Off by being forced to rent a device. That is a commonly held bipartisan principle. And i wasnt without some objections over the months and years. But now were very, very close to getting across the finish line. My concern, both on process and on policy, is that the thing that i thought i was trying to and advocating for may be accomplished in the next 15 days. But hrts of other things which i think deserve more scrutiny and oversight and discussion may also be accomplished. And its not at all clear to me that it is necessary to do all of these other things in order to get across the finish line when it comes to providing consumers with some relief on set top boxes. Im absolutely encouraged by all the commissionerss willingness to kind of get at what the offending provisions may be. I heard commissioner orielly and pai talk building how talk about two positions, how licensing would be overseen in the future by the mission. And commissioner rosenworcel and wheeler talking about their willingness to discuss and probably pursue a compromise. And so i want to just get as clear as i can without sort of referees the commissions deliberations. First, for commissioner wheeler, it sounds as though you are open to modifying this to accommodate some of these quite legitimate concerns. Is that accurate . Yes, sir. If we can do that and protect the mandate from congress, which i believe we can. Commissioner pai, part of the difficulty when conducting a negotiation is to find out whether or not these are two of the many objections that you may have to the current proposal, or if these are the two main objections. To the extent wheeler makes accommodations and you pop up with three new objections, and im not suggesting you would, i want to be clear if were trying to get to 5. 0 and he does backflips to accommodate these concerns, we dont find three new concerns 72 hours out. Do you want to comment on that. Absolutely, sir. We put our suggested changes that we vote on at our monthly meetings. On our internal chain, sometimes several weeks in advance so everyone knows what the universe of our concerns might be and what our proposals are. Those are two key ones. Another one, on i dont want anything to inadvertently delay innovation. Any change to the standard Licensing Agreement has to be approved by the media bureau. That might slow things down. The other thing is i dont want mbpds to be either deterred or just delayed in introducing new delays in their new equipment. They would have to ensure the Consumer Experience is replicate on every other app. They have to make it available on every other platfor you are just flushing out the original objections. These are not different objections . Well, this is related to it. It is related to that core concern. So thats one of the things were going to be hopefully talking about in the days to come. Okay. Thank you very much. Thank you, senator schatz. Senator daines. Thank you. In the expert of senator ships let me take a shot at that as well. In march of this year, the United States house passed the Small Business broadband deployment act. It was a vote of 4110. Very few votes in the United States house where you have a zero on the end of anything. It then came over here. This is my bill. It passed this committee 213. Thats a pretty good shot. Three touchdowns versus a field goal. So thats about as strong bipartisanship as we will see around here. The commission is set to consider extending the exemption again in december. It is clear that congress has spoken on this issue. I would argue it hasnt stuttered. It shouted pretty loud. Maybe i will start with the chairman. Do you agree that congresss intent on this issue is clear, and will you vote to extend the exemption for Small Businesses . Thank you very much, senator. One of the issues about on the whole Small Business question, what is the definition of a Small Business when youre in the broadband business . The sba defines a Small Business as 38 million or less in the broadcasting space. And a lot of times they are looking to stratify and look how you segment businesses within a particular vertical. Congress has spent a lot of time, and we debated that. I worked very is hard with some of my colleagues across the aisle. We took a subscriber view of that versus a revenue video. 250,000 subscribers. Were sensitive to what you the interesting thing is 250,000 subscribers is about 250 million in revenue when you take a revenue approach. So youve got to say to yourself, are you going to keep transparency because its too expensive away from consumers who are on companies that do a quarter billion dollars a year in revenue. Im not trying to be judgmental with that. That is the facts. What were doing is we have until the end of the year to decide are we going to extend this or not. Okay. So its not so much whether we principally agree with there should be a lawn drawn, it is where the line is drawn . Yes, sir. In the spirit of trying to hopefully generate more bipartisan agreements at the fcc level, congress has spoken very loudly on that, very clearly on that. And i hope you would respect at least our guidance there as you deliberate on where that line should be drawn. Thank you. In fact, the only difference was a 5 versus 3 is the difference. Were in agreement on where the level we want it to be drawn. I want to shift gears and talk about wireless coverage. In montana, the wireless coverage is really a Public Safety issue. Many montanans, as many people live in rural areas live many miles from the next home, from a hospital. And having that kind of connectivity is essential. Mr. Chairman, you talked about competition. Thank you for coming to montana. In montana, competition can be limited. And im curious on your thoughts on what can be done, what are you doing to promote competition particularly in rural america. Thank you very much, senator. I think theres multiple things. One, i know your question was about competition. But first we have to make sure everybody has coverage. Thats what i was talking to senator wicker about. We are going to adapt the Mobility Fund to work with that, to move towards that. Secondly, i think that there are new technologies that hold great promise. You know, there are, you know, rwanda, which is worse than montana in terms of disburtion has infrastructure sharing things theyre doing. I suggested at the Cellular Connection two weeks ago, they might want to look at things like that. I think 5g and the promise of 5g, the folks of verizon has been telling us they think 5g is a rural solution in many ways. And they refer to it as wireless fiber. So i think that there are multiple solutions, including our policies, innovative approaches, and 5g. Thank you, mr. Chairman. Im out of time. Boy, it goes by fast when youre having fun. A closing comment, we are getting a fair amount of input about a. M. Radio. I want to share my concern. As is written today, it could leave some montanans without a. M. Service. I look forward to working with you to discuss it further. Sometimes you have a disconnect you cant get connectivity, a. M. Weather radio is your link. It becomes a link for weather forecasts is and so forth for folks out there spending time on tractors. Thank you much. Thank you, senator daines. Senator markey. Two years ago i voted for commissioner orielly. Ive known him for 20 years. Hes a conservative. Hes a republican. I voted for him. Commissioner rosenworcel two years ago was promised a vote. By unanimous consent, we can bring that vote up this afternoon on the floor. So commissioner rosenworcel doesnt have that cloud over her head. And i ask we confirm her on unanimous consent. We can do it immediately. And i just think it is an important statement for the committee to make. This is a this is a relic of the past. Its a typical satellite or telco top set box. It is today. This could be in your house today. This could be in your house 20 years ago. An investigation led by senator blumenthal and i found that one, approximately 99 of american paid tv subscribers, rent this set top box from their paid tv provider. Two, subscribers spend on average 89 a year renting a single set top box. But the average household spends 232 a year on set top box rental fees renting about two and a half boxes. In other words, over 10 years, the average family is paying 2300 to rent this box. 2,300. Thats a Good Business to be in. The set top box rental market may be worth 19. 5 billion a year. Now, this little device i have here in my hand is an amazon fire stick. It costs 40 for a consumer to purchase. And there are many other devices like this out there such as roku, chrome box, apple tv. Consumers today can use these devices to watch content from multiple sources. Hulu, netflix, for which they also pay. But this device cannot play the programming package that consumers pay for each month from their cable satellite or telco provider. Put another way. The only way for a consumer, the approximately 100 million households who subscribe to paid tv is to watch the programming that they have paid for is to rent a box from their cable satellite or telco company. Consumers cannot watch their paid tv programming on these thirdparty boxes. 2,300 every 10 years for this. Good business. Thats what the fcc is considering right now. How do we transition to the modern technology and not archaic technology. We did it with the black rotary dial phone. You dont have to rent that anymore from the telephone company. You can go out to the store and buy one. We had to change the laws. On the programming, the program was a big controversy in 1992. Rural americans wanted 18inch satellite dishes. But the cable dishes wasnt willing to sell hbo and showtime and cnn to them. So we had to change the laws to those 18inch dishes could get access to the programming. It has to be reasonable. Thats the standard. But we changed the law. Who would imagine a world today without directv . Who would imagine that world . We had to create it. It needed access to the program. So this device is something that only the fcc now can do something about. The fccs proposal will ensure that through an app created by the cable company, the cable programming package can be played on this thirdparty device so consumers arent forced to continue to pay exorbitant rental fees. We dont want consumers to be forced to rent a box in perpetuity when they can buy a device that gets the same job done. That lack of choice has to end now. So chairman wheeler, youve heard these concerns on programming, on copyright. We had the same issues back with the 18inch satellite dish. We worked it out. We created a standard that worked. We worked it out. So talk about how hope you are how open you are to finding a common sense solution that works so over the next 14 days the consumers can be freed from these chains that have been binding them since the day they first had a cable System Installed in their house. Thank you very much, senator. I hope that the significant departure from structure but not from principle that our new proposal represents is a real life indication of how we are willing and seeking to resolve remaining concerns while allowing that chain to be chopped. Thank you. And, again, if anyone wants to continue to rent this for the rest of their life, they will be allowed to under the law. No one is going to stop them from paying another 2300 in the next 10 years. You still have options. The interesting thing i read in business week is that comcast is shipping 40,000 set top boxes a day, a day right now. Thats our job and your job to find this common sense solution. But we have to find a solution. We did it for 18inch satellite dish. We did it for the black rotary dial phone. Past commissioners found the answer, and thats your job, and i urge you to do it in the next two weeks. I think americans will say that is one of the best days in history to be freed from this kind of a chain. Senator from massachusetts, hold up that amazon fire stick. All right. There it is. The letter from amazon, the fcc, is opposed to this proposal, by the way, just point of fact. I will add one more fact. All the programmers back in 1992 opposed having to sell their programming to the 18inch satellite dish. Discovery came in to me and said we dont want to have to sell to the satellite dish. I said you can write a note to me in five years when you have four discovery channels on satellite. I understand you have gotten a call you cant refuse. We know the only way this works physical we, that is the government, steps in to free up these programmers so they can sell to as many devices as possible. It is not often that a coop their selfinterest. But the statement is lay competition and delay customers from receiving the service they already pay for on the device of their choice. That is the statement. That is a concern about the licensing. It is not a concern about whether or not this device should be able to process the license part. The cnn, hbo. We can work out this licensing board issue. And these commissioners are brilliant. They have the capacity to be able to resolve it. It would be good if they worked that out. It would be good if they published that so people could see it before they adopt it. Next up is senator gardner. Thank you, mr. Chairman. Senator markey, we finally found al gores lock box. Is that it right there . Chairman wheeler, as weve discussed before, satellite tv subscribers in la plata and montezuma, southern colorado, currently received new mexicobased broadcasts. They left access to without over the air broadcasting. With significant mountains, denver, front range, durango. Both broadcasters and satellite providers continue to engage as they work to deliver colorado tv to all four corners of colorado. Congress also worked to address this issue in the 2014 stellar legislation by extending the market modification process to satellite tv. As they crafted the final rules to carry out this provision i, along with senator ben and others, urged the fcc to permit county commissioners to petition for market modification. And i thank you for adopting that option. In light of the rules, the commissioner from la plata and Montezuma County have expressed interest in moving forward with the market modification process. Dish has indicated that providing Colorado Television is not infeasible. Colorado broadcasters sent senator bennett and i a letter that they are willing to provide dish in the two counties. With this progress, im calling on the county commissioners in colorado at this hearing, the county commissioners in colorado, the broadcasters, and dish together so that we can convene in a meeting next month in colorado to discuss ways we can reach a final resolution. I hope senators bennett, tipton will meet me in that meeting as well. We have to get this finally solved. So chairman wheeler i reiterate that. Youve given to me here and before, will expedite any petition by la plata and montezuma. Im sorry to senator udall, i dont mean to offend mexico tv. Washington, d. C. , is the only place we make things simpler by adding to complexity. They quote simplified. Do you agree with that, new rule simpler than the original plan and have concerns about complexity been addressed . Wait a minute. Youve got to push your button. As i said before, its time to inject competition into set top box market. Nobody has ever written me said they love their set top boxes. Maybe thats happened to you but i pretty much doubt its happened to anybody who has served in this room. A conversation to get a conversation started on this point. If i have one concern and i mentioned i to senator moran, the licensing fee gets fcc in the business of trying to figure out model licenses. I dont see how that easily fits under the statute we have. So that would be the complexity that needs work, but im going to continue to talk with my colleagues to see if we can iron that ute and make it simpler. Commissioner oreilly, would you like to address the issue of simplification. I would agree. I think originally the apps proposal as presented to us was a much simpler one than we had now. The set top box proposal, i would hope we embrace more of the original apps proposal as was presented to us, and instead of adding in all these layers of f controversial c review, of programming agreements and standard Licensing Agreement and so forth. Yeah, i would agree. I think that the whats been presented, circulated, is simpler than before. It still has difficulties, and problems that ive outlined on the two major areas need to be addressed and hopefully well be able to do that in the coming weeks. Thank you, mr. Chairman. Thank you, senator gardner. Senator booker has returned. Senator booker. Im really grateful and always excited when there is a corey to corey connection here. The corey caucus is thriving. Both fourletter words. So as you all know, i was the mayor of new york and cities are where innovation is happening. Theyre finding creative ways to get things done, Innovative Private public partnerships. Im just excited about these mayors across the country, said no republican or democratic way to fix a pothole. You just fix it. So you dont see the kind of partisan rancor you see up here. You just see ive got people, lets get it done. So im so supportive of the ideas of municipal broad band, especially in areas where there is poor or rural folks who arent getting service. This idea that somehow the private sector is going to get this done, well, theyre not, and other countries have greater broadband penetration than we have. And so we see that when it comes to overall, this crisis in our country, which i think is the broadband deployment, we have to focus on allowing municipalities to get things done. So the slow broadband or none, as a result, one of the early things i did as senator introduce Community Broadband act with support of my colleagues here in a bipartisan way to preserve the rights of local governments to invest in broadband networks. Now, with consent, i would like to put in the record a New York Times story from august 28th, that was really just disturbing. It is about some folks who are rural consumers, who did not, in the wilson, North Carolina, my fathers home statement, and if i could have consent to enter this article into the record. Without objection. But its based upon a Rural Broadband program that was done by municipality, they were able to make massive investments in upgrading their farms to really fascinating article of innovation at the local municipal level and innovation in agricult