Cspan audience, and i want to welcome them again. We are grateful that cspan is here. Im sure it has quite a bit to do with our next guest here, chairman pai, but we are glad all of you are here. So in keeping, chairman pai knows that i do this because hes been here before. Hes got an illustrious biography. I could go on and on and on about it, but weve got it in the brochure. And for those of you that are in the cspan audience, our brochure is on the website, on the homepage of the website. Its got sec chairman ajit pai bio in it. So i commend that to you but i would just say, state what everyone here knows that chairman pai serve as a commissioner prior to assuming the chairmanship of the sec. How soon after the inauguration, was that two days later . It was on a monday, january 233. So about three days after. Three days he was appointed by President Trump to be chair of the fcc. What i will say about chairman pai is this, without going over each of the particular offices which you can read about, and i pointed this out before but i think its important, hes actually serve in all three branches of government, spent a lot of time in senior positions on the hill and, of course, in the agencies over at the justice department, and i think all of those experiences are of course important and provide insights that are useful, i think. Thats a charitable explanation. I think my explanation was really the correct one, but i appreciate that. So as i said, weve actually done this before. Chairman pai and myself. And really the only difference today is i have a bigger chair here for you, because of your new office. By the way, i was looking directly at it didnt see, did you bring your weed wacker with you . I did not. I had a feeling it wouldnt travel well so i just left it at home. Okay. I mentioned that because the Free State Foundation stiff Anniversary Gala back in december when then commissioner, now chairman pai, you know, offered whats now famous illusion to the weed wacker, referring i think not to his front yard but to the regulatory underbrush at the fcc. And i noticed just last week, i think, john edgerton, the reporter at broadcasting and cable, he said in reference to your weed wacker speech, a reference to the weed wacker, he said that term quote, has gained cultural currency within and beyond communication circles. Thats quite a bit. Do you have anything else about the weed wacker you want to say before we move on . I think its probably best we move on at this point. [laughing] alright, okay. We do like to create cultural currency, things are at the Free State Foundation conference of pics i thank you for that. So ive had, as you know, ajit, weve had a House Majority whip for the same lunch conversation. We had several fcc commissioners, other notables do this conversation, but never the chairman of the fcc. So im really honored to have you here. Thank you for having me. And i do just want to say for the record really bad year that tom wheeler was chair of the commission, i did invite into, and do the same thing, or really do whatever he wanted to, and with a lot of advance notice, and he always declined. But i made a point of letting him know that he would be welcomed. I would of course be my usual polite self, but he didnt come, but im really pleased that you are here as well. We will see how this goes. I dont want to be too hasty here. You mean youre not making any promises about next time . You never know. You might get demoted cspan eight. Right now were on cspan2. For those of you who want to watch the reruns. Okay. So again a lot of us are familiar with your vital as it sits on just going to ask for questions, and this is, were going to do a lightning round, so to speak, upfront as opposed to sometimes towards the end. Because these are pretty straightforward questions. Did you always know when you were growing up that you wanted to be chairman of the fcc . [laughing] absolutely. What indian growing up in american late 70s would not say of course, the chairmanship, ive got my on it. No, never wouldve anticipated it. Even coming out of law school i did know what is going to do. I thought i would a lawyer in kansas city, and sort of testament not to my own skill and expertise but just to the power of the American Dream that someone like me or any of us really cant aspire to such heights. Its really humbling and blessing and gratifying at once probable you youngsters watching cspan right now that think when i grow up i want to be like pai. Im emphasizing one of your previous positions do you think best prepared you for the job of chairman other than serving as commissioner . Thats a good question. Ive had a number of jobs as you adverted to. Working on the hill helped me with the political calculus, judicial law clerk help med understand how federal courts interpret statutes and apply them, but the job that prepared me the most was deputy counsel. The reason i say that is twofold. Number one, from a substantive perspective it gave me a birdseye view the agency was doing and interpreting section 332, Communications Act understanding how foia and environmental law and physical law applied. That was the first time i had managed a lot of people and gave me an experience that was helpful to me when youre chief when he executive officer of the bier agency. Little did i know that the experience i would be getting would be important in this current role. Okay. Which one person has been most influential in helping your thinking regard your role in fcc . Besides you . [laughter] always a wise move. There are have been a number of people, obviously my family has been supportive. One of the great things about the job is you get to establish connections with the people that came before you and one of the connections that i have been able to make in addition to dick wiley. He was the chair during the time of great change in the industry. The teleCommunications Act was barely on the page when he ascended the chairmanship and i admire the way he led the agency and i would be very fortunate after my time is done that people mention me in the same breath. I agree. I have great fondness for the job he did. The last in this series of one questions is, what one personality trait of yours will be most important to succeeding as chairman . Personality trait. There i would say the external and externally. Externally what i would like to say i bring into the job is what is call a sense of energy in the executive. The Founding Fathers called it one of the key ingredients, leading ingredients to good government. Thats something the Agency Benefits from. I would like to think as having a chairman and commissioners who embrace the task with vigor, they put things on the agenda thats important and they move them quickly and try to create a sense of dispatch and transparency. Thats something that ive really enjoyed embracing and explaining to the outside world that i want to be active, chairman, because the role is not standing still and rules cannot standstill. I love my coworkers and its been such a privilege to work with them. Last friday with your indulgence i got email, we will see. I look forward to seeing how the agency develops, im impressed with actual knowledge and appreciation from what we all do even though in support roles like hr. Thank you for taking on the tough challenges youre facing. I admire your no nonsense approach. Those are things that lift my spirit to know i dont want to be the ceos who sits on the floor and doesnt know care about what the many members of the fcc members do. I really want them to enjoy what they do. I had a chance to meet with them. When you get up in the morning that i do and gratifying honestly to get feedback like that regardless of people might agree or disagree with a particular policy position. At tend of the day, we are all striving for Public Interest and all members of the team. If i can recognize anyone in the audience who is currently or has ever been member of fcc, if you wouldnt mind raising your hand so that i can salute you. [applause] these guys are the best. People like me get the credit, or occasionally the blame. Its just its really humbling to walk along side them in the labors. I appreciate that sentiment and i know the audience does as well. I happen to serve at the agency for three years myself, a long, long time ago. It was close in time to chairman wiley and i often tell people even even my wife sometimes that those years were some of the best professional years of my life. So i know everyone appreciates the way that youve expressed that sentiment. Thanks for that. Lets talk about making the fcc great again. [laughter] thats a joke, okay. [laughter] but lets start actually in this place. Theres a lot of has been a lot of discussion including quite a bit by you as well and michael riley, i think, too about the supposed loss of collegiality of the commission during tom wheelers years. So if you believe there was such breakdown in college the fact that there was split votes in and of itself is not evidence of any lack of god faith by your fellow commissioners, so just talk to us about what you perceived the problems if there were any in collegiality back then and then what you would like to do to restore a greater sense of collegeiality during your administration. I will say that a lot has been written about this. A lot has been said about this. I have a great deal of respect for my predecessor. Going forward, im focused on trying to create an environment in which every commissioner, stakeholder who wants to come to the agency feels that he or she can have a fair hearing and we can exchange views in collegial matter and by constitution who i am. I tend to be a pretty optimistic person. I hope they would say, at least he heard us out and explained why he was taking a different route. Thats the goal ive got Going Forward. No matter what the partisan or policy differences might b at the end of the day we have an environment thats conducive to consensus more often than not. Okay, ive asked this question almost every commissioner thats been on the chair, maybe yourself before but its relevant to the collegiality issue and ive been involved in efforts to try and change the sunshine act in some way to, you know, even aside from repealing, maybe ways to modify it that would be conducive to more collaboration or collegiality. So youve been on the commission for a long enough time that you have an opinion, what say you about the sunshine act . I think some of the provisions that you have talked about or others have talked about can be a well considered and the purpose of the sunshine act which was very well intentioned has actually worked to impede collaboration in a way that would benefit the american people. The example that i always give, when i was a commissioner in serving in the joint board, i still remember the telephone calls with a variety of state counterparts and as the time commissioner and i and no more than two of us could be on the call together, two of us would be on the call, one of the staffers says it would be 15 minutes and commissioner pai had you had to jump off and i had to get briefed on what happened with the call and random game of television. The more serious, not serious but the more intense issues on the monthly basis were the agenda items and there to three of us can get together and hash out a deal. They would have to report back to us and it was just very unsufficient process and so i think specially in digital age and specially now with some of the process reforms in terms of getting items published three weeks in advance, i would hope that congress, take a more modern, forwardlooking view if it decides to review the sunshine act. Sounds like the sunshine act runs up the telephone bill up there at the fcc the way you describe. [laughter] sticking with process a bit longer, you anticipated just now my next question, but before i ask, i do want to say this because ive been involved in other Foundation Scholars for a long time, discussing process reform and offering process reform in addition to substantive matters that we are going talk about and i have to say that in my book youre to be commended for the way that you tackled some fright the getgo. Its more common, of course, to have another committee at the commission or someone study some of these things and so at least from my part i appreciate the way that youve gotten off to a good start on process reform. And i guess, the biggest, perhaps one thats most important or at least most noted so far is the the change in the way that draft items are handled in terms of releasing them to the public and they are now released at the time the items are circulated to the commissioners, three weeks before the commission actually votes on the item, i should say the last week before the Commission Votes and thats whats called the sunshine period and there are no outside contacts during that time but the public has the draft order and when i talked about this, maybe its part of just being an oldtimer but i always, you know, had some concerns about how it would affect the commissions work and i think i even suggested doing on environmental basis and you did in a relatively short experiment but now that its been in effect, really, what we all want to know is how do you think thats working what was considered this radical reform really because it was considered pretty radical before it was done, but specifically when youre answering the question, talk about whether its putting an additional burden on the Communications Staff or the commissioners themselves or has this new practice has changed the nature or quality of the presentations to the commission and the commissions decisionmaking process as youve observed it so far . I think by in large its been a fantastic success. I never understood why the agency would only let the American Public see what it was doing after it had actually done it. To me it was a simple analogy to the hill, before that bill was voted on, before its referred to the committee, you will get the see the legislation on the internet and everyone can understand what it is and debate it. It seems to me that the fcc should take the same step with respect to the issues that the fcc puts on the agenda. For years, i talked about it. The world has gone on. Things have actually worked out just fine and in fact, i hear from the most heartening emails i get are from people who typically dont follow our proceedings, dont work in the field so much but citizens out there in the country say, thanks for publishing. At least i can see now what you were actually doing and so there the openness and transparency has been significant and i dont think its too much to ask for us and i dont think its been a burden. Instead of hush conversation which you have the parties, we heard this might be in paragraph and you can deny this. You can describe what was nonpublic information. I cant confirm it or deny it but you might be on the right track of wink, wink, nod, nod. For the staff, the burden has changed. I wouldnt say its increased but it has changed. Previously, what would typically happen is the staff would work really hard to get an item together and circulated by the chairman three weeks in advance and then the staff would just wait for a weekend and then two weeks and sometimes even almost three weeks for it to get direction from the floor as to how the items are going to change. Sometimes it would change pretty significantly and i felt sorry for the staff, the 11th hour at 10 00 p. M. Right before meeting the majority of the commissioners are going on the opposite and thats when the fccs decisionmaking can run into trouble, legally speaking that you often see problematic issues pop up at the 11th hour because you are putting stuff in there without thinking through all the implications and its hard for the staff to think through, if we do this here, what does it mean for issues like this. I would like to think the staffs work is front load sod in the weeks leading off to three weeks before the fcc meeting they work exceptionally hard, all of our bureaus work exceptionally hard to get the item in shape. If im asking fellow commissioners to vote on something in may or june or whatever, the item that we post three weeks in advance, should be publicly ready for prime time, so to speak, and they do a terrific job of doing it. I know its harder on the front end but in the back end they dont have latenight marathons where theyre not sure where the direction is going to be and not sure how late they will have to stay. The end result is good for everybody. At least youll know exactly what is in paragraph 78 or footnote 332 or whatever. You have orders that dont get up to footnotes 332. [laughter] i want to say here, i was thinking as you were talking that i know commissioner riley has championed the change that you were talking about so i want to give a shotout to him and i know that you share that sentiment, im sure. Absolutely. Lets shift from the process matters to substantive matters. As im doing that, i just want to call your attention, weve got a few copies left in our inventory that are out at the desk. You may have heard me say it before but i really do mean it this time. Two books, new directions and communications policies, written published in 2009 and then in 2012, Communications Law and policy in the digital age. So this is five years old now and they are actually on sale for 10. Thats not the reason that i bring them up although you may want to you may want to grab a copy but a lot of the ideas that are in these two books, both publish bid Caroline Academic press, concerned matter that is we are going to be talking about Net Neutrality and broadband deployment and the substantive issues, theyre actually, you know, discussed by freestate Foundation Scholars, in these books, and i guess i will say this because the administration that has been in place after the books were published, theyre still timely. Not a lot of the things that we recommended necessarily have been adopted but, you know, im hopeful that you can help make these books less timely and so we can move to some others. Before discussing specific issues, i want to just have you talk about your regulatory philosophy as a backdrop to that and i thought your remarks at the mobile world conference back in february were worthwhile reading for anyone that wants to understand really how you think about regulatory policy, so you said then, quote, in the United States we are in the process of returning to light touch to the light touch approach to re