying leave it up to the market. we're saying there does need to be an open internet, and, again, you got into an area that's very key to us which is how do we promote diversity of education? things like c-span? how do but promote diversity of information so it isn't just market forces advertising, sort of overcoming everything else? we're very worried about the concentration of content, that's another big issue to us. so, yeah, most of those issues, virtually all of them, we would be in agreement with. it's just on the extreme you get into a situation where if you don't have reasonable network management, you're not going to get the investment. and then, you know, we could have a totally open internet that's a 20th century internet, so we've got to have a balance between the two. >> host: this is c-span's communicators program.

our guest is larry cohen, cwa-union.org is the e-mail address the. lynn stanton is a senior editor with telecommunications reports, tr.com is the web address. could you tell us what telecommunications reports is briefly? >> host: well, we've been publishing since 1934 covering mainly the fcc and also congre states on telecom policy, everything that affects carriers that are now becoming broadband service providers. >> host: and, mr. cohen, you mentioned right before we did that little interlude that you were concerned about the concentration of power, in effect you've already raised red flags, i guess, from your perspective on the comcast/nbc potential merger. >> guest: right. yes, we're very concerned particularly about the linkage of content and network together. so, again, it's not our world. we get that, so we get to be in the world we're in, and we have respect for others, but, you know, we would say the ideal

world would distinguish between the content ask the pipe and would not want to have a connection. so, for example, right now there's huge differences in price points in terms of delivering content. right now in terms of the cable companies, unfortunately particularly comcast, you know, we have a lot of respect for them, we have members there, but we'd be very worried about what happens to content they don't own versus content they do own. so those kind of -- nbc which, again, lots of, thousands of members there at nbc now on the content side, you know, our concern there is, you know, what happens to that content with this merger? not so much just what happens to the jobs although that's an issue for us, but, you know, if a higher and higher percentage of content is owned by a company that also passes 60 million homes, what's going to happen to, you know, the whole democracy issue as we move

forward here? those are concerns we have, we're going to the raise those directly with ge, the parent, and with comcast, also the fcc, also in congress. you know, there's ways to bring, there's ways for that merger to work. i don't see the main advantage that they see in it is the link between tipe and the content, and that's actually where we would have the greaters concern. >> host: you were just talking about the distinction between the content and the pipe. the head of the national cable and telecommunications association gave a speech recently in washington in which he talked about first amendment rights of the pipe owners, that in pushing the stuff over the pipe there is a first amendment concern there. do you see that as a reasonable argument, or -- >> guest: i'm not familiar with that argument. where does he take that or she? >> host: when the fcc looking into net neutrality, that they are possibly going to impinge on first amendment rights of the pipe owners. not on the content owners or the

delivery of the cable system over the sort of connected cable architecture, but specificically over the broadband isp. in their first amendment rights decide how to the deliver that content. >> guest: yeah. that would worry us. we would be more interested in, you know, our rights as creators or citizens to create content to make sure we can get that content over a public internet that isn't disadvantaged. that would, to me, be -- i mean, the families of our countrymen, they meant individuals, they didn't mean corporations. i think we're running into trouble with that in many ways recently. i won't get us on to another subject. yes, we would say the first amendment is about, you know, let a million people create content on this internet and let them have a reasonable chance of getting it distributed rather than a connection between the pipe owner and deciding what content comes over there. again, i think there has to be

some managed services to get them to invest. that's the system we have right now. you won't get the investment otherwise. but on the other hand, a robust, public internet is really where the excitement comes in and the innovation. >> host: mr. cohen, when you visit congress, when you talk to congress, what are the committees you concentrate on? >> guest: that we're talking about now, commerce has, obviously, all of these issues. they also have health care. you know, the labor committee, health education, labor and pensions committee in the senate. and similarly in the house. i mean, it's pretty much a wide range because our members are, you know, different sides of things and five different industry groups. i mean, we're also concerned about manufacturing, that's another whole subject for another day. hardly any of this stuff is manufactured in this country anymore that we're talking about. we think we need a better trade policy. so, i mean, it's a wide range. we're concerned about services, jobs being moved out of the country -- >> host: services jobs.

>> guest: yeah. customer service, tech support. lots of that is no longer done here even though you think you're talking to somebody at any of these companies. i hesitate to mention one without mentioning all the ones that are doing it. the work's not only contracted out, but it's in asia instead of here. wide range of issues we care about. issues we've been talking about today are way at the top, but workers' rights are at the top as well. are we going to have bar gaining rights as well? where do we stand on people's rights to organize and bargain with their employers? we're near the bottom on that. obviously, health care distribution, universal access to health care we've dropped near the bottom on that. lots of concerns bring us to lots of members of congress. >> host: how would you grade the current congress and the current administration? with regard to your issues? >> guest: yeah. you know, i would say that as for the house and i say this openly, best speaker ever. i'm a big fan of what the

speaker's trying to do and all the people that work with her. i think there's, you know, there is a genuine focus there on innovation. i mean, our belief is, you know, we need to move forward, we need to look at what's going on around the world that we can learn from, not simply think we're going to invent it here. you know, the senate, i mean, truthfully, we're concerned about the rules and how they operate. you know, it's a challenge to have a democracy where now we're in a situation where every single thing needs 60% of the senate to actually show up, not just 60% of those who are there, but 60% to show up to even get a nomination through. very concerned about gridlock. among our senate friends. what i like about the white house is, you know, they're up working all night. [laughter] i know a lot of those folks. i think they're willing to accept new ideas, i think we have to go further to creating a government and a country where we're really looking at the ideas rather than looking at, you know, winners and losers all the time.

but very excited about the president and his team and get a lot of opportunities to work with them, you know, look forward to most of those. >> host: are with all those issues in front of congress and, obviously, health care and energy are probably going to come before communications in the lineup -- >> guest: yep. >> host: the national broadband plan is said to be non-self-executing, that they're going to present that in february. it'll have suggestions for what should be done. any room or movement in congress to move on this thing? >> guest: i think there's some room on the jobs front, so we're stressing this as infrastructure. most of our conversation today is part of the infrastructure. it doesn't get as much attention as a bridge or even a new building. we actually think it needs more in that way. it's not as costly either. so i think there's going to be openingses around jobs. americans are concerned about unemployment, and even those of us who are working, you know, what happens next. and we would argue a lot of what we've discussed here today needs

to come into the jobs conversation, 21st century structure. it's not the same as it was in previous years. >> host: mr. cohen, on your web site you did a recent analysis or report comparing or talking about google and at&t which i found interesting. could you tell our audience briefly what that is and if they want to see it,re find it on the web site? >> guest: i hope i know exactly. [laughter] it's probably on speedmatters.org. we have a site where you can go and measure your speeds, and it should be on there. if it's not, i'll get it on there when i leave. www.speedmatters.org. the reason we did this we're concerned, again, back on that net neutrality front, that in a period of high unemployment as well as the need to get broadband deployment across the country that we understand where the jobs are. and so if you, the examples that you're mentioning at&t employs about 300,000 americans.

google employs about 15,000, yet google has a higher market value. so the ability of a google to impact public opinion around the world, i might add, is, you know, enormous. their surplus value they create, the profit they create is incredible compared to the number of people who work there. so that was sort of a caution that you picked up on that as popular as google is, you know, searching is, etc., paid search is what's providing the revenue there. so that's all of the content that journalists create, you know, is getting less and less attention and less value. and the quickest way to raise advertising money right now is paid search. we're just pointing out there that in a period where most americans are concerned about employment, we ought to see where the jobs are. so that's -- also capital expenditure. i mean, a company like at&t, and i'm not here to give commercials for them, but those companies are the leading companies in

terms of capital expenditure in the u.s. so last year i believe in the at&t case it was $17 billion in cap ex. i don't remember the google number, but it's nothing like that. we're really pointing out that while innovation is huge, google is tremendous in terms of where our country stands in the world economy, we also have to stay focused on how do we keep up in terms of, you know, the earlier conversation, you know, speed and deployment, price as well so that to where we were, you know, leading in the internet economy? >> host: final question. >> host: for a long time the perception in washington was that google and other silicon valley companies weren't paying attention to washington. are you finding yourself equally matched or overmatched? >> guest: i think they're paying attention worldwide. my counterparts around the world will tell you they're basically in every capital pursuing their interest. sometimes the interests are the public interests, but sometimes

it's just about google and their profits. that's just the way the market system works. >> host: how did you get into this line of work? >> guest: first as a worker, then got active in the union. you know, i've been full time in the union for, like, 30 years. >> host: larry cohen is president of the stanton telecommunications reports, senior editor, thank you both for being on "the communicators." >> guest: thank you. pleasure being with you. >> thank you.