Guest today those industries are themselves facing new insurgent challenges. So i think thats the changes taking place. Host so everybody yous up. Were, as you said, seeing a whole new crop of businesses in online video growing up. Do you foresee a time when those new industries themselves become incumbent, and what does that look like when they do . Guest oh, golly, brian, my crystal ball is foggy in terms of what things look like. But i think you stated it correctly that everybody grows up. Host chairman wheeler, let me guest let me go back for one second. Steve case has a great new book out host third wave. Guest third wave in which he talks about the technological steps, hes now saying that theres a third stage, and the third stage is that you have to build on what has been done before, that policy issues become even more important at that point in time k and its now not just the idea, its how do you build a successful business and consumer service. And thats kind of the reality everybodys in right now. So in the ways that youve to pointed out, you know with, the cable industry and the cellular industries in a lot of ways have worked to foreclose new entrants and competition. Could you, could these new entrants themselves become barriers to competition in the future . Guest so what we want to try and create is a Regulatory Environment in which competition is allowed to thrive. You know, i dont think you want to play the hypothetical game about could this happen or could that that happen, but this is what were trying to create. Is there something fundamentally different about online video as compared to whats come before capable cable and other forms of technologies . Guest ing well, thats a really good question, brian. I dont think the difference is, obviously, the video. [laughter] its still this on the screen, and theyre using digital instead of tape now, but those are technical differences. There is more of it. And what you want to make sure happens is to, is to allow for the distribution of that video which will then encourage the production of that video. And that was kind of that was one of the concepts behind our open Internet Order. That, you know, theres this virtuous circle here that producing material drives demand for the network. The better the network gets, the more room there is for producing material which drives and were existing in that kind of an environment right now. Host chairman wheeler, a lot of people who dont support the open Internet Order have said its a solution looking for a problem. That the internet has grown up without Net Neutrality regulations, and its been highly successful. Guest i think the reality is that we need to make sure that networks are open, fast and fair. And that the success of the internet is the fact that it was a home more permissionless innovation, and people could say ive got an idea, let me go deliver it, and here is this wonderful broadband pathway. The fact that there are gatekeepers there then which are those who provide internets connectivity raises the question, okay, how do you maintain that kind of open access to consumers and consumers open access to the web . And the answer there is to say, okay, were going to have a rule that says its going to be open and that that then drives this kind of virtuous circle i was talking about. Host and just to follow up, has the mission of the fcc changed given everything thats been changing in the industry . Guest oh, golly, you know, ive been hanging around the fcc as you indicated for, like, 40 years. I can guarantee you its changed multiple times over those decades. And i hope it continues to evolve. Because the job of the fcc is to be the advocate for consumers in a vast, in a vastly changing environment. And the open Internet Order and in particular with regard to the general conduct standard, you have essentially weve seen a lot of questions about this program that a company has come out with or that program that a company has come out with. Doesnt hasnt the fcc just put itself in the position of having to have a position on every single little thing that comes up, and doesnt that create the opportunity for inconsistent rulings and, you know, precedents that could allow certain behaviors to get through a loophole . Guest thats a good question. But what weve tried to do is just the opposite, is not to be judgmental. Weve tried, you know, it used to be you talk about has the fcc changed. When i first got involved at the fcc, it was very directional and detailed. You will do this. We will look at your books for this. Youll have these kinds of directors. It was very, very specific in terms of what it did. And in the open Internet Order, we have a very different kind of approach where instead of preemptively saying we know beth, weve said you want to have a couple of concepts. You want to have an internet where there is no blocking, no throttling, no paid prioritization, and consumers know what theyre getting. Transparency. And then you put a referee on the field. And the referee has the ability to look at circumstances and throw the flag if necessary. And thats an entirely different approach to what the fcc used to be. And i think thats the kind of approach that encouragings in this kind of permissionless innovation that i was talking about a minute ago. Well, some of your republican colleagues have pointed out that some of you know, this approach could lead to uneven enforcement and the sort of, kind of ambiguity surrounding regulation that creates business uncertainty. So every company in the world would like to have certainty and a monopoly. You have got the telephone business used to be run. Markets are inherently uncertain. We are engaging in an activity that allows markets to be markets. Yes, thats uncertainty. But what we want to make sure happens is that, as i say, theres a ref rue, theres somebody referee, theres somebody in a striped shirt that knows, no, thats not right. So with one of these issues that youve been looking at on a casebycase basis has been zero rating and data caps. I wonder, you met with companies such as comcast and at t on these programs. Did those meetings satisfy your questions, or do you still have outstanding questions remaining for these companies . Guest well, i wasnt actually your staff, right. Do you or your agency still have that standing question . Guest and i think what were in the process of doing right now is trying to sort through all of the information. And by the way, it wasnt just the meeting with companies. There are, you know, a lot of consumer representatives and advocates for other positions including other companies who also wanted to heat with us and share their to meet is us and share their points of view. Thats kind of, you know, the fcc ought to be the crucible where all of these things come together. So i was saying to somebody the other day in this concept of the Public Interest which is in our statute and is our responsibility, as everybody gets more sophisticated in how they present their arguments, its, you know, well, the Public Interest always with me. Im, you know, and if you dont do this, the Public Interest wont be served. Im trying to say how do we rook rook look for a concept where the Public Interest means the public good . Thats why we want to create this crucible where we try and seek out what is the common good. Host mr. Chairman, i know you dont like hypotheticals, but im going to propose one anyway. Twice the Net Neutrality regulations put out by the fcc have been overturned. Its in court right mow. What happens if your position goes down again . Guest youre right, i dont like hype net9 calls. But im hypotheticals. But im, you know, i have all the respect in the world for the court and the judgment that they make. I feel pretty confident in the outcome. If you go back to the last court decision, one of the things you said was, wait a minute, youre imposing common carrierlike requirements, and weve taken that issue off the table, so well see how the court decides. Host december, 2014, Gautham Nagesh had a front page article in the wall street journal detailing the White House Working Group on Net Neutrality regulations. I dont think ive ever herald you respond to what you heard you respond to what you saw, what you read in that article. Was it accurate, in your view, and was it a separate track from what you were doing at the fcc . Guest to tell you the truth, i dont remember the details of the article. The white house always runs its own process. But were an independent agency that was running our process. The fccs been looking at the terms and the tariffs associated with the business broadband market. Is there enough competition in this spacesome and, you know, do Cable Companies who are getting more into enterprise, broadband and data, do they represent additional competition, or are they simply more of the same . Guest i think youve asked a really good question to which my response is going to be stay tuned because were about to put out a proposal on this. But right now is a premature time to talk about that. Host november 2013 guest boy, you keep pulling up all of these old dates. Where was i, okay. [laughter] november 2013, you were confirmed as chairman of the fcc. Guest yes, correct. Host what was your agenda at that point . Did you have an agenda . Guest thats a really good question because i had been, you know, held up in being confirmed in the senate for about since months. And so for about six months. So while we were waiting, we were able to say, okay, what are the kinds of things that we would like to do. And so, yes, we arrived with an agenda, and i think youve seen that play out. Host what havent you gotten to . Guest oh, you know, i would, i would love to see the incentive auction get completed. The process is now started. I would love to see us get through the kinds of issues that brian just raised. I would love to see us resolve the privacy issue, the cable settop box issue. But when you look back, i mean, there are a lot of things that have been happening since november of 2014. When you came into office, you had the things that you wanted to get done. Be at that time, you know, the comcast time warner merger was not an issue, Net Neutrality had yet to become an issue. Guest right. Did those take you by surprise . Did those issues, did they come on your radar at a time when you were trying to get other thingses donesome. Guest so, you know, we always knew that the Net Neutrality issue was before the court and something could happen that would dump it back in our laps. Obviously, i didnt know anything about the comcast or have any anticipation of the comcast deal. But, you know, one of the things about this job that makes it really fun is that ill guarantee you that every day something happens that i wasnt expecting. [laughter] sometimes theyre bigger than others. But its one of the things that makes it interesting. Host chairman wheeler, your colleague, ajit pai, was recently on this program, and i want to play just a little bit of videotape and get you to respond to what he had to say. Guest it is unfortunate theres been a partisan divide at the commission, and its especially dispiriting over the past 14 months that weve seen such partisan rancor, unprecedented in scope. Weve seen more party line votes than we had in the previous 43 years. Thats unfortunate because these issues are not typically politicized. Host and i know he said this on the dais with you there. Guest right. So, i mean, the reality is that there are intelligent, dedicated, strongwilled individuals, five of us, and people have their own opinions. But the way that the system has been set up is, is there a majority that comes together to make a decision. And, you know, the answer is there has been. Host do you think that you should be allowed to meet with two other commissioners in private to have a discussion . Guest ing you know, its a really interesting situation that we have. Just to clarify that three commissioners cant sit down alone for fear that they would bypass the process. Is it frustrating . Yes. Might there be some efficiencies that could be gained . Possibly. Is there a need for urgent change . Its working. I mean, i am you know with, when it comes to all of the procedural issues at the commission, i mean, im kind of a traditionalist that the rules that we are living by today are the rules that have been in place for decades. And theyve worked. What would it be like to be a democratic chairman or a democratic commissioner under a republican president . [laughter] guest i dont know. Do you anticipate staying on as chairman if the election after the election . Guest i think its too long a time away to make a decision like that today. I mean, lets just, lets see what develops. I mean, the question was posed at a recent senate heari, and you declined to answer then guest so im being consistent. But we are nearing, nearing the election and, you know, there is pressure building in the political sphere. Host and you mentioned you are a riggsalist. So traditionalist. So would you follow tradition . Guest what did i say at that hearing . I said i fully understood what tradition was, but that it was too early to make a firm commitment. Host is it because it makes you a lame duck automatically . Guest i just think its early. [laughter] you know . I mean, were, were ten months away from a new inauguration. Okay . Well deal with things as we get closer to that. Host mr. Chairman, how would you describe Congress Interest in the fcc proceedings and the potential for a rewrite of the telecom act . Guest is so congress is so congress is very interested in the work of the fcc. Im not the guy that can make the decision about a rewrite. You need to speak to the chairman of the committees about that. But, you know, i can remember my days representing the industry that congress was interested then, and theyre clearly interested today. Lets talk about something that is reasonably within your control and something that you dealt with early on in your tenure as chairman. Should consumers be allowed to use cellular telephones on airplanes . Guest so thats a, thats a question that gets divided into two participant, brian. Parts, brian. The first part is that we have responsibility for how the networks operate. And the fcc had for years had a rule in place that said you couldnt use a device on a plane because it would interfere with the terrestrial networks downstairs on the ground. New technology came along that captured the cellular on the plane which is why you can do wifi on the plane today and, therefore, wasnt interfering on the ground. So we said, okay, if youve got that new technology on the plane and its not interfering, thats fine. That doesnt have anything to do with whether you can make a phone call. And ive been pretty outspoken that i dont want to be at 35,000 feet listening to some person next to me yakking away on on the phone. But thats not our rule. Thats rules that get made by the faa. So we handle the technical side of things, and the faa is preparing a proceeding to deal with the consumer side of things. You faced a lot of public backlash in response to that issue when it came up. Did that take you by surprise, and what did you learn from that experience . Guest so i think that was an issue of we failed, i failed at the outset to define what was going on as i just did, that heres our scope of responsibility, and heres other scopes of responsibility. And did i earn from it . Learn from it . Sure. I hope im learning every day. I think for consumers that early experience may have tinged how they viewed you early on x. As your tenure moved forward, i think, you know, a lot of people were surprised by some of the decisions you made especially around Net Neutrality and the specifics around Net Neutrality. Do you feel like people underestimated you . [laughter] guest look, the job that ive got, which is a great job, is to look at a set of challenges and to try and figure out what the best path forward is representing the american consumer. They can make up they their owns about and they to, you know . [laughter] i hear. But, you know, im i dont know the answer to that. Host you mentioned that overall you look at your job as to increase or promote competition in the telecommunications guest competition, competition, competition. Host there you go. Where does the privacy issue fit into that, and what are your early thoughts . Guest so, you know, for as long as my of us can remember as any of us can remember, we all had an expectation of privacy on the phone insurance. The fact that i was calling air france was not information that the phone company should be able to turn around and sell to hotels in paris or tour agencies or things like this. It was private information of the to consumer. The question is when you go to the internet and youre going to the air france web site, why should that be different . And so what weve been with saying been saying is that weve put a proposed rule that says its the consumers information. And the consumer has the right to make the decision as to whether he or she wants that information to be packaged and sold by the network. There are many pieces that folks will want that. Terrific. Thats their decision. Because its their information. Host so lets take that another step and talk about is settop boxes and privacy. Some have called in the google bill or the google legislation or regulation. Because then google can sell ads around what youre watching. Guest no. The rules say, the proposed rules say that you have to maintain the content, and you cant substitute commercials, you cant put windows around it. And one of the nice things about the process that we go through is that we specifically propose some language. And if that language isnt good enough, then tell us how to fix it. Because we dont want google doing that. We respect privacy. We respect these assets that are owned by programmers and the cable company. Were just trying to follow the statutory mandate that Congress Gave us. Not a maybe you should think about in this thou shalt mandate saying that consumers should have choices in terms of the navigation devices that they use on their cable or satellite system. And the situation that exists today that 99 of cable consumers dont have that choice. Host and thats one of the final pillar, actually, of the telecom act of 96, isnt it . The settop boxes . Guest well, or it was a key component host right. Guest that you want to have navigation device competition, was the well host we have time for one more question, brian. At that point, on a r