Copps Says FCC Lessons from DTV May Help Broadband Outreach

“The first thing that I learned” as acting chairman “was the huge reservoir of talent and dedication that we have here,” Copps said. “If you free that talent and dedication so that people can do their jobs here,” you can “accomplish great and powerful deeds. I learned that we can really mobilize this place in pursuit of particular initiatives” -- namely the transition of full-power broadcasters to DTV, finished June 12.

Copps said the FCC has tried to get more involved with consumers and to become more of a “grassroots agency” by doing outreach “to ease the transition” to DTV. “We opened the lines of communication among staffers.” He said most staffers like their jobs better than they did under the Martin administration.

“I don’t want to sound self-serving, but I think morale is better than it was,” Copps told us. “I think the tone is different around here. I think people feel a little freer to go out and talk and share their ideas outside the FCC. They feel freer talking to commissioners and talking to one another. I think if we took a poll right now we would no longer be in on the bottom rung of the ladder when it comes to employee satisfaction with their agency.” He conceded that some employees remain to be convinced that change is real. “I think people are going to wait to see what’s the reality and does the reality match the rhetoric,” Copps said. “People have a right to feel skeptical after feeling disadvantaged for a great many years.”

Copps was long the leader of the opposition at the FCC during the presidency of George W. Bush. Now he’s the senior member of a Democratic commission. Asked what role he sees himself playing, Copps responded, “That’s a good question and I can’t give you a complete answer to it right now.” The commissioner said he likes what he has seen of Genachowski as chairman. “I would say I'm really encouraged by the policy stances the new chairman is taking,” he said. “I'm encouraged by the caliber of the people he has brought into the commission with him. I'm encouraged by the participatory attitude he has taken toward the staff who work here right now. … I'm looking forward to being a majority commissioner, where I can count on most ideas coming across my desk being in a direction that I can favor. So I think my job will be less one of damage control than it has been for the last eight years and one where we can improve some of the items that are here.”

“The number one challenge facing us is to really find ways to reach out” to “non-traditional stakeholders,” Copps said."There are so many folks out there who need to be plugged into what we're doing … because what we do on broadband will affect virtually everyone in the” country. The commission shouldn’t “rely on the usual suspects who know the floor plan here as well as the floor plan of their houses,” Copps said. “We need to find new and imaginative ways” of outreach and it is “equally important for stakeholders to talk to stakeholders” to get a “dialogue” on issues “that we can take advantage of.”

Back at full strength, the commission can move forward on several pending media and telecom items, Copps said. Among the media items are petitions asking the commission to dictate how telco-TV and cable companies should treat public access channels, an inquiry on Arbitron’s Portable People Meters, minority ownership, and making broadcasters meet additional public interest standards to renew their licenses, he said. “Minority and female ownership of media properties is an embarrassment to the country. … This is high on my agenda. We've been talking about it a long time but the statistics are actually getting worse as we speak.”

On universal service and intercarrier compensation changes, Copps said he’s disappointed that the commission didn’t approve an overhaul package last year, when consensus seemed within reach. “We were close and we had a consensus on a lot of issues amongst four of the commissioners who were here,” he said. “But for reasons we don’t need to go too much into we couldn’t bring to a final decision. Now we have new commissioners coming in, we'll have to see where they stand. But these are issues that do call out for resolution.”

The FCC will have to decide whether to tackle ICC and USF in a series of orders, or whether the commission should the work as part of its broadband plan, Copps said. He said the intercarrier compensation system remains “rather Byzantine and broken and needs to be tackled.” Changes in USF need to be made against the backdrop of the national broadband plan, he said.

“Universal service is obviously important to the broadband plan,” Copps said. “My view from right now is we need to do something on universal service in the broadband plan or before the broadband plan or whatever, but you can’t evade that. That being said, I don’t think we want to open up every telecommunications issue that developed out of the 1996 Act and believe that we can tackle that and resolve that in a broadband plan between now and next February and expect to have something that’s practical and achievable and workable.”

Copps said he hopes for quick action on wireless competition matters such as roaming and handset exclusivity that have been before the commission since the last administration. “I think it is important to move forward on these issues,” Copps said. “That being said I think these are decisions the chairman will make with regard to the velocity with which he moves his agenda. Obviously folks want to study the record. I think that’s good and laudable.”

Copps said there are advantages to moving quickly on the wireless issues, which could prove difficult to resolve. “I'm a strong believer that when opportunities for change and windows of opportunity open, as I think they opened in the country as a result of the elections last year, one is never entirely sure how wide that window is open and how long it will stay open,” he said. “I believe that you have to kind of seize the day. I believe that some of the issues that have been around here for a long time can and will be tackled within a reasonable time frame.”