update and then. thanks for your company. a discussion with michael copps

democratic member of the federal communications commission. >> host: we are pleased to welcome back to "the communicators," fcc commissioner michael copps. commissioner thank you for being with us. he also joining us is amy schatz of "the wall street journal." commissioner if i could start with the att, t-mobile usa acquisition. what do you see is the biggest impediment to that happening and how long do you see the process taking? >> guest: well, last part first i really don't know how long the process will take. there's some speculation it could be a better part of a year. i don't know that it should take that long but we will just have to wait and see with the expectations of the commission are. are. this is a huge chance action. it is a paradigm altering transaction insofar is the world of wireless goes. you will remember in the comcast merger that i said at the outset that it was a very -- and would

have been a very steep climb for me. ended up voting against it. this is maybe even a steeper climb from the standpoint of a lot of power and a lot of influence given to one company in a world where two companies are going to control 80% of the spectrum so i would hope that my colleagues in looking at this transaction in the months ahead will be asking themselves some very serious questions about what competition will be left if this merger is approved. what is the impact going to be on american jobs? i am trying to find that out. i haven't gotten a satisfactory answer yet but there will be time to delve into that and i hope and trust that we will. there is a lot of money on the table for that. how much of that money is going to end up in europe supporting telex medications there in the united states. so it is a big deal, but as much as anything what kind of

troubles me is that this kind of the oxygen out of so many issues that are pending before the federal communications commission. you know we can chew gum and walk at the same time i guess, but this affects so much of what we are doing. i think whether this goes forward or not has an effect and the whole issue of spectrum options. i think it has an impact on public safety. and the list just goes on and on, so it is a lot to absorb when you have been at the commission almost 10 years now and it seems sometimes we are just kind of a federal merger commission. that is because companies bring us so many mergers. this is the last one we are not going to be back. is an issue of approval and someone else comes to the door and say hey mackey with the other guy get real big and this is not fair. >> host: commissioner how did

you vote on the at&t will self merger? >> guest: well, we had a lot of negotiations back and forth on the bellsouth merger and managed to attach some network neutrality conditions and things like that. it was not a happy merger, happy occasion, but i think we made it better than it would have otherwise have been. >> host: before we get to amy i just want to read one piece of an editorial am a recent editorial in "the new york times" entitled looks like a duopoly. this is what "the new york times" writes. this doesn't make the at&t's proposed purchase of t-mobile should be rejected that there hurdles must be high. the fcc and the department of justice must ascertain that the arrangement does not reduce competition any further. in fact, for the acquisition to be deemed in the public interest, it should ideally lead

to more competition. at&t could be required to sell chunks of its network or divest swath of spectrum. regulators could impose conditions like mandatory data roaming on the at&t network or a commitment to provide nondiscriminatory access to data from third parties on its wireless network. >> the i think there is a lot of merit in there but the question is you know, why do we spend so much time trying to make what some people would deem unpalatable minimally acceptable we ought to be working for and the best we can do for competition and is that the best we can do for consumers and is that the best we can do for jobs? >> guest: you have dealt with a lot of these measures in the last 10 years if you've been at the commission. what kind of comment -- my conditions at the try to impose on others deals? >> guest: i am not into certainly conditions as you can probably do fine for my initial comments. this something that would be a

very steep climb for me. but i would hope a majority of the commission is going to approve of this and we would be obviously looking at market by market. that is certainly important. i think certainly the open internet and net neutrality is important. and just looking at the level of concentration and market power across the board is important. what it comes down to is all the considerations that go into deciding whether this serves the public interest convenience and necessity that is her chart so it is a pretty wide-ranging charge that we have in the statute and i hope we will fulfill it. >> guest: you were saying you thought it would not derail some of the other priorities of the commission, whether it is the incentive auction's. can you explain it more about

how that might happen? >> guest: i think not just the commission but perhaps --. i'm not going to predict what the hell is going to do but if we are talking about incentive auction said options and things like that, does this change, does it change the name of the game for that if you are going to have one less competitor in the wireless market. does that make the incentive auction idea more or less attractive? with regard to public safety and the d block, you think think those are all factors that might have the effect of encouraging some folks to say well, let's see what happens before we go ahead and act. >> host: n.a.b. chair gordon smith was recently on this program and here's what he had to say about the tensile

spectrum options and i want to get your reaction to it. what your viewers need to understand is the difference between broadcast spectrum the way we utilize it in the way wireless uses it is when we use it so it is very efficiently is. when you look at the way wifi does it if i send you a video on my iphone, it is made to you. it is one-to-one. it takes a tremendous amount of bandwidth. the truth is, we are in the video business. they want to be in the video business. video is what creates the congestion. no one does it more efficiently than we do, and there is probably, if you took all of our cat spectrum, there probably isn't enough spectrum in the universe to manage one-to-one video on every mobile device and the wifi rod band world.

>> host: commissioner copps. >> guest: if we are not getting into communications. i consider myself a friend of our testers particularly small independent broadcasters and i think their utilization of the public spectrum very often serves the nation well. on the other hand i understand full well and expect there needs to be used and utilized and there are swath of broadcast spectrum particularly the digital digital dividend that results from the dtv transition. certainly we need more spectrum for wireless and no question about that. it is a very spectrum hungry device, but i want to avoid generalizations. i don't think you can say in every instance that it serves the public interest to remove spectrum from broadcast and give it to me via wireless duopoly or

something like that. i think we have to look at its instance by instance, marked by market, and realize that those broadcasters and wireless perform absolutely essential public services in the 21st century, and that those who are doing it good job should be recognized for doing a good job and that includes a lot of broadcasters. >> guest: one of the things the broadcasters have been saying is there are spectrum holders like cable companies or others who aren't really using their spectrum efficiently about all. and the fcc has mandatory and they know, the fcc knows who has a race but they don't roanoke they are using them. do you think there is some merit to the idea of actually looking at whether people are using their airwaves? >> host: i don't think there is anyone in the united states of america who has the foggiest idea. spectrum is being utilized for one particular purpose and it would be helpful to note that. that does not mean that we should remain motionless in the

months ahead. into stand that we need more spectrum for wireless, but as we proceed along this path and before we get to the endgame and the end of the road, we ought to have a better idea on what is going on with the spectrum. the commission is me king strides toward that with the spectrum dashboard and other initiatives and it is taking -- i applaud those but we need to do more. >> host: and there has been a lot of talk about spectrum inventory. is there any dropdead date for that to actually occur? guest: no, i think the commission feels that it is making good progress and getting sort of a basic type of inventory up there with the dashboard. there will be a legislative push for spectrum in the tory again. we will see where that goes but in the meantime i would hope that we would be using all of our considerable resources to get that inventory going. it is not an easy test to do

this. is time-consuming. is resource intensive. it cost a lot of money and there are shrinking budgets but i don't know that you have to go out and send a truck into every village and town to measure the spectrum but we should be really doing a credible sample so we have a good idea particularly in markets where there is a spectrum crunch. >> host: commissioner copps i want to go back to something you said earlier which is equal to regret that at times the fcc has become the federal merger commission. how do you avoid becoming that merger commission and having the set conditions on every deal that comes before you? >> guest: well, it is very difficult. and the private sector drives a lot of this and you know the private sector modus operandi has changed in the telecommunications world and the media world. we have just like the rest of the economy gone through enormous concentrations in recent years and there is that

mindset out there that all of the -- much sought after but seldom achieve economies of efficiency are the wave of the future. seldom are they realize in these mergers but often they are sought, so the private sector drives that. but the commission has, or should have, can have input and the approach it takes for mergers so the department of justice and the federal trade commission and government spent a lot of time during the first eight years that i was here last thing this kind of consolidation. not just blessing it but actually encouraging it so when does the private sector. does the private sector encouraging this consolidation while the same time the commission moved away from a lot of dedication and commitment in public interest oversight and regulation. at some point, we have to decide whether we are really serious about having competition or not

and if we are going to have this constant trend toward duopoly or monopoly then there has to be some rules of the road. there has to be some oversight. there has to be some regulation. i hesitate to use that term. we look at monopolies for long period neck of time over the last 100 years regulated. let's get about the job of doing that and the rules of the road and maybe at that point the private sector and the companies will begin to understand that any of no mergers are not going to be automatically rubberstamp or passed with conditions when they come to the federal communications commission. >> host: this is c-span's mitigators program. our guest is fcc commissioner michael copps. also joining us up for "the wall street journal." guest: the fcc is to have spectrum caps in place to prevent companies from getting

too big and then i think it was -- i'm not entirely sure, they did away with them. to think it is time to bring them back? >> guest: is not in favor of that. i think it went much better had we continued with spectrum caps and avoidance of excessive concentration we have had since them. yes, think that is something that we could consider. the numbers would have to change in the percentage would have to change, probably given the things that did happen in the market. i noticed just the other day off, great britain announced it is going to have this enormous auction from 250 megahurts of spectrum and they are putting limits on the amount that anybody can end up with and it is premised on the idea that they think there should be at least a minimum of four wholesale competitors in each of those in that spectrum.

>> guest: when you talk about limits on options if you are talking about incentive options and auctioning off tv airways do you think there should be in a any limits in place to prevent, or to help continue to have diversity on the airwaves because you could see there could be some low power or some stations might want to sell airwaves and they might not have that diversity. >> guest: that is what i'm worried about. the think the original candidates will be who will step up and say we have this incentive auction right now and i'm going to participate? i think there are two troubling the first is going to be the hard-pressed minority station for the diversity station in a big city who is trying its best to serve the public interest but the economics just aren't working. the advertising is not there and try as they might day may want to take advantage of this. the other is going to be those hedge funds and banks and folks that own the big stations. into them it is just a numbers

game. if they look at it and say well keep it, we can make this much money, sell the licensing or participate in this auction we will make 15 cents more. i can tell you which one they are going to take. they are going to take the one with 15 cents more because that is the dynamic they operate under. >> host: commissioner copps on another issue there was a recent news report about the rollout in deployment of the broadband national plan, and that was behind schedule or not fully scheduled. do you think that is a fair report and if the fcc could, how would you increase the deployment? >> guest: i am hopeful that we are on track. it took a while to develop a broadband strategy, initial broadband plan but it provided a roadmap. we had done nothing in the way of developing a broadband strategy for the united states of america, so we now have that strategy and i believe that this

year of 2011 can really be a good year. it might be counterintuitive and people might say the political dynamic is changing and we are not going to get anything done. i do believe that and i think there's a lot of bipartisan interest and finally stepping up to universal service and carrier compensation on these issues and solving them. i think if you look at the agenda of the fcc we are starting to get into implementing this in a substantive way. so i think we can do a lot this year and i'm afraid that if we don't do a lot this year, when is the next chance going to be for us to do this? i think they were sort of an alignment of the stars. it is not perfect but it is sufficient to allow us to move ahead in to make some progress so by the end of this year, i would like to see the fcc have approved a transition plan, fairly detailed transition plan, universal service and carrier compensation. that doesn't mean every last tea

has to be crossed or i dotted or number filled in but pretty explicit because companies have to know in investors up to now up to now and innovators have to now and it would be nice for consumers to know too where we are going with these two very important programs and then i would like to see some orders passed to get us on what the job. i think that is doable and i think there is a commitment they are. i certainly hope so. >> host: in your view what is the biggest obstacle you have suffered? >> guest: just people use to used to another system for many many years, a system that is not serving the public interest well and is not responsive to the needs of the broadband era and the digital era that people used to do business that way. you have to change mindsets and you have to get everybody to understand that everybody's going to have to sacrifice since

the rules of the game are not going to be the same because we cannot afford for them to be the same. we are to in a different era, different technological period and the systems are going to have to undergo some fairly significant change so that -- really getting people to sit down around the table and think autumn line. i don't go -- want to grow rabbit have sessions where people are bringing their santa claus wish list on what they like. we have done that for years and years and years and we still are at the same place so i think we have to encourage the fcc some sessions here in the next few months. they sit with themselves and then was set in and we get what people can live with and get an understanding and we take all that back in a short period of time come up with our proposed rules. >> guest: so far the fcc is really only talking about the distribution side. it hasn't really said much about

the conservation side. so what would what would you sas the impact this is going to be on consumers? >> guest: i think we need to look at the conservation side and i think if we do it right, it will be a good impact for everybody. but if we have broadband not only on distribution part of usf but on the contribution part, it would mean considerable extra money and it should be there because broadband, these providers are selling triple play in making more money so i think there is some obligation for support of a universal system that is going to be hopefully serving the needs, serving the needs of the broadband era. so i am for it, including that. i am for congress passing something that would allow a collection of intrastate collection revenues based on intrastate revenue.

it would make an enormous addition to the wisdom of the program. i think it would increase the revenue base from something like 68 to $230 billion. it would reduce the contribution factor by an order of 70%. this is a fixable and doable system that we have got to make sure people know we are serious and what is about to happen and let's get to the final last best offers. >> host: commissioner copps as we enter the political season of 2012, the media access project has proposed changes to the disclosure of rules for political broadcast. here's what they write. to basic changes to the existing rules i needed. do you see changes in the

sponsorship rules? >> guest: i certainly hope so and i've been talking about this for months and months. i think if you have got an ad on tv and you see this little line that comes up and says pay for by citizens for spacious skies and amber waves of grain, but if you really knew who was sponsoring it was a chemical company refusing to clean up a toxic dump. i think citizens and consumers have a right to know that and i think it is a disservice that they don't. folks -- there was like $2 billion a think, nearly $2 billion that went to political advertisements. most of them are attack ads in the last session, or the last election cycle. so i'm not trying to cut off those ads but i think media access -- i think the time has come for this. i think people have a right to know who is putting out on the air -- if you put a bottle of

coca-cola misspoke raymond somebody will say you have to have product placement and pay for that or something like that. here we are talking about the future of democracy and people are trying to influence elections. don't people have as much or more of a right to know that? i think they do so i think this is a bipartisan small d democratic patriotic right thing for us to do. it is an access project to elevate the attention of this matter at the federal communications commission and i hope that my colleagues will follow up and we'll take it really serious and do something about it. >> guest: any insurance they might do something on a? >> guest: no. >> guest: one thing you have talked about his media ownership and it is one thing we know that the fcc is behind on, the ever-present annual review, quadrennial review.

you are behind for this year they're supposed to be a futures media report coming out soon. what would you like to see the recommendations be in that report? >> guest: strong and hard hitting. i would like to see come out soon in the future of media report will be the pass of the media report. has been pending for a while. we need to be more active. as you know this has been the thing that drives me up the fcc to make sure that we get our media rights particularly in the stage when there is so much change going on. we have had all of this consolidation. you have had downsizing of newsreels, firing of journalists come investigative journalism put on the endangered species list. we are in deep deep trouble i think because of the lack of investigative journalism and that is newspapers and broadcast in the engine in the whole thing. we really have to, we really have to be addressing that, so i think we need to come with some good hard-hitting reports, it

recommendations. i would love to see some return to public interest licensing process for broadcast licensees. that doesn't solve the whole problem but it begins to solve some of the problem and they think, i think the licensing process ought to be, go back to where it used to be every three years. for years and years it was three years. now it is eight years. we used to have guidelines and the public interest guidelines, you would look at it and see if the station was making an effort to serve the public interest. those are almost all gone now. is basically postcard renewal, send in your postcard and you get a new license. that is no way to treat the stewardship of the public airways so i would like to see us have some public interest guidelines to encourage localism and diversity and i think part of those guidelines need to become new centric. not interfering in the content of the news, but a station putting more resources and

investing in the news important to them or are they cutting back, and i think that would be one of the factors we would look at. we really need to do something about this because i don't think we can afford another four or five years of this hemorrhaging of reporting and journalism that we have been through without doing great injustice to our country. >> host: in a comment on your former colleague michael pollock heading the ncta? >> host: . >> guest: i did congratulate him. we don't always agree but he knows a lot. he is experienced, smart, personable so what i am sure the cable folks will welcome him with open arms and i look forward to seeing a little bit more of him. >> guest: i'm sure he will also enjoyed media ownership review as we move forward on that. >> guest: déjà vu all over

again. >> guest: a little bit. i'm sure that will be good times for him. you know, getting back to that though the rules that he had proposed are still in the courts. the kevin martin rules are also still in the courts and now we are talking about another quadrennial review where you might be talking about something like this where you change the rules somewhat to increase the public interest aspect for broadcasters. do you think at this point given the fact that all of these things are already in court, that it is even possible for the fcc to move forward? >> guest: yes i do and i think you have to kind of segment this a little bit. i think ownership rules are kind of structural and go to the numbers. we can do some of that the congress may have to do some of that. it is kind of a time-consuming thing. but we can make a down payment on media reform in that get less to the structural rules and more to the behavior rules and the public interest guidelines in the approach i'm talking about. the fcc has the authority to do

that right now. a notice of proposed rulemaking and in fact we have some localism out there to bring to a vote and do it. and we should have done that by now. i don't want to see media become the orphan child of the commission, but in fact we need to do more of these important media questions. >> host: and finally commissioner copps if you could reflect on your 10 years on the commission, perhaps give us a hint of what your future plans are, and what structural changes would you like to see in how the fcc operates? >> guest: i haven't done a lot of reminiscing because we have such an important year ahead and i think we can make so much progress. i just hope we don't have a government shutdown. i would like to see us all keep working that as i look back over the 10 years here, i think making the media questions a matter of public issue and public