Host senator mark pryor is joining us for the chair of the commerce subcommittee on Communications Technology and the internet. Senator pryor or full Committee Approved tom wheeler to be sec nominee. Senator cruise your colleague is talked about putting a hold on that nomination. Is there any word on that right now . Guest let me first say thank you for having me on. Its great to be on the show and let me say thank you to cspan for all the publicinterest broadcasting they do. Its great and i know you dont believe this but people people say i saw you on cspan so i want to thank cspan. Let me get back to the tom wheeler nomination. Basically there is a sentiment within the senate that we ought to compare this with the republican nominee. The republicans would like to have a republican to go alongside to the process. The problem is we have not at least officially and i hear rumors but officially we have not received a republican name of who they would like to nominate so i understand maybe in the process and i dont know the whole status and havent been officially notified that nonetheless hopefully we will get this done quick way. Hopefully senator rockefeller has said publicly and said in a hearing that he wants to expedite that and get it through as quickly as possible. My view is its kind of a Senate Courtesy i think if we can do it in such a way that it doesnt delay too long a time for tom wheeler to take over. Thats okay but if its going to take a long time it will be protracted i would try to get tom wheeler on. Host one of the concerns senator cruz had was political speech at the fcc. Guest i dont necessarily share that concern. Thats a hard job to be on the fcc and i think people the mars appreciated but its one of those jobs were as difficult to make everyone happy and oftentimes when he you do something you dont make anyone happy. I just dont see them weighing in on the political speech. I dont think its a big agenda item for anyone but certainly it is something they could do conceivably that i dont see them doing that. My view is likely have to have a wellfunctioning fcc. Lets get the chairman and there and lets get rolling again as many commissioners as possible and if we get the republican on quickly lets her do that and if we do a together thats fine. I dont have a big objection to that but i like fully functioning agencies and boards and commissions. Host senator pryor i wanted to ask you about Senate Hearings youve been holding the subcommittee. Whats the goal of these hearings in d. C. Legislative action coming from them . Guest possibly and for your viewers who arent that familiar with the communications , Communications Technology, Communication Technology and internet subcommittee i was was garbling doubt that the cpi subcommittee, we have had a series and we started the congress with a series of four we call them state of hearings and so we have the state of rural telecom. We have the state of Wireless Telecom and Wireline Telecom and the fourth one lets see i will have to think about what that is but nonetheless the idea is to group we have a lot of new subcommittee members, about 25 or 30 are new. Lets hear from industry and hear from all all the stakeholders and try to get everybody acclimated to the issues and understand where all the issues are and get the state of play. That is what what we call the the state appearing so once we get these for done which we have then we can move forward. The status video was the fourth. The status video. Once we get these for done than we have laid the groundwork to really look at legislation. The one thing the subcommittee has to do by the end of next year is stella which is the satellite reauthorization. It sounds like your audience is a pretty sophisticated audience on telecom and all the things about all this so they probably know what stella is but its the Satellite Telecommunications law if you get dish or one of the other networks, Satellite Networks than stella is going to govern. The question is do we do a clean reauthorization . Do we just kind of basically roll it over and make changes to modernize and the date or do we actually start getting into some policy . That is really the question. I think what im hearing mostly from the committee and the subcommittee is they would like to do it clean reauthorization but again you have to understand that this is one of those rare bills where he can have joint jurisdiction between us and the Senate Judiciary committee so we will have to work with their public on the judiciary and the house has two committees there. This is going to be a four step process instead of a twostep process. Host joining our conversation with senator pryor is Gautham Nagesh bliss cq roll call. Guest equal reference the state of the Wireline Committee hearing. What is the state of wireline medications and how does the universal concept of universal concept plan todays concert where wireless internet, wireless Broadband Internet perhaps more important to their landline . Guest youve touched on three or four very important issues that deal with wireline. First the Wireline Network is the backbone of our communications. We need wireless. There is no doubt. If you have a cell phone in a call from washington d. C. To San Francisco at some point its going to go over a landbased system. You dont talk wirelessly all across the country. Its happened to it cell tower. Wires not just into the home but the wire system is the back on that is criticallcriticall y important. The other thing you mentioned before is there is this big transition going on now. You mentioned wireless and it is huge. If you look at the numbers clearly you see the trend lines but also there is the ip transition as well, the internet protocol transition where a lot of the incumbent carriers are saying what clear getting away from the traditional copper wire , the traditional telephony that we think of has been regulated as family for decades. We need a new generation of regulation which basically what they would like to see is no regulation or very little or very light regulation. So with your traditional phone like when we all grew up in arkansas but didnt realize it at the time but southwestern bell was my local carrier. They had obligations. They were the carrier of last resort. They had other obligations. They had a monopoly. The monopolies are kind have gone, i mean they are gone kind of but so some of these Companies Want to come in and say we are doing this ip transition. Lets just get away from regulations and get rid of all these obligations. That concerns me and impact that may be the subject of the hearing in our subcommittee at some point. We havent announced or even decided that we are looking at that because this issue really came up during wireline hearings we have had and i think its an issue for discussion. Guest you also touched on another aspect of this which is the traditional phone line system because of the regulations attached to it is far more reliable or perhaps resilient in the face of natural disasters and some of the issues we have seen with Cell Phone Networks in areas affected by natural disasters. Do you think theres any possibility for congress to act in that area to require wireless carriers to take on some the same responsibilities that Landline Services used to have . Guest i think thats one thing the subcommittee and the full committee and the senate can talk about that. You are right. When you were asking the question i was thinking of examples in arkansas where we have had bad thunderstorms or tornadoes or an ice storm or Something Like that that have knocked the power lines down. We go without power but are landline still works. Their redundancy is a good thing in a natural disaster. We have seen oftentimes when your power goes out if your power goes out in the wrong places than your cell phone has power if you have a better but you cant connect anywhere because the towers are down. We have seen that in a lot of the natural disasters. We need to build and that redundancy. We need to make sure that our phone system works. Maybe especially in times of emergency but thats something we really need to focus on. The other thing you havent mentioned yet which is critical is Rural America. You mentioned we had a hearing on Rural America. The economics of Rural America really havent changed. Its just like back in the old days we couldnt get electricity in Rural America. They couldnt get Telephone Service and a lot of this is changing. There is a lot of change in this world and we just made need to make sure that Rural America is not left out. Guest i drove home to michigan this week and i couldnt help but knows precisely what you are referring to which is the cell phone coverage varies greatly and obviously the rural areas are the areas where it is not a strong. What can be done about this . We do have things shifted to wireless but most of it is going towards wired rodkin so what can be done in the wireless space . Guest well this is something i think the fcc has grappled with and the house and senate have grappled with this. I dont think we have a clear answer in terms of a clear consensus but a lot of what we talk about here is money. The economics of providing Rural Wireless are just not as good as they are in urban areas. We just have the density population and the density of paying customers. If you go to Rural America we have places in arkansas where you are driving 10, 20, 30 miles before you see another house and of course the montana you drive 100 or 200 miles before you see another house or in alaska you may drive 1000 miles before you see another house. These are all challenges in the economics dont work to provide stateoftheart wireless in these areas because so that is why things like the universal service and others that we have other names for but basically the same thing, that is why thats so important. We need to make sure that those folks in Rural America dont get behind. We dont want a tale of two countries where you have the urban and suburban over overhearing the latest and greatest and cuttingedge in Rural America are using two generations ago technology. That doesnt work. We need to connect Rural America. Host senator pryor d. C. Reform legislation coming . Guest there again this is another thing we should have a hearing on because we spend a lot of time on usf. Ill bet you one third of the witnesses at these four hearings in one way or another mentioned usf in talking about how the universal service fund and again there may be different names for it as it changes and transitions itself but nonetheless that usf that universal service fund which basically means everybody pays a little bit into a fund in that fund goes to help customers usually in Rural America but it could be low income customers, whatever. We want to make sure everybody can connect. My view of this is if you think about american history, initially when the first europeans to her scam they had to be on the coast because they had to connect with trade and communications back to europe. As time went on he could settle on rivers. If you look at the cities today almost call of them, almost all of them not every single one but the big cities almost all of them are near big rivers. That is because that is how the Country Group because they were on the river system. Then when the steam engine came along and paddle boats and men could have more control over that in them with the railroads that there was a time that if you are not on a railroad you might as well not exist. Yorktown would just drop. We have seen out in the history of our state and every other state and now since i have been around its been the interstates. Anybody who wants Economic Development you have to have interstate. Todays broadband. Its that one extra piece that you have to have or youre just not going to get jobs in certain places. Its important for state like arkansas to do things like telemedicine and other things we can provide some Services Like health care services. Some of those services to the rural areas of our state with the greatest golfers in the world because you can connect via broadband. Theres a huge amount of power and thats a great thing and that is why we need to make sure rural eric americas left out. Host when it comes to wireless communication and services is there enough competition in your view and can the senate do anything to increase that competition . Guest are you saying wireline or wireless . To. Host wireless. Guest thats a hypercompetitive industry and they just beat up on each other all the time. The truth is its very competitive in most areas of the country. There are numerous wireless carriers in most area areas but also at t and verizon are great at what they do and they have played by the rules and run their market share. What happens is you have kind of everybody else make sup bat i think we want to make sure that their competitor which is a conglomeration of companies and we know some of their names and a lot of the names or regional names or local names that we dont really know but they are in there fighting hard and trying to provide services well. We need to make sure that level, the Playing Field is level so everyone can compete because that people that say i like regulations, the answer to that is competition. If you have real competition that is robust that is fair and want to get a competitive advantage you cant just dominate that if you have fair competition that is the answer to regulation. Have good fair competition and a good marketplace where consumers have a lot of choice. Host youre watching the Communicators Program on cspan. Senator mark pryor is the chair of the Communications Technology and internet. Our guest reporter this week is Gautham Nagesh with cq roll call. Guest guest senator you refer to broadband as being vital to the future especially for rural areas of india believe that broadband should be something that every household has access to either through some sort of usf subsidy or program similar . Que . Que x. Guest i would like to see that. Traditionally we pretty much have that policy in this country for telephone. Every household basically have the right to have access to Telephone Service. I am sure didnt work out in some percentage of the cases. There will always be those heart to serve difficult areas but i too think trying to get broadband to as many houses as possible and the right level of broadband, not some fly by night tv type service but something that people can actually have access to and use it. You know how it is. Not everybody wants it. I know people that dont have the internet and they dont want it but the number of people who dont are very small. Most wanted and they love it and they continue to rely on it. Its important for business and important for the way they communicate now. Things like facebook and twitter or whatever happens to be, web sites. That is how people communicate and that is how grandparents stand touch with her grandchilgrandchil dren and things like that. Thats one of the beautiful things about all this technology in america. If you put it out there we will find ways to do things that are simply amazing. Things that didnt exist years ago. Guest now, while broadband is increasingly popular Adoption Remains in the 60 , 60s basically. Cost is cited as a major reason. Do you think anything can be done about that . I think consumers are familiar with the fact that broadband costs continue to rise and in some cases performance rises. What is your view of that . Guest i do think that thats a real problem. If you look at a state like mine and arkansas is not unique but we have a lot of people that are low income and its hard for them to afford that monthly Internet Service provider fee. They just cant do it. That is actually a concern i have with some of the things that we have heard where people say for example we were talking about landline phones a few minutes ago jumping back to the previous topic. Some people say well instead of having a landline lets just have wireless. Thats great in the abstract but how much is that going to cost a person . Right now you can probably get a landline phone in Rural America for 10, 15, 20 a month. It would be hard to find a wireless plan in a lot of places that cheap. We need to look at the cost to the consumer and go back to what you you were saying a moment ago. Thats a real fact there in the rate of take people taking the internet. First you have to have a computer and i know computer costs have gone way down and get a whole lot more for less today but still there is a cost. If you are low income person you dont have an extra five, 600, 700 or thousand dollars laying around to buy some gizmo a laptop or tablet. Anyway its a in the funding will be a challenge. We just need to make sure we get as much access out there as possible and we dont leave anyone behind. Host senator pryor one of your colleague senator mccain has introduced his cable bill. Guest i knew that was going to come up. Host speaking of costs how do you feel about that . Guest i appreciate senator mccain. He has filed an a la carte bill every year since ive been in the senate and he feels passionately about it. I think we have to look at it. We have to consider it but i also think we are seeing a market change there as well b