I can tell you that i have personally voted on the matter, but it is still before us, so i have to be careful on exactly what i say about such a proceeding. Host now, when you say you have voted on the matter guest yes. Host but you still have to be careful, how did you vote . Guest that part is to be released at a certain time period. So all of that information will come forward in the next couple of week withs, i assume. Host when in general, then, when we talk about a merger or some type of activity like that, putting conditions on such a whats your philosophy behind it . Guest so my approach to mergers is similar to a number of republican viewpoints that we have certain charges in the statute. They are for the review of whether the transfer of licenses between parties. Youre transferring wireless licenses in this case. You have a number of wireless licenses that the Different Companies own and hold, and theyll be transferring them to the new merged company. And that review, something that were required to do to make sure that the new party is able to hold the licenses, qualified to hold them and have sufficient, meet our statute, chew story requirements statutory requirements from having the licenses. From that other people realize the statute in a way that provides other opportunities for different reviews of the merger itself. Some people some past commissions have looked at whether what is the impact of the merrier on the local market in and of itself and where they compete, where the Companies Compete amongst themselves, and others stretch the conversation even further to be generally whatever they see fit at the given moment. And that yets you gets you a broad universe of what can be potentially conditions for the merger. And it depends on how a particular commission approaches the issue. Host commissioner orielly, do wired and wireless organizations, do they get treated the same at the fcc or should they . Guest they do not today. In some services they are. In some instances they are actually for instance, we treat them the same versus our net neutral the city rules which i dont agree with, but let me treat them were other purposes. It is a bifurcated approach because of the statute. We have a law that congress has enacted and that governs how we operate, but a lot of it is our own doing. Id like to see an opportunity to bring greater parity between the two but also respect the fact that wireless is different. It does have different characteristickings. You have characteristics. You have to obtain spectrum whether through an auction, and you have to build infrastructure thats different than a wired company. Host well, were going to bring Howard Buskirk of Communications Daily into this conversation right away, but first i want to play some videotape. Guest sure. Host this is commissioner chairman tom wheeler who was on this program a couple weeks ago talking about management of the fcc. Guest 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 best, weve said you want to have a couple of concepts. You want of 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 encourages this kind of permissionless innovation that i was talking about a minute ago. Host what do you think about what he had to say . Guest well, i disagree with his last with most of what he had to say, but certainly the last part, with permissionless innovation. The Net Neutrality item which i kid not support for i did not support for numerous reasons, i think it decreased innovation on the internet and what the internet is going to grow to be. Right now under the structure that the chairman has probe posed and has been adopted, now being challenged inside court, you have like he described three bright line rule, and then you have this other category of a jump ball. He describes it as a referee on the field. The problem is we have no idea what the rules of the game are. Its whenever the bureau or the chairman feels like it. Thats not a mechanism to produce certainty in the marketplace, and its not a mechanism that produces information. Weve seen this today at the commission in a number of different instances. One in particular is the zero rating item and its where that issue has been reviewed and is being currently reviewed by two different bureaus with no rules of the road, no guidelines on how the investigation will go and when it will end. And well just have to see what that plays out. And that leaves too much authority into, basically, employees of the federal government trying to review what technology should be going forward. Host Howard Buskirk. You were a critic of that order right from the beginning and very strong on it more than a year ago, in february of 2015 when it was approved. After the period of time this much later what do you think has been the net effect of the order . Are you seeing any bad effects on business so far . Guest well, a couple. One is the practices of the carriers, the providers that were supposedly, you know, going to be the bad behavior was not happening beforehand and is not happening now. So i dont know that that item actually changed behavior on that side of the equation. We have seen companies and ive talked to company who have changed their decisions, their investments and their rollout of products based on the rules itself. So some innovation is not happening because of those rules. The third part i would say is that those rules are being challenged in court. Were expecting a decision any day now, and that will help provide some guidance even though i do believe the decision will still be challenged to the Supreme Court of the United States. That will provide some guidance on whether the commission was inbounds or out of bounds and, therefore, whether those rules are allowed to stay. If theres a negative decision from the court, negative from the standpoint of those who want to see the rules stand, that that could be a dominant issue for the rest of the administration, dont you think . Do you think thats going to take over the rest of the agenda if the rules are rejected to any extent . Guest well, it depends on what the ruling is, and i hate to predict what a court may or may not do. It depends on the scope of the review if its done on procedural grounds, but if its done on it actually is done on the merits themselves which i think has a great chance to happen, then you may find that it will have an impact on our decisions that are potentially pending. Because a lot of those decisions are tied into the authorities that we have captured by our Net Neutrality decision. Okay. And i also wanted to since we saw the chairman, theres a lot of people who feel that relations are quite bad at the fcc right now among the commissioners. Id like to ask you to comment on that. Guest sure. So i have, ive commented on this in the past and have made the point that i believe its basically something that happens on an itembyitem or issuebyissue approach. Sadly, i actually dont think thats the case anymore. And its not a personalitydriven approach. Tom and i, chairman wheeler and i get along fine as people. But when but the direction from fcc leadership including the chairman to take the most aggressive, leftist approach to policy making, these little ground when that becomes the first, primary goal of the item, when the policy direction that they want to go becomes the first goal rather than any consideration of any collegiality or any kind of attempt to bring or develop consensus, you wind up with the scenario we have today. When theres little interest in bringing my opinions onboard, youre going to find im less likely to be supportive, and im going to express my views. Does it feel to you like its been a general, gradual deterioration of relationships at the commission . Guest yes, i think thats probably fair. I still maintain positive relationships with my colleagues, but i think overall theres a fairly tense, you know, feeling at the commission. Were waiting for a number of Court Decisions that will settle some of the ground. We have only so many more months left of this particular administration, and i think people are trying to figure out what the next Administration May look like and what how that may be structured and how, you know, the different commissioners may or may not stay. Host commissioner orielly, theres a little bit of a kerfuffle going on in the senate regarding one of your colleagues, commissioner rosenworcel. Do you think that she should be confirmed for a full second appointment . Guest well, ive said positive things and put out a press release to that effect when her nomination was sent by the president to the senate, but e leave the legislating and the nominating process to my friends and colleagues and to the senators in the body. They know best. Thats their job, its not mine. Ive put out some thoughts. Shes been a great colleague of mine, and the senate will have to decide whether she should stay. Host and you mentioned it being an Election Year. Does that curtail some of your activity at the fcc much like since its an Election Year, we dont know whos going to be the president next year, whos going to be in the administration . Guest in my past experience the answer would be generally, yes. Past instances of an Election Year you saw the commission slow down as you got closer to an election day. I actually dont know if thats going to occur this go around. Chairman wheeler has a fairly broad and strong agenda that he tends to want to move in the next many months. And so i think were going to proceed through those items and, therefore, there wont be too much of a rest as we get closer to election day. As he says, he wants to run through the tape, and i think thats i may not agree with the items that are moving forward, but i think were going to be fairly busy. Host and one more election question. Guest sure. Host Hillary Clinton was recently in west virginia, and she mentioned how her cell phone would drop, and she was unconnected. To use an old term, do we still have a do we have a Digital Divide in this country, and what can, if so, what can be done . Guest so we still have parts of america that are not connected whether they be on the wireless side or the broadband side. I have spent a great deal of my time, and my colleagues as well n trying to figure out how to address those issues. Where are those pockets, where are those places where service is not being provided, what is the breakdown of what is the problem . How do we best address it . We have a funding mechanism that the federal Communications Commission runs, the universal service. Its going to run about 11 billion this year, and were trying to figure out how to spend those or dollars in an efficient manner. We get those dollars from the rate payers of america who pay as part of their telephone bill for that purpose. So i try to be solid stewards of that dollar and make sure it goes as far as possible. So we have a number of different programs that we run to try to expand the existing network to all people in the United States as best as possible. Host do you think its been well, do you think youve been good stewards . Guest there are parts of the program that i think have done very well, and there are other parts that i think have not lived up to what is expected. Weve also expanded two of the programs of the four fairly substantially. One of the programs had substantial fraud, waste and abuse existing, and we didnt fully, in my opinion, address those issues before expanding the program to broadband, that being the lifeline program. So i think that theres still some problems that need to be addressed. We are not getting the maximum benefit for the dollar being collected. One of the things i wanted to ask you about is youve been in washington since the early 90s. To what extent dueck some of the fighting do you think some of the fighting at the fcc is reflective of sort of the broader divisions in washington and a more deeply partisan congress . Does that trickle over to the fcc . Guest i dont believe so. I worked for members of congress for many years, and that is you know, those fights come and go. It depends on the cycle, depends on the leadership, depends on their tone. Ive left that body two of and a half years ago. I think the commission traditionally has run in a fairly straightforward manner. If people are willing to work together, i have tried to be as collegial as possible and try and find common ground. If people are willing to do that, you can sidestep any particular problems. The difficulty is that if you, if the leadership, the majority has a particular outcome that they want and are pushing as hard as they can for that notwithstanding my views or my colleagues views, ajit pai, the other republican, if those views are side sidestepped, its hard to find commonality. It is about how is the commission being run. Youve complained a lot about how you will submit edits, and they dont get looked at for various orders and neighborhood coo of do you believe that thats a departure from past fccs . Guest well, ive actually put forward a good couple dozen process reform ideas, and not many of those have made it into the books as of yet. But i do think that i do put on the table, i read every item thats put before the commission that either my names going to out on, that i know about. There are a number of things that go out the door from the bureaus that i dont know about or i dont have an opportunity to vote on. But besides that, i do read everything, and i do try to provide constructive ideas and edits on how to make an item better that would garner my support. Many times recently they havent been adopted or even considered. I think thats disappointing. Its just a decision, i think, by the leadership that my vote is not as important. And this chairman is more willing than some past chairmen have been to put things out with 32 votes. Hes not really looking for the consensus so much . Guest thats been my experience, i think thats what you can see from the items. Thats been the practice. Host commissioner oreilly, were a year into Net Neutrality, have there been any issues . Guest we have a major Court Decision thats about to break in a matter of weeks or so, could be a couple days. There were not problems before, so im not surprised you havent seen problems since. There are problems with the rules themselves and the behavior from the rules, and i think thats been problematic, and id like to see those things changed. I dont know that ill be successful in that. Host in a couple of weeks youll be visiting with the cable industry at their annual show, and one of the issues thatll probably be talked about is settop boxes. Guest yeah. Host where are you on that . Guest sure. You outlined my position. I did vote against what the commission was proposing. In fairness, my viewpoints are fairly well known. I would like to get rid of the box. I dont think the consumers i as a consumer myself do not like a settop box. I think theyre old. I think they do not provide the modern functionality that you expect out of todays communication technology. So id like to get rid of settop box. The difficulty is with the specifics of the proposal that the chairman put forward. He had an opportunity to go one of two ways. One is old style, how do we regular gate settop box regulate settop box and how much you can charge for it and what does it look like in terms of the streams that come into it and go out of it. The other approach was to adopt a modern viewpoint, that the video marketplace is changing and modernizing and moving to an applicationbased structure. Everyone used, most everyone uses applications today, and they know what im talking about. And the video marketplace is no different. In that scenario we could eliminate the box, we could let consumers save all of the money that they currently pay for renting boxes, and we can open up innovation in a very straightforward way. Sadly, the proposal thats been put on the table well probably dispose of by the end of this year is an old vision, its an old model, and it should be disregarded. The fcc is in the middle of an incentive auction, the first one in the world. Youve expressed concerns about that in the past . What are your concerns at this point . Guest sure. So i am rooting for and hopeful for a very successful incentive auction. I helped advise members of the senate on the component of a statute that designed the rules for the incentive auction that the commission has implemented. My difficulty with what the commission did over time and it goes back to your point in terms of how are things done at the commission, whether theres a willingness to find compromise. I suggested that we shouldnt move towards certain things that i would have to describe as social policy. We tried to, you know, specifically target a couple companies and let them have licenses at less cost than other companies. Think thats skewing an auction. And in doing so, thats harmful to those people who are selling licenses, and its also harmful anytime youre disrupting the marketplace itself. So i am rooting for a successful auction. I must admit as not being the chairman, i dont have a great deal of information as of yet. I do read the information thats put out. Were looking forward to the start of the reverse auction where we see what the price will be at the band plan and at the initial target of spectrum thats made available, and well see, you know, how much it would cost to buy out the broad broadcasters for a gain of 126 megahertz. The fcc recently announced theres going to be as much as 100 megahertz offered nationwide, not all markets. Does that make you feel a little bit better . It looks like theres going to be a lot of spectrum available. Guest well, we dont know we know thats the initial target, and i hope thats successful. Id like to release as much spectrum as possible. This initial target is 126. Id like that to be the case, but im not sure that it is. The chairman has indicated that well go through multiple stages, if necessary, an