out of time and we thank you very much. >> guest: thank you so very much. this was enjoyable. for a dvd copy of this program called 1-877-662-7726.

>> host: senator mark pryor is joining us for the chair of the commerce subcommittee on communications technology and the internet. senator pryor or full committee approved tom wheeler to be sec nominee. senator cruise your colleague is talked about putting a hold on that nomination. is there any word on that right now? >> guest: let me first say thank you for having me on. it's great to be on the show and

let me say thank you to c-span for all the public-interest broadcasting they do. it's great and i know you don't believe this but people people say i saw you on c-span so i want to thank c-span. let me get back to the tom wheeler nomination. basically there is a sentiment within the senate that we ought to compare this with the republican nominee. the republicans would like to have a republican to go alongside to the process. the problem is we have not at least officially and i hear rumors but officially we have not received a republican name of who they would like to nominate so i understand maybe in the process and i don't know the whole status and haven't been officially notified that nonetheless hopefully we will get this done quick way. hopefully senator rockefeller has said publicly and said in a hearing that he wants to

expedite that and get it through as quickly as possible. my view is it's kind of a senate courtesy i think if we can do it in such a way that it doesn't delay too long a time for tom wheeler to take over. that's okay but if it's going to take a long time it will be protracted i would try to get tom wheeler on. >> host: one of the concerns senator cruz had was political speech at the fcc. >> guest: i don't necessarily share that concern. that's a hard job to be on the fcc and i think people the mars appreciated but it's one of those jobs were as difficult to make everyone happy and oftentimes when he you do something you don't make anyone happy. i just don't see them weighing in on the political speech. i don't think it's a big agenda item for anyone but certainly it is something they could do conceivably that i don't see them doing that. my view is likely have to have a well-functioning fcc.

let's get the chairman and there and let's get rolling again as many commissioners as possible and if we get the republican on quickly lets her do that and if we do a together that's fine. i don't have a big objection to that but i like fully functioning agencies and boards and commissions. >> host: senator pryor i wanted to ask you about senate hearings you've been holding the subcommittee. what's the goal of these hearings in d.c. legislative action coming from them? >> guest: possibly and for your viewers who aren't that familiar with the communications , communications technology, communication technology and internet subcommittee i was was garbling doubt that the cpi subcommittee, we have had a series and we started the congress with a series of four we call them state of hearings and so we have the state of rural telecom. we have the state of wireless telecom and wireline telecom and the fourth one let's see i will

have to think about what that is but nonetheless the idea is to group we have a lot of new subcommittee members, about 25 or 30% are new. let's hear from industry and hear from all all the stakeholders and try to get everybody acclimated to the issues and understand where all the issues are and get the state of play. that is what what we call the the state appearing so once we get these for done which we have then we can move forward. the status video was the fourth. the status video. once we get these for done than we have laid the groundwork to really look at legislation. the one thing the subcommittee has to do by the end of next year is stella which is the satellite reauthorization. it sounds like your audience is a pretty sophisticated audience on telecom and all the things about all this so they probably know what stella is but it's the satellite telecommunications law if you get dish or one of the other networks, satellite

networks than stella is going to govern. the question is do we do a clean reauthorization? do we just kind of basically roll it over and make changes to modernize and the date or do we actually start getting into some policy? that is really the question. i think what i'm hearing mostly from the committee and the subcommittee is they would like to do it clean reauthorization but again you have to understand that this is one of those rare bills where he can have joint jurisdiction between us and the senate judiciary committee so we will have to work with their public on the judiciary and the house has two committees there. this is going to be a four step process instead of a two-step process. >> host: joining our conversation with senator pryor is gautham nagesh bliss cq roll call. >> guest: equal reference the state of the wireline committee hearing. what is the state of wireline medications and how does the universal concept of universal concept plan today's concert

where wireless internet, wireless broadband internet perhaps more important to their landline? >> guest: you've touched on three or four very important issues that deal with wireline. first the wireline network is the backbone of our communications. we need wireless. there is no doubt. if you have a cell phone in a call from washington d.c. to san francisco at some point it's going to go over a land-based system. you don't talk wirelessly all across the country. it's happened to it cell tower. wires not just into the home but the wire system is the back on that is criticallcriticall y important. the other thing you mentioned before is there is this big transition going on now. you mentioned wireless and it is huge. if you look at the numbers clearly you see the trend lines but also there is the ip transition as well, the internet protocol transition where a lot of the incumbent carriers are saying what clear getting away

from the traditional copper wire , the traditional telephony that we think of has been regulated as family for decades. we need a new generation of regulation which basically what they would like to see is no regulation or very little or very light regulation. so with your traditional phone like when we all grew up in arkansas but didn't realize it at the time but southwestern bell was my local carrier. they had obligations. they were the carrier of last resort. they had other obligations. they had a monopoly. the monopolies are kind have gone, i mean they are gone kind of but so some of these companies want to come in and say we are doing this ip transition. let's just get away from regulations and get rid of all these obligations. that concerns me and impact that may be the subject of the hearing in our subcommittee at some point.

we haven't announced or even decided that we are looking at that because this issue really came up during wireline hearings we have had and i think it's an issue for discussion. >> guest: you also touched on another aspect of this which is the traditional phone line system because of the regulations attached to it is far more reliable or perhaps resilient in the face of natural disasters and some of the issues we have seen with cell phone networks in areas affected by natural disasters. do you think there's any possibility for congress to act in that area to require wireless carriers to take on some the same responsibilities that landline services used to have? >> guest: i think that's one thing the subcommittee and the full committee and the senate can talk about that. you are right. when you were asking the question i was thinking of examples in arkansas where we have had bad thunderstorms or tornadoes or an ice storm or something like that that have knocked the power lines down. we go without power but are

landline still works. their redundancy is a good thing in a natural disaster. we have seen oftentimes when your power goes out if your power goes out in the wrong places than your cell phone has power if you have a better but you can't connect anywhere because the towers are down. we have seen that in a lot of the natural disasters. we need to build and that redundancy. we need to make sure that our phone system works. maybe especially in times of emergency but that's something we really need to focus on. the other thing you haven't mentioned yet which is critical is rural america. you mentioned we had a hearing on rural america. the economics of rural america really haven't changed. it's just like back in the old days we couldn't get electricity in rural america. they couldn't get telephone service and a lot of this is changing. there is a lot of change in this world and we just made -- need to make sure that rural america

is not left out. >> guest: i drove home to michigan this week and i couldn't help but knows precisely what you are referring to which is the cell phone coverage varies greatly and obviously the rural areas are the areas where it is not a strong. what can be done about this? we do have things -- shifted to wireless but most of it is going towards wired rodkin so what can be done in the wireless space? >> guest: well this is something i think the fcc has grappled with and the house and senate have grappled with this. i don't think we have a clear answer in terms of a clear consensus but a lot of what we talk about here is money. the economics of providing rural wireless are just not as good as they are in urban areas. we just have the density population and the density of paying customers. if you go to rural america we have places in arkansas where you are driving 10, 20, 30 miles before you see another house and of course the montana you drive 100 or 200 miles before you see

another house or in alaska you may drive 1000 miles before you see another house. these are all challenges in the economics don't work to provide state-of-the-art wireless in these areas because -- so that is why things like the universal service and others that we have other names for but basically the same thing, that is why that's so important. we need to make sure that those folks in rural america don't get behind. we don't want a tale of two countries where you have the urban and suburban over overhearing the latest and greatest and cutting-edge in rural america are using two generations ago technology. that doesn't work. we need to connect rural america. >> host: senator pryor d.c. reform legislation coming? >> guest: there again this is another thing we should have a hearing on because we spend a lot of time on usf. i'll bet you one third of the witnesses at these four hearings in one way or another mentioned usf in talking about how the

universal service fund and again there may be different names for it as it changes and transitions itself but nonetheless that usf that universal service fund which basically means everybody pays a little bit into a fund in that fund goes to help customers usually in rural america but it could be low income customers, whatever. we want to make sure everybody can connect. my view of this is if you think about american history, initially when the first europeans to her scam they had to be on the coast because they had to connect with trade and communications back to europe. as time went on he could settle on rivers. if you look at the cities today almost call of them, almost all of them not every single one but the big cities almost all of them are near big rivers. that is because that is how the country group because they were on the river system. then when the steam engine came along and paddle boats and men

could have more control over that in them with the railroads that there was a time that if you are not on a railroad you might as well not exist. yorktown would just drop. we have seen out in the history of our state and every other state and now since i have been around it's been the interstates. anybody who wants economic development you have to have interstate. today's broadband. it's that one extra piece that you have to have or you're just not going to get jobs in certain places. it's important for state like arkansas to do things like telemedicine and other things we can provide some services like health care services. some of those services to the rural areas of our state with the greatest golfers in the world because you can connect via broadband. there's a huge amount of power and that's a great thing and that is why we need to make sure rural eric america's left out. >> host: when it comes to wireless communication and services is there enough

competition in your view and can the senate do anything to increase that competition? >> guest: are you saying wireline or wireless? to. >> host: wireless. >> guest: that's a hypercompetitive industry and they just beat up on each other all the time. the truth is it's very competitive in most areas of the country. there are numerous wireless carriers in most area -- areas but also at&t and verizon are great at what they do and they have played by the rules and run their market share. what happens is you have kind of everybody else make sup bat -- i think we want to make sure that their competitor which is a conglomeration of companies and we know some of their names and a lot of the names or regional names or local names that we don't really know but they are in there fighting hard and trying to provide services well. we need to make sure that level, the playing field is level so everyone can compete because

that -- people that say i like regulations, the answer to that is competition. if you have real competition that is robust that is fair and want to get a competitive advantage you can't just dominate that if you have fair competition that is the answer to regulation. have good fair competition and a good marketplace where consumers have a lot of choice. >> host: you're watching "the communicators" program on c-span. senator mark pryor is the chair of the communications technology and internet. our guest reporter this week is gautham nagesh with cq roll call. >> guest: >> guest: senator you refer to broadband as being vital to the future especially for rural areas of india believe that broadband should be something that every household has access to either through some sort of usf subsidy or program similar ?-que?-que x. >> guest: i would like to see that. traditionally we pretty much have that policy in this country

for telephone. every household basically have the right to have access to telephone service. i am sure didn't work out in some percentage of the cases. there will always be those heart to serve difficult areas but i too think trying to get broadband to as many houses as possible and the right level of broadband, not some fly by night tv type service but something that people can actually have access to and use it. you know how it is. not everybody wants it. i know people that don't have the internet and they don't want it but the number of people who don't are very small. most wanted and they love it and they continue to rely on it. it's important for business and important for the way they communicate now. things like facebook and twitter or whatever happens to be, web sites. that is how people communicate and that is how grandparents stand touch with her grandchilgrandchil dren and things like that. that's one of the beautiful things about all this technology in america.

if you put it out there we will find ways to do things that are simply amazing. things that didn't exist years ago. >> guest: now, while broadband is increasingly popular adoption remains in the 60%, 60's basically. cost is cited as a major reason. do you think anything can be done about that? i think consumers are familiar with the fact that broadband costs continue to rise and in some cases performance rises. what is your view of that? >> guest: i do think that that's a real problem. if you look at a state like mine and arkansas is not unique but we have a lot of people that are low income and it's hard for them to afford that monthly internet service provider fee. they just can't do it. that is actually a concern i have with some of the things that we have heard where people

say for example we were talking about landline phones a few minutes ago jumping back to the previous topic. some people say well -- instead of having a landline let's just have wireless. that's great in the abstract but how much is that going to cost a person? right now you can probably get a landline phone in rural america for 10, 15, $20 a month. it would be hard to find a wireless plan in a lot of places that cheap. we need to look at the cost to the consumer and go back to what you you were saying a moment ago. that's a real fact there in the rate of take -- people taking the internet. first you have to have a computer and i know computer costs have gone way down and get a whole lot more for less today but still there is a cost. if you are low income person you don't have an extra five, 600, 700 or thousand dollars laying

around to buy some gizmo a laptop or tablet. anyway it's a in the funding will be a challenge. we just need to make sure we get as much access out there as possible and we don't leave anyone behind. >> host: senator pryor one of your colleague senator mccain has introduced his cable bill. >> guest: i knew that was going to come up. >> host: speaking of costs how do you feel about that? >> guest: i appreciate senator mccain. he has filed an à la carte bill every year since i've been in the senate and he feels passionately about it. i think we have to look at it. we have to consider it but i also think we are seeing a market change there as well because the whole idea of all a card in an intuitively i like it , is that when i buy a cable package from say comcast or whoever i buy it from at&t when i buy that i should be able to

pay for the channels they want. why do we have to pay for all these channels that i don't want. that is what he is talking about. à la carte means that you should be able to pick and it's up to you but you pick and choose what you want. that is not the way the cable system will shape their contract with the content folks with hbo and abc's. that is just not how it works. in effect mccain says we need to go in there and allow the the consumer choice and yeah a lot of people want that but that really changes how cable is done today. so i think we have to consider that but my point a minute ago was that is changing too because now if you want to watch shows on abc there are web sites you can go to and download those shows. that is changing as well. this whole area is morphing so much. i remember when i was a little kid in fayetteville arkansas,

one of the first cities in the country to have cable, the second oldest cable system in the country. you couldn't get broadcasting out of little rock. we would get springfield missouri and joplin but nonetheless those were the early ones. it was light-years ahead of what that used to be. it's crazy how much it's changing and it continues to change. the question is will à la carte really be something that is even that desirable for people five years from now because things are changing so rapidly. certainly senator mccain wants to talk about that, he has earned that right. >> host: sub life? >> guest: senator senator you alluded to how quickly the communication landscape is changing the. is that part of the explanation for why we have seen reluctance from congress to take on some of these larger technology focuses

in legislation things like the rewrite of the telecommunications act? we hear people say these laws are outdated but the same time there's a real risk of legislating and seeing the market shifted to your feet. >> guest: that's exactly right and if you think about something like à la carte i don't know if there will be a need for à la carte. i don't know but it's possible if congress gets in and tries to legislate too much into specifically in these areas then all of a sudden we stifle innovation and we prevent the investment that we need to keep the cutting-edge in the u.s. economy like we have. i have people sit in my office thing we need to rewrite the 1996 act. tell me why you think so. the internet is only mentioned twice now in office two that then they say again about than in 95 and 96 the telephone companies local versus long distance. we have moved so far beyond that it's not even funny. that's true but if you look at the innovation in this industry

and look at how this industry has driven the u.s. economy, look at the investment and how amazing the stuff is and how much it changes and how they are so much emphasis in so many resources there and it's all great. why would we want to go when and what will we change and a lot to try to make this better cat? i know there are some fixes we can do here and there. this is a funny industry because most people are hypercompetitive in a fight all day and complain every day about this guy is getting a better deal than i am for this industry is getting a better deal than that industry but guess what? they are all doing great in terms that they'll have a good chance to succeed. they have had a lot of success. >> host: senator pryor before we run out of time i want to ask you about -- where do you stand, where do we stand? is it going to happen in 2014 and what is going to be your

role? >> guest: i'm totally fine with it. i'm hearing rumors that it may not be ready in 2014 so it may slide into 2015. here again when we had wireless hearings every witness, every other answer they kept coming back to spectrum, spectrum, spectrum. that's the ballgame and one of the things we need to talk about and i'm sure you talk about on the show before is the amount of spectrum that the government allows. the dod is the poster child for this. as you know and a lot of your audience will now the dod recently came out with a proposal on how to proceed with some of the spectrum. we need to be sensitive to dod, and the other agencies. just as we have utilized these wireless services and use spectrum or in a private sector than ourselves they have done the same thing.

they rely on this more and more. their systems are more based on this and more investment than they have ever had so you can't just flip the switch. it's going to take some time and it's going to take a lot of money to do this. one of the things is to get the senate to do it and that is part of the proposal. i would hope that we would get it done in 2014. i guess by 2015 but this is a very important thing. do you let people do big national programs work you build more locally and regionalize? there are lots of discussions. the company's ability to hold x amano spectrum so we have all those questions and i think most of that will be resolved by the fcc. certainly i think this is so important that the a candidate will have a hearing on it. >> host: dostum?

>> guest: i wanted to touch on an issue that you've raced in the past and that is the issue of accessibility. we have talked about rural medicatiomedicatio ns and rural areas being left behind but there is also a risk of people who will be left behind. can you speak to the state of that legislation which i believe is still pending? >> guest: we passed legislation to her three years ago 21st century communications access act. i can't remember the exact name name but we passed it in president obama signed into law. basically what happened was stay with telephony normal telephones there were requirements about access that when you go to the smartphones there really was no such requirement. some companies were doing that and we appreciate that but not everybody was doing it. we pass this line now companies are pretty much getting on board about how they have to do this

and why they do it and they are doing it and it's good that there are still some bumps in the road. one is about closed-captioning on the internet. and some video closed-captioning to make sure that the deaf community can have full access to all the technology. i am a big supporter of that and talk about not leaving people behind as you said and just because you have a disability i don't want you to be left behind. you should be able to enjoy the benefits of a smartphone whether it's an iphone or an android or whatever or a tablet whatever it happens to be. you should be able to enjoy the benefits. >> host: finally senator pryor what grade would you give the federal government when it comes to cybersecurity? >> guest: i would say probably a c at best. i really wish and i've been pushing for this in the senate, that we would move cybersecurity legislation. it's big and and complicated and that word cybersecurity means

different things to different people but we need to get this done. actually as hard as it is for me to say that the house has done something right, they have actually passed some of this. i think that we have to look at what they have done and certainly if we want to take a stab at doing her own thing in the senate that's great that we need to get moving on this in the senate. this is a real threat and this is a real problem and all of my colleagues on the intelligence committee, i am not that they are all worried about cybersecurity. we need to get this done and it's imperative that we get to this year. >> host: senator mark pryor and gautham nagesh has been our guest reporter.