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let's talk first if we may about your
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experience on the transition team what
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exactly was your role I was co-leading
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the agency review of the Federal
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Communications Commission so there were
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teams on the transition assigned to
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every part of the federal government and
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our responsibility was to go into the
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agency meet with the senior staff meet
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with outside groups industry public
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interest groups other interested parties
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and really roll up our sleeves and
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assess what was happening at the agency
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and try to lay the groundwork for the
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new administration coming in to put into
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place both their people and a new policy
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agenda now what was your takeaway about
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the regarding the agency well the FCC
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under Kevin Martin who was the chairman
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at the end of the Bush administration
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was was really devastated it was it was
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a place that had been heavily
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politicized the staff were demoralized
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it was failing in a lot of ways to
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achieve the kind of benefits that it
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should be achieving and so we found a
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lot of dissatisfaction both inside and
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outside the government with just the
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kinds of processes the agency was using
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people would say that they're just not
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being fair they're not being consistent
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they're not being transparent we really
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don't feel like they they have the
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interest of the American people at heart
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and so we were really trying to to
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ascertain how to revitalize this agency
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how to take this agency and make it once
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again one that could really deliver
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benefits to the American people that
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sounds like what a rebuilding job they
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weave have one nomination for the
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Chairman and some other positions that
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are still open on the Commission itself
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is how urgent is it that we get those
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positions filled quickly oh I think it's
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very urgent it's it's it's urgent of
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course more generally that the
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president's nominees get confirmed and
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that and that the additional openings
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are filled the FCC is pretty important
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it oversees a huge swath of the economy
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the whole telecommunications and media
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sector as well as the whole technology
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sector which is really I think pretty
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critical to an economic recovery mm-hmm
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indeed the it would seem that as to the
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degree that the work of the FCC can be
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tied to the economic
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recovery will determine the speed with
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which it gets the attention it needs
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what how important is the role of the of
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the telecommunications and technology
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generally in the recovery do you think
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it's extremely important the FCC really
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needs to think about itself as an
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economic stimulus agency as an agency
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that's about creating jobs and fostering
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investment and you look at the
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telecommunications and media and
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technology sectors there's a tremendous
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opportunity for growth these are not
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industries that are going down these are
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industries that in many ways are growing
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and they're the foundation for other
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kinds of new jobs so revitalizing
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healthcare a central part of that is
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computerizing medical records and
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putting healthcare online that requires
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broadband out to every part of the
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country green energy again requires
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smart grids instrumenting the electrical
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grid on broadband networks education
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requires the ability to deliver
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information throughout the country over
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networks to people so the areas that the
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FCC is responsible for can really be
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central to the recovery are you
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confident that the Obama administration
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recognizes that oh absolutely they
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recognize that Julius Genachowski has
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been nominated to be the head of the FCC
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has tremendous experience as a business
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leader and an investor as well as in
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government and I know he recognizes that
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absolutely okay now you're going to be
00:03:53
addressing some of the challenges for
00:03:55
communications regulation in the coming
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years at a seminar tomorrow and I wonder
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you you're saying in this seminar that
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the communications networks are the
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foundation on which the future of
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business business of news business
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interaction entertainment healthcare
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education energy conservation and a lot
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of other economics fact sectors will be
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built and that the network
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infrastructure is the dividing line
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between the old physical economy of
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scarcity and the new information economy
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of abundance tell us what you mean by
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these these two terms of the physical
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economy of scarcity and the information
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economy of abundance well it's pretty
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simple you make things there's a
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necessary scarcity GM can only put out
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so many cars and it costs a certain
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amount of resources to build each one
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but bits are bits and they're infinitely
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replicable so Google doesn't have the
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same kind of physical limitations on how
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many searches it can do or what it can
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do with the information that goes into
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its system now underneath that there are
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physical networks there's equipment they
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have to buy routers and servers and they
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have to buy telecommunications lines to
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connect them up which is why I talked
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about that being the dividing line but
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once you have that investment to build
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on top of it and to build new services
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and to scale them out is really limited
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only by the imagination I see so you're
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also suggesting that the biggest
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challenge for communication is law right
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now is to take the lessons that we've
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learned from some of these virtual
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ecosystems that live on top of this
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infrastructure and apply them to the
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infrastructure tell us how that works
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well so so my research really looks at
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the intersection between law business
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and policy around technology and we have
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70 plus years of communications
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regulation in the United States that was
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designed for traditional networks for
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the telephone system for example or
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broadcast television and radio and
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increasingly all those are going online
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they're all merging in with the internet
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all those those silos of networks are
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converging and we don't have a
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regulatory structure for that new
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converged broadband internet
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infrastructure partly because
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justifiably the FCC and other parts of
00:06:13
the government were hesitant to regulate
00:06:15
those new services as they were growing
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they didn't want to apply the old rules
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to the new technology which which I was
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involved with when I was in government
00:06:22
in the 1990s and fully support but at
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some point you need to have a system
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that looks at how to ensure networks are
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used in the public interest how to
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ensure that that markets don't go off
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the rails which is what we saw with the
00:06:36
financial sector for example and we've
00:06:37
seen in the past with the telecom sector
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and that means you need to figure out
00:06:41
the intersection of the legal structure
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with the new technology with with what
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the market looks like today right and it
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seems that what you're suggesting is
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that the default setting in addressing
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regulation of the infrastructure is open
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access and by open access you
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mean so open access means that networks
00:07:00
can interconnect for your league so what
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makes the Internet the internet people
00:07:04
think the Internet is a network it's
00:07:05
really not the Internet's a network of
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networks so any system that speaks the
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language of standards that connects into
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the Internet can be part of this
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ecosystem and that's a principle that's
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allowed the internet to grow and foster
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so much innovation if we have open
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interconnection open access so any
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broadband network system can be plugged
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into you can you can attach new services
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new devices new applications to that
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Network then there's a lot more
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potential for growth so for example we
00:07:36
have a stimulus package now that's going
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to put seven billion dollars into rural
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broadband and and broadband
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infrastructure to expand out the system
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that we have in this country if that
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only serves the companies that provide
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that network the value is limited but if
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it's an open access network that allows
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other companies governmental
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institutions citizen groups to come in
00:08:01
and leverage that infrastructure stick a
00:08:03
wireless network on the end create a
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healthcare application in a rural
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community and so forth and that
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magnifies the value of the network and
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are there any regulations now that stand
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in the way of those kinds of structures
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being added to the broadband network
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that comes into these rural areas well
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that's that's that's the point of this
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this research I've been doing it's a
00:08:24
total regulatory gray area because the
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rules we have applied to traditional
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telecommunications networks the FCC in
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the past has said broadband access
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networks are not what are called
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regulated telecommunication services
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there's something else called
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information services right which there
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are no rules for information services
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under the existing statutes and so what
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I'm trying to do in my work is is map
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out what those rules should be by
00:08:49
reference to some of the enduring
00:08:50
principles that are in the
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Communications Act already the Obama
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administration has received some degree
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of attention for its consciousness of a
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lot of these services that you're
00:09:02
talking about President Obama was very
00:09:05
worried about losing his blackberry for
00:09:06
example do you think that that
00:09:08
orientation is going to have
00:09:10
a big impact on the kinds of policies
00:09:12
that we see emerge from the FCC in and
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other related agencies oh I think it's
00:09:18
going to have a big impact across the
00:09:20
government but but think about work
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today in any kind of organization there
00:09:25
are very few organizations today that
00:09:28
don't use email say and they don't use
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the internet as just a fundamental part
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of how they do business how they manage
00:09:34
their supply chain and so forth so
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governments the same thing and if you
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have people in government who are not
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familiar with those technologies that
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the average worker today the average
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manager takes for granted there's going
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to be a disconnect in their ability to
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develop policies that reflect even
00:09:51
today's economy let alone tomorrow's so
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I think the fact that there are so many
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people involved in this administration
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who really are technology savvy and who
00:10:00
get it just at a personal level is
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important the other thing is these
00:10:04
technologies are incredibly powerful
00:10:05
well I remember on the transition
00:10:08
talking with someone who had been
00:10:10
involved in the Clinton transition in
00:10:11
1992 and later was a senior official in
00:10:14
the Commerce Department and he said back
00:10:16
then they had to walk around with disks
00:10:17
so when people would write memos or try
00:10:20
and group collaborate on a policy
00:10:23
recommendation they would literally have
00:10:25
to walk around with floppy disks across
00:10:26
the office and of course today we can do
00:10:28
that all online we had a collaboration
00:10:31
system that we could use for doing the
00:10:33
work of the transition and just for the
00:10:35
transition process which is a limited
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time it's just 77 days which has to do a
00:10:39
tremendous amount the ability to use
00:10:42
that technology was very powerful I see
00:10:43
and and those powerful technologies
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you're talking about right now a lot of
00:10:48
attention is being paid to handheld
00:10:50
instruments that really behave more like
00:10:52
personal computers and then then
00:10:55
telephones and everybody seems to be
00:10:58
that's the big technology of the moment
00:11:00
it's very difficult to look far down the
00:11:03
road for these things but what are some
00:11:05
of the other new technologies that you
00:11:07
think that the FCC is going to have to
00:11:08
address in this come in the next four
00:11:10
years say so we're still just getting a
00:11:13
taste of mobile we're now in a world
00:11:16
with about three and a half billion
00:11:17
people having mobile phones which is
00:11:19
more than double the number of people
00:11:20
who have wireline phones and that
00:11:22
transition is happening and
00:11:24
we're just starting on the smartphone
00:11:25
revolution so the iphone is really
00:11:27
symbolic of this transition you
00:11:29
mentioned from phones to handheld
00:11:32
computing devices I talked to a friend
00:11:34
yesterday who's saying he was at Samsung
00:11:36
Samsung is introducing 20 iPhone like
00:11:38
devices next year 20 of them for just
00:11:41
one company so that revolution is going
00:11:43
to be quite significant I think we're
00:11:45
also going to see group collaboration
00:11:47
mechanisms some of the things i talked
00:11:50
about becoming more powerful in the
00:11:52
workplace as well as the ability to use
00:11:55
video much more integrate that and other
00:11:58
kinds of media integrated into the
00:12:00
process also just just the ability to
00:12:03
take search technology which of course
00:12:07
is very wide spirit on the internet and
00:12:09
and apply it much more more directly
00:12:11
into lots of other services we've
00:12:13
already seen social media interfere or
00:12:16
make its presence known i should say in
00:12:19
realm of the law where for instance a
00:12:21
trial in philadelphia in which a juror
00:12:24
was sharing observations via twitter do
00:12:28
you see that as a something that's going
00:12:30
to be happening more and more as these
00:12:33
ads these appellees social networking
00:12:36
applications become more widely adopted
00:12:38
people sharing all kinds of information
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is that going to be something that is
00:12:44
going to be looked at by regulators do
00:12:46
you think well as first of all I
00:12:48
certainly think that that's something
00:12:50
that's going to be increasingly
00:12:51
pervasive and Twitter is your the
00:12:53
current symbol of it but it's really
00:12:55
much broader than that and it follows on
00:12:57
from the point about mobile devices and
00:12:59
smartphones as you have people more and
00:13:01
more densely connected on platforms that
00:13:04
are interconnected and that are
00:13:06
converged and then you have much more
00:13:08
intelligence both in the devices about
00:13:10
where they are as well as intelligence
00:13:12
in things in terms of connecting to the
00:13:14
devices through wireless networks and so
00:13:16
forth that leads to the lots more
00:13:19
potential for applications and services
00:13:22
that leverage off of that connectivity
00:13:24
so Twitter is is one early example I
00:13:27
think of what happens when people can
00:13:29
communicate all the time about what
00:13:31
they're doing and that can be aggregated
00:13:32
together from a regulatory standpoint
00:13:35
sure they're there are a whole set of
00:13:37
issue
00:13:37
is that government is just starting to
00:13:39
wrestle with privacy is one that's
00:13:42
that's extremely important but deeply
00:13:44
misunderstood it's not an either or
00:13:46
question of whether I'm public or
00:13:48
private we're going to be sharing things
00:13:50
all the time and people's preferences
00:13:53
are going to be changing based on what
00:13:54
circumstances they're in we're in a
00:13:57
world and increasingly in a world where
00:13:58
everything is connected so regulators
00:14:01
and government as well as individuals
00:14:03
need to wrestle with what are
00:14:05
appropriate limits in terms of sharing
00:14:07
information see well thank you very much
00:14:09
for being with us today and we look
00:14:12
forward to your seminar tomorrow my
00:14:14
pleasure
00:14:21
Oh
