only two republicans and one of five commissioners, how much influence do you have in setting the agenda? >> the date february 15 might seem familiar. we are to come up with a plan to present to congress. we are in the of soliciting public comment and data input and trying to get analysis and to promote some ideas to present to congress. we kick this off back in april with a notice of inquiry, where we say to the world, please give us your ideas. there are a lot of questions we would like to have answers to. we are in the midst of that process right now. in terms of being one of five, we all have an equal vote.

the chairman sets the agenda for the commission. that is how it is set up by statute, but all the other commissioners have a role to consult with the chairman and it buys, and also to vote on matters that he puts before us -- and to advise. it is a small group, but one of the least partisan places in washington. this summer i had my summer law clerks do an analysis of my votes versus other commissioners, and it ends up that 70% of the time -- 9 out of 10 times, we are unanimous. the other 10% of the time, it is not partisan divide. bechtel would you like to see the broadband plan developed? >> i would like to see it as transparent as possible. what the commission is thinking as well as the date and opinions we are soliciting from the outside world. we should make that as transparent as possible. i am already on record as saying i would prefer if we could have

put a plan or an outline out for public comment. the question remains as to whether or not all the commissioners will vote on it. it is unclear in the statute if we do not have to do it that way. that will be interesting to see how that develops. >> have you had any discussions with the chairman yet about whether you will be intimately involved in the formation of this plan? it seems like you set up this entire bureau invited consultants to come in and ride this thing. it was not entirely clear to me this week and i talked the chairman after the kickoff workshop about this issue, about how to involve the other commissioners will be in actually writing the plan? >> i am meeting with the commissioner later today as well as the director of the broad trend -- broadband initiative. we are in constant contact. thus far, the chairman has been

very gracious and awful and has reached on a lot. we communicate several times a week. i give him high marks for his first weeks in office. >> why should you be involved in the plan? what is the benefit for the agency have the two republicans and the other democrats on the commission having input into the plan before it actually comes out? ultimately it is a plan, and if you are going to do anything to get more broad and across the country, you guys would have to vote on it. >> it has been said that this plan is the biggest thing the fcc has worked on since the telecommunications act. that is the case, you hope it would be a collaborative effort that involves consensus of all the five commissioners. it is merely a report to congress, that is one thing. it is not called a report, it is called a plan. it remains to be seen if it will be in options sent to congress saying there are 50 great

ideas, or will it be something more set in stone. what is interesting is, and this was a bit of an oversight by congress, the broadband mapping initiative data is due in 2011, so a full year after the broadband plan has to be present to congress. i think it has to be a flexible document. in internet time, things are always changing anyway, so nothing should be really carved in stone. >> what you see for the role of private sector in developing this plan? >> excellent question. this year, between $70,000,000,000.-1604073449 dollars in capital expenditures will be invested by the private sector -- between 70 and $80 billion. it dwarfs other countries

private investment or public investment in broadband. i think it is very important that we not discourage that. the first rule of any broadband plan should be do no harm. we want to make sure that we continue to have an environment that is attractive to private capital investment. that is really the engine driving all of this. tet and telecom are really well placed to help bring the country out of this recession right now. a lot of tech purchases have been put off by companies and residential users as well. we are well placed to bring us of this particular session, versus the earlier recession with a.com bubble bursting. it is the flip side now. we want to make sure now that whatever we do really help stimulate more private investment as well. >> heavy seen any indication that the plan is developing along the line that you do not agree with? >> not yet.

we are still in a fact gathering phase. there are a lot of public workshops being initiated this month in washington d.c., and i hope to be able to travel throughout the country more to learn from books. i was in alaska this past winter where it was 50 below with the wind chill to look at the challenges they have their, with sea ice making it hard for undersea cable landings and extreme weather conditions making it difficult for anything other than satellite. not impossible, but very difficult for technologies to help them with broadband. i want to see what the challenges are in these uncertain and underserved areas around the country. >> a couple of weeks ago you sent letters to the chairman asking him about reform and some things you thought he might be able to do about that. can you talk about your major points from that letter? >> earlier in the year, shortly

after michael cox became acting chairman of the fcc, i see him a similar letter. we wanted it posted on the website in the spirit of transparency. these ideas are not mine. i do not care who gets the credit for them. the overall picture, without going into the details, is to make the fcc more open, transparent, and collaborative, both from the outside looking out, but on the inside with the commissioner being able to see how the various cogs in the machinery work. getting the same information from our career professionals we have working throughout the fcc. we have 1800 employees working there, economists, engineers, and other professionals.

we need to be able to more fully use them and get them involved, and here the diversity of their opinions. a great example of this was under the acting chairman during the digital tv transmission schwinn january and june. it was very clever to. we were able to make decisions in real time -- it was very collaborative. it should be a model for how the commission works on other issues as well. >> with their need to be the rule changes in how the fcc operates to implement some of these transparency changes you would like to see? >> in the letter, i do not talk about rule changes as much as operational changes. starting with a full operational and ethics audit of the commission, the way you would have if you have one company by another or new top management changes at the top of a company. let's do a full audit. how does it work and not work?

what could we do better? and then revise our strategic plan as well. it is easy to get lost in the day-to-day activities at commission and forget about the direction it wanted to go in, so let's update our strategic plan as well. there has been talk of advising the sun shine in government act. independent agencies -- you cannot have a majority of the commissioners' meeting without meeting in public, without public notice and making it available to the public to see. the supreme court, town councils, congress can all meet in executive session. it makes it difficult at the fcc because no more than two commissioners can meet at a time. our staffs have to shuttle around. we have to relay information in gain consensus that way. it was a post-watergate era law that they did not want smoke-

filled rooms producing public policy. there are ways to make it transparent but also make it more collaborative as well. everything we produce is in writing and available to the public. we also need to enforce our rules a little better. we need to enforce the ones that are on the books already. if someone from the outside census information or new thought about something, we need more detailed disclosure as to what it is. they were to meet with us for an hour and talk about the broadband plan, it should say something more than that we talked about the broadband plan. give us more detail about it. >> is it fair to say, and it is available at our website as well as fcc.gov. is it fair to say that your

letter stems from the thought that the -- >> we do not want to look over our shoulder, but we can learn from the past. different commissions have been run in different ways. the commission sort of got away from information sharing on what we call the eighth floor, the commissioner level. we want to get back to the days where we could get the same analyses and summaries of comments that have been filed and the same legal opinions, etc. we can work from the past, but the good and bad. >> the chairman sinew a polite letter back. what did you think of that, or have you had all of conversations? >> we have a lot of conversation prior to the letters, and we have talked afterwards, too. this has been something he has talked about since the minute he

was nominated by the president. he is taking fcc reform very seriously. he has hired some qualified people to come into the commission, and i remain optimistic. x last week, the fcc sent letters to apple, google, an at&t about an issue involving google voice being taken off the apple app store and other applications were yanked off the store. did you support that inquiry, or what should they be looking at there? >> that was issued by the bureau. i did not know about it at the time. it was signed off on ahead of time. it doesn't hurt to ask questions and gather data. it does take the fcc on a different tack. there has been talk for quite some time about us looking into what is called handset exclusivity.

it means can you download any application on your wireless design -- wireless device and call it a cell phone? can you have any application on there, and take advice from carrier to carrier? device and application portability is what we call it. i have always supported that. also we have to ask, has a marketplace been moving in that direction already? a couple of years ago we had our rule in the option of the tv airwaves, reclaimed from the digital tv transition. it rules for mandated open access. did we need a will to do that? there are some companies already in discussions at the time that were producing devices that could contain any application that you wanted to download on them. there was the google-t mobil

partnership and other applications that are producing these things. every decision should be dated driven, and i support that. we will see where the facts take us and where the law texas. at what point do we go from being the federal communications commission to the federal software commission? it was not clear to me what the fcc could do to apple, with the jurisdiction would be there, if they decided that apple was incorrect in takeover -- in taking google off the app store. >> that will be for lawyers to debate for a long period time. it may go to an appellate court, but there are antitrust issues as well. we have to operate under what is called the public interest standard. in terms of having an application store, is little

like having a grocery store. if you stop it -- if you shop at whole foods and are looking for a certain organics cereal, he would not be expected to find frosted flakes there. we will see where this takes us. >> there seems to be a much broader issue with wireless issues at the commission. are there other things you think the commission should be looking at right now in the wireless space? cracks were less is one of the most exciting areas recover. what we call spectral efficiency doubled every 2.5 years. that is the amount of data you can put to the airways. we are about two trillion times more respectfully efficient than we were at the time the radio was first invented in the late 1800's by marconi.

that trend seems to continue and will for quite some time. our wireless devices will become more powerful every day. average cellphone today has more computing power in it than the entire pilot program did. it is a very exciting time. there are things on the horizon that will make wireless technologies even more powerful. it is pretty competitive in the marketplace. 51% of american consumers have a choice of five wireless providers. we are working on the television white spaces. it is a very exciting area. it is wonderfully chaotic and will cause a lot of positive and

constructive chaos for the economy in years to come. but what about for the fc questionc or >> it is important that we do no harm. let's make sure that what we do, if anything, we tread carefully. the wireless industry is actually bringing a lot of benefit to american consumers. wireless broadband, for example, where we are the fastest-growing market in the world. we are a leader there, and that will continue. people have traded the reliability of fiber at times for the freedom that comes with mobility. if you look throughout the world, the world is using mobility. it is very important to not only help the economy throughout the world, but also to help improve the human condition overall. mobile telecommunications can help supplant things like travel, if you are a subsistence farmer in africa and you are looking for a buyer for your

crops, the wireless device you have can really help in change -- changing your life as far as finding medicine for your child or drinkable water. we need to be very careful as we go for that we do no harm. >> one of the priorities of the obama administration has been cyber security. when it comes to wireless, there is less security than with fiber. does. fcc have a role when it comes -- does the fcc have a role when it comes to fiber security? >> the president has made the cyber security a big priority of his, and rightfully so. as we see more denial of service attacks, these are coming from foreign countries. we think there sponsored by foreign governments to shut down keep websites and servers in our country and our government web sites. it is important that we all rallied around this particular effort. the fcc does not have a

statutory mandate on some of these issues, but it is a partnership with other agencies throughout the government. we will be working on things like network management, we need to allow the network operators to ensure that those systems are secure from threats, and that will play into the public policy that we initiate. >> how to use the network management, network neutrality in the agendafcc for the next six months to year, and how does that fit in cyber security? >> the chairman sets the agenda, so i do not know if it will. given the amount of attention and publicity it has been given, it is all sort of related. i would just guessed that something will pop up before too long. how does it relate to security -- net neutrality does not really have to give -- a dictionary definition.

it is a war shack term. you see in it what you want to, -- is a rorschack term. is there room for reasonable network management? for instance, if there is a nondiscrimination fifth principle, there are four principles regarding network management to give consumers the freedom to go wherever they want on the internet, basically. that is what it all boils down to. you want to make sure it is as open and free as possible. there are times when network operators, your phone, cable, or internet service providers all have to manage the network and traffic flow. there are surges of information. if you think of software as torpedo size, can you shoot that through a drinking straw of a wire to go from in user to end user.

they have to be able to manage things like these denial of service attacks that come from within or outside of the country. the have to be able to look for a lawful content such as child pornography or stolen intellectual property. there are a lot of practical, everyday questions. as a consumer, if you download a movie, you want to be able to see that movie smoothly, and you do not want your e-mail bids or your voip bits freezing of the picture or interfering with your viewing experience. so there are quality of service issues there as well. these will all play into any network management debate. >> our guest is robert mandel, one of two republican commissioners on the sec. and shots of a good wall street journal" is also here. >> since you brought up neutrality, do you think it also applies to wireless networks

besharov >> again, net neutrality has not been defined. the commission does not have net neutrality rules yet, but as we have wireless networks meshing with wire line networks, is all flowing together. they are all connected, so it is very hard to divide one from the other. >> does the fcc then need to write new principles or real broke rules -- or real rules? to set the real definition, so that everyone is not confused in the future? >> every day there are quadrillions of internet communications going on. as far as i can tell, we really need to change the nature of the debate to what is anticompetitive conduct versus discriminatory conduct? there's a lot of talk about discrimination.

in many contexts, discrimination is a dirty word. we were talking about the video experience you were talking -- you are watching to have without interruption. the question should become, is what they are doing reasonable, or is it anti-competitive? there are laws on the books against anti-competitive conduct. that is where the fcc's role should be. >> d.c. media ownership coming back up as an issue? >> it has to as a matter of law. every four years, they are required by statute to take a look under ownership rules. it includes whether or not you could have cross ownership of a broadcast property and a

newspaper in the same market. those will be coming up in the year 2010. it is always an energized debate as to what we should do. i am looking forward to that. >> water your feelings right now? do you think the rules need to be changed or altered? >> at this point, broadcasters are facing an unprecedented amount competition. they are feeling the effects of the recession more than other sectors of the economy. i just had broadcasters tell me yesterday that some of their station's received about half of their revenue from auto dealerships. we know they are not doing very well these days. their revenues are way down. their viewers and listeners are looking toward new media. the advertising dollars are following those viewers and listeners elsewhere. it is a very stressful time for broadcasters.

what we need to do is make sure we are doing no harm. it is a bad time to try to keep more regulations on top of them. broadcasters have more incentives to differentiate their products from national or international content you might find on the internet and to be more of local and a lot of ways. that is how they can differentiate themselves in the marketplace. when we talk about localism, it is definitely a goal of all we want to promote at the fcc. broadcasters get to use the airwaves for free in exchange for using local licenses. they have more incentive now to serve the local committees. >> what you think they should focus on in the media ownership debate? >> they should get an accurate snapshot of what the industry looks like right now. if we have a thorough fact gathering process and an honest analysis, i think the facts will

lead us to some conclusions. i would hope that that conclusion is not to heap more regulations on broadcasters. >> there still seems to be a lot of concern expressed across the country that the fairness doctrine is coming back. can you trust that they will not try to bring it back? >> he has only been on the job for six weeks, so i want to give him a high degree of credibility. there is concern, however. in december 2007 i had trouble with a notice of proposed rulemaking where there were a number of tentative conclusions. one of the ideas was to require each broadcaster to have a mandatory community advisory report, unclear as to how the

board would be appointed. it could have great sway over the kind of contact each broadcaster errors and also great sway over whether or not they get their license renewed. some say the term should be shortened to three years, so each broadcaster is in perpetual renewal mo. couple that with things like mandatory community advisory boards dictating content. i think there is a huge constitutional area there, but i do not think it is good public policy as well. let's let consumers decide what they want to listen to or see and let the market help dictate that. in the view of some, that could be a back door fairness doctrine in terms of the government controlling more of the content that is aired. the fairness doctrine spoke to political speech. it was enacted in 1949 by the fcc and abolished in 1987.

it forced broadcasters not only to air controversial issues but to air opposing views. it becomes very difficult when you get the government to determine what is the opposing view, how many opposing views are there, the messy editorial decisions at the government would have to make. it would not pass muster at this moment. justice thomas has implied that he would like to see it overturned, and there might be a majority on the supreme court to do just that. >> isn't that decision still open? >> it is still a concern out there. members of congress periodically talk about how the fairness doctrine should be reinstated. others rally opposition to that.

i think it would be a bad idea. is unconstitutional and would be against the public interest. we have seen a rise in political discord since the fairness doctrine was abolished 22 years ago. there is more political discourse on the airwaves, and on the inner core -- on the internet, which did not exist in 1987. >> when do you see fcc having significant action on the broadband plan? what is next in the line? >> the month of august will be spent with these workshops, 20 of them. it will be very active. i would like to see the commissioners go out across the country and have town halls and listen to the american public as well. i think as we get into fall and winter, we will start to see more interest paid to this as we get closer to the february 17 deadline. in terms of the specific time line, i do not