you can watch all previous programs on our web site, booktv.org. >> coming up on c-span2, next "the communicators" with fcc chair michael o'rielly. then a panel on cybersecurity. after that a look at america's water supply. at 11 a.m., a discussion on hate speech and campus speech codes. >> c-span, created by america's cable television companies and brought to you as a public service by your cable or satellite provider. >> host: and this week on "the communicators" fcc commissioner michael o'rielly, one of two republicans. thank you for being with us. >> guest: thank you so very much for having me. >> host: want to start with one of the issue that is the fcc recently worked on, that was the charter/time warner merger. why were conditions put on that merger? >> guest: so i should be careful here. that actually, that item is still before the commission.

i can tell you that i have personally voted on the matter, but it is still before us, so i have to be careful on exactly what i say about such a proceeding. >> host: now, when you say you have voted on the matter -- >> guest: yes. >> host: -- but you still have to be careful, how did you vote? >> guest: that part is to be released at a certain time period. so all of that information will come forward in the next couple of week withs, i assume. >> host: when -- in general, then, when we talk about a merger or some type of activity like that, putting conditions on such a -- what's your philosophy behind it? >> guest: so my approach to mergers is similar to a number of republican viewpoints that we have certain charges in the statute. they are for the review of whether the transfer of licenses between parties. you're transferring wireless licenses in this case. you have a number of wireless licenses that the different companies own and hold, and they'll be transferring them to the new merged company. and that review, something that

we're required to do to make sure that the new party is able to hold the licenses, qualified to hold them and have sufficient, meet our statute, chew story requirements -- statutory requirements from having the licenses. from that other people realize the statute in a way that provides other opportunities for different reviews of the merger itself. some people -- some past commissions have looked at whether what is the impact of the merrier on the local market in and of itself and where they compete, where the companies compete amongst themselves, and others stretch the conversation even further to be generally whatever they see fit at the given moment. and that yets you -- gets you a broad universe of what can be potentially conditions for the merger. and it depends on how a particular commission approaches the issue. >> host: commissioner o'rielly, do wired and wireless organizations, do they get treated the same at the fcc or should they?

>> guest: they do not today. in some services they are. in some instances they are actually -- for instance, we treat them the same versus our net neutral the city rules which i don't agree with, but let me treat them were other purposes. it is a bifurcated approach because of the statute. we have a law that congress has enacted and that governs how we operate, but a lot of it is our own doing. i'd like to see an opportunity to bring greater parity between the two but also respect the fact that wireless is different. it does have different characteristickings. you have -- characteristics. you have to obtain spectrum whether through an auction, and you have to build infrastructure that's different than a wired company. >> host: well, we're going to bring howard buskirk of "communications daily" into this conversation right away, but first i want to play some videotape. >> guest: sure. >> host: this is commissioner -- chairman tom wheeler who was on this program a couple weeks ago

talking about management of the fcc. >> guest: when i first got involved at the fcc, it was very directional and detailed. you will do this. we will look at your books for this. you'll have these kinds of directors. it was very, very specific in terms of what it did. and in the open internet order we have a very different kind of approach where instead of preemptively saying we know best, we've said you want to have a couple of concepts. you want of to have an internet where there is no blocking, no throttling, no paid prioritization, and consumers know what they're getting, transparency. and then you put a referee on the field. and the referee has the ability to look at circumstances and throw the flag if necessary. and that's an entirely different approach to what the fcc used to be.

and i think that's the kind of approach that encourages this kind of permissionless innovation that i was talking about a minute ago. >> host: what do you think about what he had to say? >> guest: well, i disagree with his last -- with most of what he had to say, but certainly the last part, with permissionless innovation. the net neutrality item which i kid not support for -- i did not support for numerous reasons, i think it decreased innovation on the internet and what the internet is going to grow to be. right now under the structure that the chairman has probe posed and has been adopted, now being challenged inside court, you have like he described three bright line rule, and then you have this other category of a jump ball. he describes it as a referee on the field. the problem is we have no idea what the rules of the game are. it's whenever the bureau or the chairman feels like it. that's not a mechanism to produce certainty in the marketplace, and it's not a

mechanism that produces information. we've seen this today at the commission in a number of different instances. one in particular is the zero rating item and it's where that issue has been reviewed and is being currently reviewed by two different bureaus with no rules of the road, no guidelines on how the investigation will go and when it will end. and we'll just have to see what that plays out. and that leaves too much authority into, basically, employees of the federal government trying to review what technology should be going forward. >> host: howard buskirk. >> you were a critic of that order right from the beginning and very strong on it more than a year ago, in february of 2015 when it was approved. after the period of time -- this much later what do you think has been the net effect of the order? are you seeing any bad effects on business so far? >> guest: well, a couple. one is the practices of the carriers, the providers that were supposedly, you know, going

to be the bad behavior was not happening beforehand and is not happening now. so i don't know that that item actually changed behavior on that side of the equation. we have seen companies and i've talked to company who have changed their decisions, their investments and their rollout of products based on the rules itself. so some innovation is not happening because of those rules. the third part i would say is that those rules are being challenged in court. we're expecting a decision any day now, and that will help provide some guidance even though i do believe the decision will still be challenged to the supreme court of the united states. that will provide some guidance on whether the commission was inbounds or out of bounds and, therefore, whether those rules are allowed to stay. >> if there's a negative decision from the court, negative from the standpoint of those who want to see the rules stand, that that could be a dominant issue for the rest of the administration, don't you think? do you think that's going to take over the rest of the agenda if the rules are rejected to any extent? >> guest: well, it depends on

what the ruling is, and i hate to predict what a court may or may not do. it depends on the scope of the review if it's done on procedural grounds, but if it's done on -- it actually is done on the merits themselves which i think has a great chance to happen, then you may find that it will have an impact on our decisions that are potentially pending. because a lot of those decisions are tied into the authorities that we have captured by our net neutrality decision. >> okay. and i also wanted to since we saw the chairman, there's a lot of people who feel that relations are quite bad at the fcc right now among the commissioners. i'd like to ask you to comment on that. >> guest: sure. so i have, i've commented on this in the past and have made the point that i believe it's basically something that happens on an item-by-item or issue-by-issue approach. sadly, i actually don't think that's the case anymore. and it's not a personality-driven approach.

tom and i, chairman wheeler and i get along fine as people. but when -- but the direction from fcc leadership including the chairman to take the most aggressive, leftist approach to policy making, these little ground -- when that becomes the first, primary goal of the item, when the policy direction that they want to go becomes the first goal rather than any consideration of any collegiality or any kind of attempt to bring or develop consensus, you wind up with the scenario we have today. when there's little interest in bringing my opinions onboard, you're going to find i'm less likely to be supportive, and i'm going to express my views. >> does it feel to you like it's been a general, gradual deterioration of relationships at the commission? >> guest: yes, i think that's probably fair. i still maintain positive relationships with my colleagues, but i think overall there's a fairly tense, you know, feeling at the commission. we're waiting for a number of court decisions that will settle

some of the ground. we have only so many more months left of this particular administration, and i think people are trying to figure out what the next administration may look like and what -- how that may be structured and how, you know, the different commissioners may or may not stay. >> host: commissioner o'rielly, there's a little bit of a kerfuffle going on in the senate regarding one of your colleagues, commissioner rosenworcel. do you think that she should be confirmed for a full second appointment? >> guest: well, i've said positive things and put out a press release to that effect when her nomination was sent by the president to the senate, but e leave the legislating and the nominating process to my friends and colleagues and to the senators in the body. they know best. that's their job, it's not mine. i've put out some thoughts. she's been a great colleague of mine, and the senate will have to decide whether she should stay. >> host: and you mentioned it being an election year. does that curtail some of your activity at the fcc much like

since it's an election year, we don't know who's going to be the president next year, who's going to be in the administration? >> guest: in my past experience the answer would be generally, yes. past instances of an election year you saw the commission slow down as you got closer to an election day. i actually don't know if that's going to occur this go around. chairman wheeler has a fairly broad and strong agenda that he tends to want to move in the next many months. and so i think we're going to proceed through those items and, therefore, there won't be too much of a rest as we get closer to election day. as he says, he wants to run through the tape, and i think that's -- i may not agree with the items that are moving forward, but i think we're going to be fairly busy. >> host: and one more election question. >> guest: sure. >> host: hillary clinton was recently in west virginia, and she mentioned how her cell phone would drop, and she was unconnected. to use an old term, do we still have a -- do we have a digital divide in this country, and what can, if so, what can be done?

>> guest: so we still have parts of america that are not connected whether they be on the wireless side or the broadband side. i have spent a great deal of my time, and my colleagues as well n trying to figure out how to address those issues. where are those pockets, where are those places where service is not being provided, what is the breakdown of -- what is the problem? how do we best address it? we have a funding mechanism that the federal communications commission runs, the universal service. it's going to run about $11 billion this year, and we're trying to figure out how to spend those or dollars in an efficient manner. we get those dollars from the rate payers of america who pay as part of their telephone bill for that purpose. so i try to be solid stewards of that dollar and make sure it goes as far as possible. so we have a number of different programs that we run to try to expand the existing network to all people in the united states as best as possible. >> host: do you think it's been well, do you think you've been good stewards? >> guest: there are parts of the program that i think have done very well, and there are other

parts that i think have not lived up to what is expected. we've also expanded two of the programs of the four fairly substantially. one of the programs had substantial fraud, waste and abuse existing, and we didn't fully, in my opinion, address those issues before expanding the program to broadband, that being the lifeline program. so i think that there's still some problems that need to be addressed. we are not getting the maximum benefit for the dollar being collected. >> one of the things i wanted to ask you about is you've been in washington since the early '90s. to what extent dueck some of the fighting -- do you think some of the fighting at the fcc is reflective of sort of the broader divisions in washington and a more deeply partisan congress? does that trickle over to the fcc? >> guest: i don't believe so. i worked for members of congress for many years, and that is -- you know, those fights come and go. it depends on the cycle, depends on the leadership, depends on their tone. i've left that body two of and a half years ago. i think the commission

traditionally has run in a fairly straightforward manner. if people are willing to work together, i have tried to be as collegial as possible and try and find common ground. if people are willing to do that, you can sidestep any particular problems. the difficulty is that if you, if the leadership, the majority has a particular outcome that they want and are pushing as hard as they can for that notwithstanding my views or my colleagues' views, ajit pai, the other republican, if those views are side sidestepped, it's hard to find commonality. it is about how is the commission being run. >> you've complained a lot about how you will submit edits, and they don't get looked at for various orders and neighborhood coo of -- do you believe that that's a departure from past fccs? >> guest: well, i've actually put forward a good couple dozen process reform ideas, and not many of those have made it into the books as of yet. but i do think that i do put on the table, i read every item

that's put before the commission that either my name's going to out on, that i know about. there are a number of things that go out the door from the bureaus that i don't know about or i don't have an opportunity to vote on. but besides that, i do read everything, and i do try to provide constructive ideas and edits on how to make an item better that would garner my support. many times recently they haven't been adopted or even considered. i think that's disappointing. it's just a decision, i think, by the leadership that my vote is not as important. >> and this chairman is more willing than some past chairmen have been to put things out with 3-2 votes. he's not really looking for the consensus so much? >> guest: that's been my experience, i think that's what you can see from the items. that's been the practice. >> host: commissioner o'reilly, we're a year into net neutrality, have there been any issues? >> guest: we have a major court decision that's about to break in a matter of weeks or so, could be a couple days.

there were not problems before, so i'm not surprised you haven't seen problems since. there are problems with the rules themselves and the behavior from the rules, and i think that's been problematic, and i'd like to see those things changed. i don't know that i'll be successful in that. >> host: in a couple of weeks you'll be visiting with the cable industry at their annual show, and one of the issues that'll probably be talked about is set-top boxes. >> guest: yeah. >> host: where are you on that? >> guest: sure. you outlined my position. i did vote against what the commission was proposing. in fairness, my viewpoints are fairly well known. i would like to get rid of the box. i don't think the consumers -- i as a consumer myself do not like a set-top box. i think they're old. i think they do not provide the modern functionality that you expect out of today's communication technology. so i'd like to get rid of set-top box. the difficulty is with the specifics of the proposal that the chairman put forward. he had an opportunity to go one of two ways.

one is old style, how do we regular gate set-top box -- regulate set-top box and how much you can charge for it and what does it look like in terms of the streams that come into it and go out of it. the other approach was to adopt a modern viewpoint, that the video marketplace is changing and modernizing and moving to an application-based structure. everyone used, most everyone uses applications today, and they know what i'm talking about. and the video marketplace is no different. in that scenario we could eliminate the box, we could let consumers save all of the money that they currently pay for renting boxes, and we can open up innovation in a very straightforward way. sadly, the proposal that's been put on the table we'll probably dispose of by the end of this year is an old vision, it's an old model, and it should be disregarded. >> the fcc is in the middle of an incentive auction, the first one in the world. you've expressed concerns about that in the past?

what are your concerns at this point? >> guest: sure. so i am rooting for and hopeful for a very successful incentive auction. i helped advise members of the senate on the component of a statute that designed the rules for the incentive auction that the commission has implemented. my difficulty with what the commission did over time -- and it goes back to your point in terms of how are things done at the commission, whether there's a willingness to find compromise. i suggested that we shouldn't move towards certain things that i would have to describe as social policy. we tried to, you know, specifically target a couple companies and let them have licenses at less cost than other companies. think that's skewing an auction. and in doing so, that's harmful to those people who are selling licenses, and it's also harmful anytime you're disrupting the marketplace itself. so i am rooting for a successful auction. i must admit as not being the chairman, i don't have a great

deal of information as of yet. i do read the information that's put out. we're looking forward to the start of the reverse auction where we see what the price will be at the band plan and at the initial target of spectrum that's made available, and we'll see, you know, how much it would cost to buy out the broad broadcasters for a gain of 126 megahertz. >> the fcc recently announced there's going to be as much as 100 megahertz offered nationwide, not all markets. does that make you feel a little bit better? it looks like there's going to be a lot of spectrum available. >> guest: well, we don't know -- we know that's the initial target, and i hope that's successful. i'd like to release as much spectrum as possible. this initial target is 126. i'd like that to be the case, but i'm not sure that it is. the chairman has indicated that we'll go through multiple stages, if necessary, and so if there's not enough bidding, those people purchasing on the wireless carrier side for those

people supplying, the broadcasters, then we'll drop down. to we'll drop down to a different tier until those thicks -- >> much less spectrum -- >> guest: we could wind up having much less spectrum, and it may take us many, many months to get to that point. i don't know -- as you indicated very succinctly, this is the first time it's being attempted in the world. hopefully, if we set it up in a thoughtful way, it can be lendly candidated not only in the united states, which i believe it will, i do believe there's another incentive auction in a number of years, but i think it can be adopted elsewhere, hopefully without the social policy. >> this is tied into the move to 5g, the wireless carriers are talking about 5g, the next generation of service. do you feel that the fcc is doing enough to make sure the u.s. stays in a competitive position in the world as the world moves to 5g? >> guest: well, i'm pushing as hard as possible as i can. i think the incentive auction is

one piece of it. it is making more spectrum available to lower tier, the lower bands. we still have more things to do, we have an item to kiss pose of in -- dispose of in july. hopefully, that will be successful. i've pushed the chairman, and he's agreed to high frequencies to that pot. and hopefully, we'll be able to do that this summer. >> the companies having trouble building out the wireless towers and small cells and that kind of thing, that's one of your concerns. >> guest: absolutely. there's -- the first part is obtaining spectrum. the second part is actually doing the buildout. understandably for many years communities don't necessarily -- they would like the service, but they don't necessarily like towers themselves, the macro towers, the big towers that cover a number of areas. we have moved to a technology, thank goodness, that advanced that we may have smaller towers, may have smaller antennas, you

know, we can be small as going into a streetlight. so you're talking about a much smaller universe. to actually provide service in such a small structure, you're going to still have to get signal and most of -- in fairness, wireless service is driven by wired. wired service. we have to have wired connected all of these facilities. and so that wired service has to get to those wireless places. that is going to be difficult because a lot of communities don't like the ground, they don't like the deployment of certain facilities in certain places. so you have that tussle going forward, and i'd like to see that we get to a more friendly place rather than the big blocs we've had over the last couple of decades. >> host: commissioner o'rielly, is the telecommunications market today competitive, in your view? >> guest: well, it depends on which piece of it that you look at. we have this debate in a number of different instances. i can say i do believe that the wireless industry is fairly

competitive depending on what part you're looking at and what market you're looking at. some places are less, and some places are more. so it's harder to say universally that everything's -- would you like more competition, would everyone like more competition? absolutely. i would like more competition. but it's also a realization that the cost of deployment, the cost of entering the marketplace, the cost of doing everything that it requires, it is not an inexpensive venture for a company to deploy a number of services whether it be in the wired, the wireless, satellite or even, you know, in the cable or the broadcast side. so those things do require a lot of capital and a lot of investment, and i understand why people and companies make certain decisions. >> host: what, in your view, could the fcc do to make it more competitive, to allow more entrants? >> guest: sure. well, i think the first thing i would try and do is focus on what are the baueriers to entry, what are -- barriers to entry,

those things that keep people from entering the market. some of them may be infrastructure driven. that may require -- and i'm, you know, i've been outspoken on this -- it may require preempting localities and some of the burdens they've unfairly or unnecessarily are imposing and blocking carriers from providing service or deploying service. so there are things that i would spend my time in focusing on that. >> what would you, what do you see as being the worst decisions that the fcc's made since you've, since you became a commissioner? >> guest: well, gosh, that's -- >> host: top three. >> guest: okay. that's still -- top of that list by far is net neutrality. i think second on that list is municipal broadband. and then third on the list, boy, there's a bunch that would fall into that category. >> you have f do you have like 3a, b, c, de and e, right? >> guest: yeah. i could highlight so many different instances. i don't agree what we just did on special's.

there's a handful of things that would fall into that category. >> do you see a lot of issues teed up between now and the end of the administration or mostly fighting battles you've already fought on things like set-top boxes -- >> guest: we have reached the point in the calendar where any new ideas have already had to have been teed up if they're going to be concluded by the end of the year, generally. there are some exceptions. it's not universal. but we have generally reached the point where all new ideas have been put on the table, and now it's a matter of reviewing the comments and executing the item in and of itself. i may disagree with what's going to happen, but i believe that timeline, you know, there's probably a dozen to, you know, 15 items in the big ticket scenario that will be disposed of before the end of the year, and most of them i know what's coming. >> host: now, hulu recently announced they were going to be offering a skinny bundle, so to speak. now, is that something that the fcc will have jurisdiction over, take a look at? >> guest: well, i wouldn't say jurisdiction.

i would say it's a very interesting, innovate i potential -- innovative potential offering. it's still to be determined whether that happens. there's still contractual relationships with content providers. but if it does, you know, if it does materialize as announced, that actually is a very, you know, interesting development for our business because it is suggesting that programmers are going to deliver service directly to consumers over a broadband pipe. and some of that happens today, but not to this degree, and not by these programmers: so i think that, you know, has the potential to completely change the marketplace if it develops as we expect. i try to be careful here and try to be, you know, and not suspecting some of these things have fallen could be over the years, haven't materialized as expected. so if this does develop as has been announced, then that really could have an opportunity where you have the voi of the old cable provider is now a broadband provider only, and you're getting the consumer

buying directly from the programmer. and the programmer is selling, maybe their selling, you know, in this instance they may sell on a channel basis. hulu sells on a program basis. program-by-program basis, and you can buy a package on a monthly subscription. so it's a very interesting development, and i'm hopeful that -- we'll see what comes. >> host: do a lot of the decisions that the fcc makes or considers have to do with who owns that pipe going into somebody's house? >> guest: they have recently. we do look -- we don't have, you know, authority over certain aspects. we don't have authority over some of the programming issues. you know, those aren't under our jurisdiction as established by congress. so there are some issues that we have authority over and some we don't. a lot of issues recently have focused on the pipe itself whether it be a broadband pipe, whether it be a wireless pipe, and the two can be the same. i don't suggest otherwise. but, you know, it has focused on some of the physical components

in recent days. >> i wanted to ask you about ben john, that's at service that seems to be pretty popular with users, t-mobile, you can stream everything you want, but it doesn't count against your data cap. do you think realistically the fcc could clamp down on something like that since it's such a popular service? >> guest: i would be cautious in doing so, and that's -- this is the example i was highlighting earlier when i was talking about zero rating. that's being reviewed now by the commission with no rules in place, we have no idea how the commission's disposing of this or examining the issue or what they're going to do about it and what, quite frankly, might trigger a problem area. so it is unclear how the commission's going to look at this issue under its net neutrality structure. but i am, you know, i'm watching what the consumers are gravitating towards, what they're looking for and what they're adopting, and i see great, you know, potential for this, and i don't want to foreclose certain avenues until i know the full ramifications.

the commission seems to be very focused, and you saw this in the net neutrality decision, it's very prophylactic. we know what's going to happen, and we think this behavior is problematic from the start, and we cannot allow are it. here they gave a little more authority and said, well, we're going to give a double look-see at this scenario. a lot of these things should develop further. when you're talking about some of the bands in net knew centrality, there are -- neutrality, there are reasons why certain things should be, you know, allowed to happen that we are bang before we know -- banning before we know, and it's occurred in the marketplace. >> host: and finally, commissioner o'rielly, is it cumbersome to come up with the rules and regulations at the fcc under a 1996 congressional act? >> guest: well, your question is important. i leave the legislating to the congress. they determine the best time of when to update the law. they have expressed interest in updating the statute since '96. hasn't been done.

but i leave that in their capable hands. it seems like the calendar has gotten away from them a little bit, so they're not going to do it this congress, but there is appetite to change some of the statute. i do find that the statute does prevent -- provide a number of problems for the commission. we are taking advantage, the majority is in my opinion, taking advantage of provisions in the statute, interpreting them in ways that were not intended, reading words either in or out that should not be done in the way that they're doing. so i have trouble with how the commission is interpreting the law in and of itself, whether they're actually following the law. i don't believe they do in some instances and have expressed my views on that point. beyond that i do think that modernizing a statute would be appropriate, but that's for congress to decide. >> host: michael o'rielly, one of two republican commissioners on the federal communications commission. and howard buskirk, executive senior editor at "communications daily."

♪ >> madam secretary, we proudly give 72 of our delegate votes to the next president of the united states -- [cheers and applause] ♪ ♪ [cheers and applause] >> recently, our campaign 2016 bus made a visit to pennsylvania during its primary, stopping at grove city college, slippery rock university, washington and jefferson college and harrisburg area community college where students, professors and local

officials learned about our road to the white house coverage and our online interactive resources covering the campaign trail found at c-span.org. visitors shared their thoughts about the upcoming election. we ended the week visiting a middle school honoring seven ninth graders for their winning videos in this year's student cam competition. thanks to comcast and argue strong capable. you can view all the documentaries at studentcam.org. >> later today nasa administrator charles bolden talks about the future of science, technology, engineering and math education in america. live coverage beginning at 10 eastern on c-span. >> later today a look at the rise of terrorism many europe and why certain groups are being blamed for promoting a jihadist agenda in the region. that's host by new america.