every day for citizens and for businesses. unfortunately, kansas has not kept up with that competition the last 30 years, but working with the legislature, we are back in the game. what i and other republican governors in the country are doing is a lot like the wichita state basketball team. .laying in the ncaa final four pundits said, they cannot win. , watch us. republican governors have been told, you cannot cut taxes, balance your budget at the same time. we said, watch us. we have done what we said we would do. we have been going our economies and building strong family structures and making wise government investments that produces results. our republican message is a belief in the power of the people more than the control of

the government. this only shows the creativity of entrepreneurs and the strength of help, dreams -- hope and dreasmms. we remake our country not into a place that looks more like europe, but one that looks like america again. that is the rebirth we are doing. thank you for listening. god bless you all. c-span, "the communicators." that is held by our "first lad ies" series. later, emily's list president.

>> i was a socialist in my early 20s. that hardly indicates fundamental instability. said,ston churchill once any man who is not a socialist before he is 40 has no heart and any man who is a socialist after he is 40 has no head. [laughter] i think that kind of evolution is very evident. trains passing in the night. he was one of the toughest senators to lobby on anything. he did his homework. he studied. he was smarter than him in a lot of ways. he wrote the book at yale.

they were passing like two trains. the former deputy assistant to presidents nixon and ford sunday night at 8 p.m. on c-span's "q&a." speed" is theor new framework book for telecommunications policy for the 21st century. the authors are robert litan and hal singer. the current status of broadband in the u.s.? >> it is doing pretty well, but it can do better. we have a high degree of penetration of what the fcc defines as acceptable broadband. it is something called four megabits per second. a megabit is a million bits per second. we measure the speed of broadband by the number of bits

per second. the faster you can go, the more stuff you can watch. there is youtube or whatever site you are on and clearly the faster you can go, you can watch movies. the main objective that we argue in the book, which i think is on ,ontestable -- uncontestable there is no question what broadband should be. >> what the benefits of faster? you get new uses. think about streaming video. you probably cannot watch streaming videos at a low level. you can do it at a higher level. it is not just video. we're talking about uses in energy. all kinds of business uses that are only possible in terms of analyzing data, a so-called

cloud where all of these things are supposed to be stored. that requires faster speed. we talk in the book on how to get there. >> has u.s. regulatory policy help to spread and strengthen broadband in the u.s.? that u.s. we argue policy has likely gotten in the way. not horribly so, but in the margin, it is not helping. we bring up this net neutrality fight. the fcc decided they would not allow network providers to enter into contracts with websites for priority delivery. things like a fedex are getting

packages to your house the next day. they decided it was too dangers in their minds to allow a network providers like comcast or at&t or verizon to enter into such contracts. bob and i argue in the book that there is a way we think to achieve a better place to allow .he contracting besides the net neutrality or the, is there another structural regulatory policy that stood in the way of advancing broadband? that isnk the next one a big impediment is that wireless technologies are really poised to take over. we have seen it happen with voice in the last decade. the same thing is happening with data. the biggest obstacle in the way is the spectrum, the licenses

that are needed for wireless to compete. the industry has been very slow at finding new spectrum and auctioning it for providers. that would be my number two complaint. >> you have talked about broadband in your book. are you talking about wire and wireless? >> yes, we are. that is critical when he said the word "and." it is structured the way things used to be. it is not a wired division and a wireless division. that is an annual report is required by congress on the state of wireless. behind theion congressional direction is that the wireless market is somehow separate from the wired market. in fact, in the world of broadband, the two have bee increasingly converge.

think of the tablet that a lot of us have. you can download on your tablet with wireless technology. something that is basically indistinguishable from what you get on a pc. because of the convergence between wired and wireless, the markets for broadband is a lot more competitive than people think. we have a major providers like verizon and at&t and comcast and time warner. at the same time, we have wireless companies, some of them use the same telcos, but we have others come up with these guys are competing against each other. radicallyhanged is increased competition. we are not in the old days where we only have one pipe to the house and all in one kind of content. there is a convergence of all of those bits on the same platform. that has changed the dynamics. that thelk about silos

fcc has regulated. one of the points that we stress in the book is that we need recognition from the congress and fcc that we need to get rid of the silos. in addition to getting rid of the notion that everything is silos, when she realized there is a lot more competition in the space than there used to be, the fcc does not have as much to do. >> cohead. -- go ahead. on the way ofical doing things, but it is not meant as attacking. the instructions come from congress. right in the report for competition in the markets. that ifo be very clear you tell an agency to devote certain resources to writing a

report about a market that no longer exist on its own, because broadband now encumbrances wire and wireless and satellite, you get a report that may not be that useful for policymakers. we want to make sure that the notion that the fcc will fix itself and wake up is fanciful. i think direction needs to come from congress on the recognition of the new landscape. >> one of the policy proposals in the book is curb the fcc's merger for the wireless transition. >> it is more broader than that. wireless is one of the most critical areas over which they have merged. there are overseeing mergers in the cable space. the problem that we have here is that there is a budgetary

problem. wire agencies are doing duplicate merger reviews. isecond problem that we see that once all of the antitrust issues are taken care of by the department of justice, what is the fcc doing this second and this review? things seen some bad happen. there are no bad actors, but just how the system is set up. the fcc is in a position to give away things to competitors that complain the loudest. economists have a fancy word for this "rent seeking." when you give the agency that kind of power to move around millions or billions of dollars , you're going to get cords of lobbyists walking the halls of agencies and looking for handouts. goodat, that is not a

thing for society. i want to be careful. we are not in favor of more anti-competitive mergers going through. when anti-competitive mergers, that should be looked up by the antitrust agencies. the fcc does have some special inlls and expertise assessing bees mergers. we do not think they should not have a seat at the table and a merger review. i just should not have a vote. -- they just should not have a vote. >> i was a prosecutor at the antitrust justice department. work with a lot of agencies. -- i worked with a lot of agencies. i work together. we do not need to votes -- two votes where one will do.

i do not have to tell anyone in the audience that we are experiencing austerity in washington. i think that makes it incumbent upon all lawmakers to go back and ask, why are we having to agencies do the same thing? let's start with communications. you mentionedeer, the justice department and you have also worked as an economist for presidents carter and clinton. they might interpret this as a call to being regulated, they can make asians industry. is that fair? >> i think that is fair. but time has have changed. something was said to the things will change and the facts have changed

communication. 30 years ago when we had a monopoly telephone company and a there were tablcable, the silos. there was a case then. ,ut for the world we have now there is less need for that. by the way, i'm proud to say that i work for president when he was the leader in deregulating the trucking industry. they were competitive. there was no longer a need for control. guess what -- the communications industry has reached that. it does not longer a democratic or republican thing. a democraticer republican thing. fair to sayt is

that overall an overarching theme is one of the regulation. but to be fair, we have other ideas and policies that might he offensive to the other the other side of the aisle as well. some -- might be offensive to the other side of the aisle as well. where we depart with what i -- we are very sympathetic to the ideas to allow a puff from orner to vertically integrate and by a them to-- allow vertically integrate and buy content. in that instance, it does not that we reject the idea of locking all types of vertical integration. radical that is teed double ooo and harsh. would-be advocate instead is a regime in which the complaining

party can come forward to the fcc and say, we are not -- what we advocate instead is a regime in which the complaining party can come for to the fcc and say isn't fair. i'm comfortable with the notion of deregulation. i didn't think we should end the fcc role entirely. >> there is a process in the for there to be judges to determine cases. what we argue is that they use the same context to make these determinations in the case of discrimination were broadband is involved. without having to go to federal court. the courts already clogged up. they can be quicker more efficient and get to a result with expertise to do so. i as the market changes

would break apart the silos and we have myriad technologies that often broadband like cable am a issue movellite,, --y from horizontal issues cable, fiber, satellite, they should move away from horizontal issues. we think that is where the action will be. we think the fcc has a nice process in place to do to keep these sorts of disputes in a video programming space. i think it is strange that in december 2010 under the current and departing chairman that they took a different approach, which was to basically prevent any sort of contracting and impose what components -- incumbents alcall --

twohere might very soon we new appointees. who would you like to see on there? >> i do not have any favorites. i think the theme of the book i want to stress is that as long as you do not change the system, you could put in the most andanimous king on earth here she was still be subjected to the same sort of lobbying activity that the current commissioners are exposed to. i fear that just a getting the right commissioner will not do the trick. there are certain attributes of the like to see. i would like them to recognize this competition between wire and wireless. other than that, i fear that just getting the commissioner right will not do the trick. >> same thing.

-- we need someone in there who realizes the world has changed. hal is pessimistic about the system is not conducive. nonetheless, there are people. i would not want to have who voluntarily goes to congress and says, here is our mission. there are examples, believe it .r not, of agencies in my lifetime. the internet state commerce commission -- we got rid of the lot of regulation.

the resolution trust corporation. it was created and dismantled. with the right people on the right philosophy. they can make the case and say, we should be doing these kinds of things in this vertical context. that is our expertise. we can provide advice to the justice department. give us that. we do not need this other stuff. >> maybe this is a bit far- fetched to say that a chairman will say, take away my discretion. that is sort of the currency of power in d.c. spectrum to options wireless carriers, there are certain restrictions that makes it unpalatable for certain bidders. they want to steer the spectrum to favor constituents. when theuld like

lobbyist comes in and says, i want you to put restrictions but are only valuable for my business plan, i wanted to say, i cannot do that. i would love to help you out, but that discretion has been taken away from me. that, theress dueoes conversation will always go the wrong way. what is navigate economics? it is part of a larger firm called navigant consulting. >> what is your background? my teeth at the security and exchange commission in two years ago. i have a phd in economics. when i'm not do not begin stuff, i'm typically writing. >> you write out bloomberg government.

bloomberg government. >> we have our own network. build abloomberg business around the bloomberg terminal. bloomberg is in many different businesses. one is bloomberg government. it is an information service for that provides economic analysis of the business impact of government decisions. we also have information for clients that want to know a lot about congress and government contracts and so forth. >> we have members of congress on this row graham discussing wemunications issues -- often have members of congress on this program discussing communications issues. >> our book is an endorsement of

that position. there is a new framework for the sec and a new stature that calls for a narrow scope of fcc. it is something along the lines of the limits would have talked about. is that what the new telecommunications act would be, we would be for that. there is controversy over virtually everything. i think that there is growing recognition and that these things take time. it takes many years. we broke up at&t in 1984. cold beers later we got a years later we12 got a telecom act.

there are a lot of other things that alleged to that act, but it years. i think we are in this interim period where people are realizing that the world has changed and it takes a while before you get legislation that will in effect make it possible to go to the next stage. i think we will get to a stage, i hope. maybe not in 2013 or 2014. talking about some agencies that have gone away in his lifetime. a function that is still in place. is it necessary today? >> we think it is necessary. the set of columns that is not served by broadband is shrinking yearly -- the set of homes that is not served by broadband is shrinking yearly. 5 billion homes that are not

,et certified with broadband it does not disable or is not a problem anymore, but the market has done an impressive job to provide a ubiquitous coverage. bob and i suggested some tweaks to the program. reverse auctions are used rather than writing a check to conduct an auction and have different suppliers of all technologies, including wireless and satellite, to bid for the opportunity to serve those fewer remaining homes that are not yet served. a bit in a reverse way. would say, give us the least amount of substance for the least amount of money. that is much better.

>> one point on this, when you read the broadband progress report of fcc, you can tell they are focused on this problem. it is an important problem. we want to get to 100% coverage. that would be ideal. ishaqi the overarching policy driver for the fcc -- it should not be the overarching policy driver for the fcc. the report seemed to take no interest in looking at how many distinct providers are serving a wath of homes. that is an important incineration. we are trying to refocus the debate and say, look at how many wireline providers are serving a given area. window cable basically has the entire country covered. -- wireline cable

basically has entire country covered. there is no such thing as er.opoly and yony longr having incentivized the telcos to push the network out further so that it covers up 100% of the country, we do not see the fcc thinking in those terms. , you say same time that wireless is competing with wire lines. >> yes. they have been for some time. we have done work at bloomberg government. investment has taken place in broadband. we still have a situation where half the country only has one wire line.

we have economic evidence that two wirehave reached slines. many people were watching the show will complain about their bills. they are getting a large bill. the 18 cheaper one. the best that they want a cheaper one. one.ey want a cheaper they want to get that speed that we talked about in our title. thene thing that stands in way with the telcos pushing out the network is that unlike the cable companies, the telcos are held to a special task. they have to maintain two separate networks -- a copper network or the grandparents who insist on happening that landline telephone and a broadband network. is a day version of the

resources. diversion of the version resources. one of the policies that we advocate is freeing up those telcos from those legacy legislations. we think that is an important one that would get competition going. " bythe need for speed robert litan and hal singer. thank you for being on "the communicators." >> thank you were having us. [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2013] [captioning performed by national captioning institute] >> c-span, brought to you by your television provider. >> next on c-span,