Transcripts For CSPAN Communicators With Mark Jamison 201709

Introduce you to mark jamieson. Fulltime, hes at the university of florida, where hes director of the public Utility Research center, director of the telecommunications study. He was on the president ial Transition Team, focused on telecommunications and the federal Communications Commission. Dr. Jamison, welcome to the communicators. Biographyed in your that you were at one time head of the National Association of regulatory Utility Commissions. What does a regulatory Utility Commission to do . Mark i was the chair of a committee within the National Association, thats a very different thing. It was a subcommittee. What a public Utility Commissioner does in the united they regulate utility. Setting what the Service Quality standards will it focuses on the infrastructure rollout and development. In some instances, it determines how markets will work. Thats basically the job of the utility regulator. That his formal job. I train a lot of people around the world in this, the biggest job is to regulate the politicians. There was a time when utilities were regulated by legislative bodies and city councils. That system never worked well. People would get out of business, it fell. A little over 100 years ago, we set up these agencies to be a buffer between the political pressures and the need for investment that takes 30 year planning horizons. The small part of the job of that regulator is to. Keep the politics out when it comes to a public Utility Commission, they can do cable, telephone, water, electric. Mac cable, the other three. Telecommunications is rare. Is it statebystate, yes. What was your role at the president ial transition . My role was to serve what was called the landing team, which was to work with the Transition Team and the federal Communications Commission to help figure out exactly what kind of policies and directions there might be for the fcc. Thousand different than a lot of landing teams, because the fcc is a independent agency. The president cant say what they want to say, but he still made a majority vote for something to happen. How would you describe your telecommunications philosophy . The customers are in charge. Everything that we do, when i talk about regulations, what i teach about it is how can you put power power into the customers hand . To help us look at some of the issues that the Telecommunications World is facing is david shepherdson, who covers telecom. The Biggest Issue by far is the Obama Administration decision in 2015 to reclassify internet service, like a public utility, under the 1930s act. Proposede has noted decision, but has left a couple of Big Questions unanswered for the commission to decide. Does the fcc have authority to regulate conduct by the eyes retain any ofit the existing protections under the title to order russian mark where do you come down, worship the fcc go from there . One of the things that you set up front, that was a decision by the Obama Administration. Byneeded to be a decision the federal Communications Commission itself. There was a lot of political pressure. There are some legal aspects of your question i cant address. My understanding from talking with experts in that field is that it does indeed have Legal Authority to do regulations. Exactly where in the law is what is issued. There are some areas where it can happen very light handed, light touch regulation. There are other places where it can be heavyhanded. With the fcc chose in 2015 was to choose that heavyhanded part that we call title two which was written for common carriers of utility. There were all monopolies at that time, the laws were designed to exist forever, but it didnt. Broadband probably fits better somewhere else. David what is the answer then the marketplace . What protection do you think consumers need and broadband to ensure that there is not blocking throttling or Paper Organization of . The World Wide Web has existed for over 20 years, so everything that has been since 2015 is new. People were happy with whatever kind of nonblocking and pricing whatever that they were getting before. Not all that might happen if we were to list the title ii regulations. With respect to what it is people might be afraid of, locking has had very few instances. Insurance providers are actually giving customers options. They can give a lower price if they let them slow down traffic when the network is congestion. Thats actually customers being given a choice, i think it should be like that, because it puts the customer in charge. With respect to the vast lanes of paid prioritization, that will make customers better off. Get a review with several other colonists of the economics literature on those issues, its hard to find scenarios under which that hurts customers, it generally helps them. You wrote about whether Tech Companies should be too big, you said the euro think they are too big. Is there a role for the federal government to ensure that these companies do not use the market dominance to prevent new entrants into the market . Winter that consumers truly have options. Thats what we have the antitrust laws for. For someone in an anticompetitive way keeps some us from competing with them. Thats been around a long time, we understand how to do that. What we are talking about is things are huge, google is huge, facebook is huge. They seem to concern them. Especially in the technology industry, its you and meet making decisions every day, several times a day. That makes those companies the largest they are. Its hard to fathom a scenario where you can tell customers id like to buy that from amazon, but we are going to force you somewhere else. Or to tell a customer when they enter google. Com to do a search, we redirect them to being or somewhere else. That doesnt make customers better off. Whats important to understand is that these types of Custom Companies are as large as they are because of the choices customers make. Isnt broadband, id love to hear what your definition of rock band is today, isnt it at as important as electricity . Or telephone . Or water . Thats up to customers. The definition of broadband, i dont have one. Thats for customers to decide. For a lot of people, do think about what should broadband be 25 megabits, or some other speed. Its telling us what they prefer, i would assume regulations are the customers in terms of what is broadband. Is it essential . Thats for customers to decide. Whether or not its essential doesnt change your regulations, whose essential . A lot of things are essential for everyday life, but we dont impose a particular regulatory scheme on it just because they are important. What would be the downside of regulating the broadband arena as we would electricity or Something Else . One thing you get immediately is less faculty. We saw some evidence that that is. The case once you start limiting the opportunities for growth and change, then you get left investment. Of having a marketplace where people have to compete for customers at for their attention. Competitors, or can gain some regulatory advantage. Regulatory made in rather than the marketplace. I think we should keep things in the marketplace. The critics would say if you look at some of the specific dynamics, the amount of the ad market controlled by facebook and google is more than two thirds, there are four major Wireless Companies that control 90 of the market. Historically, the u. S. Has raised concerns are to break up companies that become too large. Do you still think the marketplace is such that new entrants can enter the market as these companies have bigger and acquire larger market shares . A word you used i want to take issue with. Board of control word of control, nothing but google in control of you saying im going to search google. Its your choice that makes the network valuable. People decided they want to reach you, so they advertise on. These companies dont control. , and they are just simply doing something the customers like, thats a good thing. In terms of thinking about should we break them up . Breakup, thatt was a situation where the government said at t backup. Said at tment audit you can be a monopoly, thats why competition was made possible. Itt abused that position, didnt to discriminate against other equipment manufacturers, people trying to connect with the network, it was because of the governments control. There has been Good Research over the past 20 years that showed the government made a mistake there. It really could have been competitive if the government had stayed out. You can be a monopoly and thats ok with us. Whats to prevent companies in unopposed title ii world from using the dominance to discourage competitors, zero ratings, or digging more aggressive actions to shift consumers to their proper . Adopt an equivalency that not really there. At ts was a dominant one. These are companies that are earned their way by satisfied customers. As far as being what they might to we haveback antitrust laws that are there specifically for that. If there is something this company does that arms consumers, because its an anticompetitive manner, we have laws in place that can deal with that. Not all things that we may think of as being discriminatory really are. The re services for targeted to the poor, targeted to the disabled that use zero rating because that pain for data is on optical to them to get service. I it not necessarily a bad thing, you go through all the research and economics that have done. We found theres sometimes an act like that, they percolation can be bad. Most of the time its good, how can you have regulations . To allow good thing to happen and stop acting russian mark thats where the antitrust is stuffed in. It is to stop those bad things. Do think theres areas were the fcc should be more aggressive in regulating . I think the fcc is making very Good Progress on that issue that you identified. There are spots on the map where there is no broadband today. To do that, the fcc is finally adopting practices that have been around for 20 years. It started in latin america, spread to europe, we are just now adopting it. We find places where there is no service, then we asked the question how much do we think it will be to find service . Theres no service there because the costs are high and the revenues are down. That looks like something you may want to subsidize. The question is, how do you know . And how much should that subsidy the . Who should get it . The fcc adopted this idea of a reverse auction. The start out at 1 million to service an area. Who would do it for 900,000 . 800,000 . They get it to where it stops and thats the amount. Thats when you decide who will provide the service. How much the subsidies should be. Thats exactly the right way to do it. Mark jamieson, you recently wrote an article or the American Enterprise Institute Website Blog Technology is outsmarting Net Neutrality. Whats the focus in that article . Its looking at the basic ideas of Net Neutrality, showing that we have Technological Progress that is bypassing those ideas. There are two ideas that i address. An idea that every packet that enters the internet should be treated the same. There should be no discrimination, no favorable treatment over video versus voice, or anything else. The other one is that customers should be allowed to go anyplace you want to on the internet as long as they are doing what is legal. Technology is addressing those, already. They take what we call fifthgeneration wireless, ig. It is a technology that will be rolled out next year, it will be in place or about one decade or so, it specifically has built into it what they call lies. Each can be customized to a particular service, customer, as provider whenever it might be,. It is designed to do that. That violates the idea of staying treatment of its. If Net Neutrality is going to do Something Different than what the policy people a bit they would like. I also talk about what i call the domestic netflix effect which is not just netflix, a lot of the large content providers are building or leasing their own networks, they were very specifically for their service very well. If you were if you are i wanted to start a video or other content service, we could do that. We would have to use the public internet, which is not customized for us. These companies bypassing that public internet are making the whole issue moot. The third thing i talked about was the apb affect, this is about work customers can go. Blockeder should not be going to a site that is legal. Right now, a large amount of our traffic is going over mobile phone. Largelyhone are driven through apps as opposed to browsers. The apps are designed to put up a wall, you bloody yelp, urban spoon, they have particular paces they will let you go and places they will not, the customers love it. It violates the idea that the customer should be able to go where they want to go. We have these things happen in the marketplace that are making moot some of these ideas that people want to have required through something called neutrality. If you are using netflix at home, it is coming through either cable wire or whatever wire is connected to your house. Itsding on where you are, probably not going to the public internet. Internet technology, netflix is connecting directly to the pup what we call the head in of your Cable Company or maybe your telco that you are using a Different Technology. It never goes through the public internet, its a direct and action they have prioritize. Slicing, is there a discriminatory basis rather than how it currently is structured . You might call a discriminatory, but its different. If you and i were trying to talk over the internet, first we were sending emails. The demands of those two types of services are very different. With ituters dont pair is set our rights. They can go all over the world and come back. That works just fine. It doesnt have to happen that all of the letters in the email arrive in the right order, they can come in the wrong order and your computer will target out. Talk, a voice has to travel at a particular rate. It has to be true that you have the same time im speaking, or becomes hard for us to talk. Voice has a very Different Technology demand than does any of data. Thats what 5g is trying to address, its slicing up the network so that these things that really flourished under different treatment can be treated differently. Is it a new Regulatory Environment . Yout request dont need a new Regulatory Environment. Regulators are trying to do with, as far as how should data, voice, video be treated . The customers are saying that they like when theyre playing their games to have this kind of productivity and response when im just simply browsing the web not so much, and the technologies are adapting to. Ive customers those services a year ago, the big fight was whether the fcc should give customers a right to scrap their boxes. That proposal died with the previous administration, there are more and more tv watching moving to our phones, do you example, do an think theres martello was in watching shifts to our phones and our way from traditional markets . Are we going to need new . Egulatory paradigm i dont think we need to ship out her diamond this country so much. What you are describing is a situation where customers are engaging with content across multiple platforms. Might watch something on your phone for a bit, but you get to where you are going, so you flip to a Television Set or a computer. You may engage with three or four different devices while continuing whatever it is that you are doing. In the u. S. , its pretty much all the same. You get outside the u. S. , and people are struggling with that. They very much regulate content, content coming over the internet escapes their legal mechanism. They are try to figure out how to do that, we were talking with them. Heres our customers are using it, your approach, if you want to control content is going to have to be different. Wherere moving to a place we are going to have traditional stations we pick your own videos, shows to watch, networks you want to subscribe to. What do you think it terms of the growing consolidation, at t buying time warner, verizon acquiring yahoo , what is that like to me for regulators . Are they these multiheaded Companies Like to pose a different challenge . I dont think they necessarily pose a regulatory challenge, the things it is telling us, all of these companies are trying Different Things some of these ideas succeed, some of them fail. One of the examples i try to keep in mind was many years ago, when aol and time warner were merging, there was a lot of concern over this. Messaging, they dominated instant messaging, they were going to take it to a higher level than what their content time warner were just going to control the market. Was allne year, that gone, that didnt matter at all. The merger didnt even work too well. One thing i try to keep in mind, these companies are trying to tell us there telling us whether they want to or not that the world is changing very fast they dont know where its going, nobody knows where its going. A lot of Different Things can be tried. What that means for the igulatory community, encourage the fcc to