>> they had a very political merits, much like john and abigail. she would lobby in the halls of congress. she was always very careful to say my husband believes the time has been advocates that. she herself was doing the pitch and one of her husband's opponent said he hopes if james were ever elected president, she would take up housekeeping like a normal one in.

she said if james and i are ever did, i will neither keep house nor make better. >> said six is the name of the new book, telecommunications policy according to the authors robert litan and hal singer. mr. litan, if we could start with you. if you can't assess the current status of broadband in the u.n. >> you can do a lot better. we have a high degree of penetration of what the fcc defines as acceptable bribe to

come a something called four megabits per second. we measured the speed of rock band that the number of bits per second and the faster you can go, the more stuff you come watch. whatever site they you around, clearly the faster you go, you can watch movies and the main object is that how am i arguing the the book is uncontestable. the book is controversial to some degree. there's no question about what the ultimate object to a broadband policy should the united states get faster. >> what are the benefits besides westrick on your tv? >> you get new uses. think about streaming video. you probably can't watch streaming video. you cannot do 10 or 20 or 30 megabit level.

were talking about uses an energy. all kinds of business uses, which are only possible in terms of analyzing data, the so-called cloud world the stuff is supposed to reside and data needs to be analyzed. all that requires faster speed and what we talk about is how to get there. >> co-author, has u.s. regulatory policy helped to spread and strengthen broadband in the u.s.? >> i think not. in fact, we argue u.s. policy has likely gotten in the way. at the margin is just not helping. an example would bring up is the net neutrality fight that played itself out, culminated in an order in december 2010 in which the sec decided it was not going to allow network providers to

enter into contracts with websites or priority delivery. were familiar when it comes to things like fedex or getting a package to your house the next day. here they decided it was too dangerous to allow a network provider like comcast or at&t or verizon to enter into such contracts. or bob and i argue in the book is the result of a wiki to achieve a better place, to allow the contracting to police any abuses for discrimination is that the likely concern in on an after-the-fact case by case basis. >> is there another structural regulatory policy that stood in the way of advancing broadband? >> it's hard to rank these, but the next that is a big impediment is wireless ologies are poised to take over.

we saw it happen with voice in the last decade in the same thing now with data. the problem, the biggest obstacle in the way of wireless is suspect turning the air for wireless to compete. the sec has been slow in optioning it to wireless providers. i would say that would be my number two complaint. the >> robert litan, when you talk about rod and in your book comes "the need for speed," are you talking about wired and wireless clinics >> svr. the sec is structured the way things used to be. it's got a wired vision and a wireless division and issues an annual report required by congress on the state of wireless and the hidden assumption behind that congressional direction is that the wireless market is somehow

separate from the wired market. in fact, in the world of broadband companies to increasingly overt. think of the tablet a lot of us now have. you can download on your tablet for a wireless technology, something basically indistinguishable from what you would get on a pc and because of this convergence between wired and wireless, the market for broadband is a lot more competitive than people think. with nature fixed providers by broadband, at&t, comcast and time warner cable company and at the same time, wireless companies. we have others like pcs and t-mobile. these guys are all competing against each other. what's changed in this world is radically increase competition. we are not in new york is. only one kind of content because

for broadband has allowed the convergence of all those bills and 90s changed the dynamic of the entire and is true. >> you talk about the silos. >> still does. in fact, one of the points we stress in the book any recognition by congress. that's not all. in addition to getting rid of the notion that everything is silos, once you realize there's a lot our competition than there used to be, the sec does not as much to do and its duties and functions need to be scaled out. >> where critical of what the sec is doing. the instructions full text when an out come from congress in the wireless market.

this directive came a decade ago and so i wanted to be clear if you tell an agency to devote certain resources to writing a report about a market that no longer exists on its own because brad pitt encompasses wireless, wireline satellite, a host of technologies. google has gotten into the game. you get a report that may not be useful for policymakers. we want to make sure the sec is going to fix itself and wake up. a fanciful. the directional have to come from congress with a new landscape. >> hal singer, one of the policy proposals he put in "the need for speed" is curbed the sec's merger authority over wireless transitions. why is that important? >> is broader than not. wireless is one of the most critical areas of which they have merger authority, but also

the cable space. the sec weighed in on comcast sec's merger. the problem here is a budgetary problem. a second probably see as one solid trust issues are taken care of that of the federal trade commission, the question is what is the sec during the second duplicative review? we see some bad things happening. there's no bad actors. what the sec is any position to do is give competitors who complain the loudest and economists have a fancy word for this. the word we use here is rent seeking. as honesty to fess up that power

with millions or billions of dollars to special interests, you're going to get hordes of hours of obvious walking the halls looking for handouts. that is not a good society. we are not in favor of more anticompetitive mergers going through. any anticompetitive merger should be out by the antitrust agencies. the final point is the sec does have the special scales and expertise in assessing these mergers. we don't think they shouldn't have a seat at the table. they just shouldn't have a supplemental foe. >> did you want to add something? >> other than the fact of the formal life there were a prosecutor. we work with a lot of agencies in a cooperative manner. how is great. we don't need to go what one

will do. the other thing i want to say this while this idea may have been easily dismiss, five or 10 years ago, i have to tell anyone in the audience we are in a new world of budget austerity. washington and the states and localities. that makes it incumbent on all policymakers to go to first principles and asked, why are we having to agencies doing the same thing in any spirit to the? >> host: robert litan, intervention to review mentioned the justice department. he worked for presidents carter and clinton. if people were to pick up subs tix, they might interpret this as a call to deregulate documentations industry. is that fair? >> that is fair, but times change.

john maynard keynes, a famous economist basically said something to the effect when the facts change, what do you do, sir? attacks have changed in communications. 30 years ago when we had a monopoly telephone company and cable, particular markets or whatever and there were the silos. there is a case done from a regulation. in a world in which we have convergence and a lot more competition. there's less need for regulation. i'm proud to say i worked for president carter in the late 1970s when president carter was the leader and deregulated the airline industry in the trucking industry and the reason he did it is because they were competitive. there is no longer need for price and entry control. guess what? the communications industry has reached that state and is no longer a democratic or

republican thing were here say that we ought to deregulate when the world has changed. >> guest: is fair to say an overarching theme is one of the regulation. to be fair, we had other ideas and policies that might be offensive to the other side of the aisle as well. something i care about passionately as notion of sassy discrimination. where we depart what i refer to as a matter sense is how do you do that? we are very sympathetic to the idea if ui platform honor to vertically integrate and via content the way that cable operators are doing, you can create incentives for discriminatory behavior. in that instance, we reject the idea of blocking all types of vertical integration.

we think it's too radical, too harsh. we are sympathetic and what we advocate is a regime in which a complaining party could come forward and say were not being treated fairly on the basis of affiliation or lack thereof and we want our day in front of a judge. we are explicit on the protection we put in place. i'm comfortable with the notion of deregulation. i don't watch you think we want to run the rule entirely. >> there is ardea process at the sec for the administrative law judges to determine cases of discrimination and contacts outside of broadband and what we argue is the use of cincom at to make these determinations where brad pitt is involved without having to go to a federal court. by the way, clogging up the courts which are already

clogged. they can be quicker, more efficient and get your results with the expertise necessary to do so. as the market changes and we break up our silos and recognize the myriad of technology offering broadband, fiber, cable, satellite, the emphasis should move away from horizontal issues going on between the telcos can focus on quarterly issues. the kind of fights that go on between independent programming distributor. that's where the action will be. the sec has a process to adjudicate these disputes in the video programming space and it's strange in december 2010 under the current departing chairman that they took a different approach to basically prevent any sort of contracting and

impose what economists call a structural separation between the content owners in the network owners. post-others to opening in the sec potentially soon choose new nominees are appointees. who would you like to see? >> guest: i was worried i was going to get us back. the theme of the book is so one you don't change the system, you can put in the most magnanimous philosopher king and he or she would still be subject to the same lobbying in which the connectivity the current commissioners are to. so i fear just getting the right commissioners are going to do the trick. for certain attributes would like to see. for example from what i can to recognize the intermodal competition because that would

cause a rethink of how busy street broadband policy. i fear just getting the commissioner wright is not going to do the trick. >> host: mr. sub three. >> guest: same thing. we need somebody who realizes the world has changed. hal is right to be pessimistic but it is not conducive. having somebody say here in my jurisdiction and get rid of some nice stats here that's typically not the way things work. nonetheless, there are people who do these things. i wouldn't mind having someone there who says change her mission because the world has changed. by the way, there are examples of agencies that provided the

distant. during their lifetime. the interstate commerce commission and the hussein era. something called the resolution trust corporation got rid of the real estate in the savings and loan crisis. we actually can do this with the right people in philosophy they can go and say look, we have to be doing these kinds of resolutions and this book. that's their expertise. we can provide a nice, but we don't need all this other stuff. >> guest: it is far-fetched to say some chairman will take away my discretion. to give one example, right now when the sec auction the spectrum, have discretion to place certain restrictions on the licenses in a way to make it

unpalatable for bidders to enter the auction. that will steer to a favored constituency. what i would like us than the obvious comes into the office and says i want you to put restrictions is only valuable for my plan. i take them to say i can't do that. this sort of discussion has been taken away and until congress does that come with those conversations are always going to go the wrong way. >> host: hal singer is the economic center called madigan consulting and we specialize in regulatory consulting and litigation consulting. >> host: with your background? >> guest: i cut my teeth with the securities and exchange commission many years ago. i have a phd in economics.

jalisco robert litan, at bloomberg government, which is? >> guest: a subsidiary of bloomberg lp. that's not all of course. michael bloomberg started a fabulous career after salomon brothers and built an enormous business or in the bloomberg terminal and a bloomberg is in many, many businesses. one of which was started two and half years ago, which is an information service that provides economic analysis of government decisions. we also have information for clients that want to know a lot about congress and contracts and so forth. >> host: robert litan come whenever we have discussions of

issues, dare we often bring up a 1996 telecom act and whether it needs to be updated. guess who we are arguing for a new framework and the statute in effect calls for a narrowing of the scope and something that is along the lines we talked about in this program. so if that's the telecommunication sector 2013 or 2014 would be, we'd be happy with that. >> host: d.c. the act of 2013, 2014? >> guest: not yet because lots of partisan controversy over everything. there is growing recognition in these things take time. we broke up at&t in 1984 and 12 years later we got a telecom act

because it was in part recognized at that point that the telephone companies were competing with cable companies and i've had to allow that. there's a lot of other things that that the act, but it took 12 years. we have ran this. right now, where people realize the world has changed before we get legislation that will in effect make it possible to go to the next stage. eventually will get to a stage that we talk about in this for coming to be that 2013, 2014. >> host: talking about agencies that are probably in his lifetime. the universal service fund is a function that is still in place. is it necessary today? >> guest: we think is necessary. the good news is that of homes not served by brad beyond a

shrinking yearly. the point now when you overlay the wireless at work, we talk about to the 5 million homes that are not yet served by broadband. it's not to say there's not a problem anymore. i don't mean to diminish it, but the market has done an impressive job providing ubiquitous coverage. bob and i suggested tweaks to the program. we suggest that reverse options are used rather than writing a check to conduct an option including wireless and satellite today for the opportunity to serve as few remaining homes not yet served. normally when you bid you want to pay the highest price. the reverse auction in which the bidders would say, give us the least amount of subsidy and whoever asks for the least

amount case of subsidy. the market determined that handing out money and say you would give us a thousand dollars a line. >> when you meet the broadband progress report, you can tell they are singularly focused on the problem. we want to get to 100% coverage. it should be the overarching policy driver in our humble opinion. there's other important problems that competition. the report states no interest in looking at how many distinct providers serve a given spot of homes in the u.s. it released monastery monastery where have you. bob and i tried to refocus and say look at how many wireline

providers are serving a given area to cable has the country covered in verizon and at&t have about half. at least half the country beholden to super wireline provider of access. of course that is not counting at the wireless on top of the satellite. there is no such thing as monopoly. we still think it's an important policy object to is to think about how we incentivize the telcos to push their network out further so it covers up 100% of the country. we don't see the sec thinking in those terms. >> at the same time, you say where this is competing with wireline. >> guest: yes. there has done a lot on an annualized basis. we've done more to quantify roughly the 40% in greece and

investment has taken place in broadband. we still have the situation and namely a cable provider in the wireline business come with economic shows that leads to wireline competitors in addition to get cheaper service and a lot of people complain about their bills. they wanted cheaper. the best way to get a cheaper postmark competition. the competition not only for its own sake. we want lower prices and it will induce to get that speed we talked about. >> guest: unlike the cable companies, the telcos are beholden to special tax sometimes called the legacy regulations to maintain two

separate networks. a copper network for grandparents who insist on a copper looming telephone and a broadband network. the problem is this is a diversion of resources and it's not a trivial diversions. if they were freed from obligations, they would have billions of dollars to go invest in expanding a broadband network. one of the policies bob and i advocate is freeing up those legacy regulations. we think that is an important one that would get competition going. >> host: "the need for speed," a new framework for the 21st century. robert litan and hal singer are the co-authors. gentlemen, thank you for being on "the communicators." >> guest: thank you.

>> in both of these books, what did you learn? >> i think you see it laid out in a way that you never see when you visit it by day and you're amazed at how much has been during those eras and decried into the times. when you look at the task of power, there's a whole sweep of your life. you see it is actually happened

and sometimes what i hear compassion because you're looking in hindsight. but we know obviates adc phase and that's a different aspect of writing a bit of history as a future.