Genachowski Says FCC Still Plans to Move Forward on Net Neutrality

Genachowski indicated that the hard work isn’t finished. Asked about the possibility of acting under Title I of the Communications Act, he said, “All the options are still on the table. We're still evaluating them."

The FCC is also discussing with cities opportunities for them to provide broadband access, Genachowski said. “We are talking to various municipalities,” he said without offering specifics. “We are looking at it."

The white spaces spectrum gives cities a chance to create broadband networks much more economically than previous technologies allowed, Genachowski said. Responding to a question suggesting that muni broadband has been a neglected subject recently, he said it’s recognized in the commission’s National Broadband Plan.

Resolution of the net neutrality debate was slowed by Verizon and Google’s legislative proposal, Genachowski complained in restrained terms: “I would have preferred if they hadn’t done what they did when they did.” That’s not to say that policymakers and their lawyers shouldn’t bring companies involved into discussions to help shape policy, he said. Neutrality adversaries coming together is “a good thing,” he said.

Asked about the prospect of an Apple-Google duopoly in smartphone operating systems, Genachowski said the policy implications make “a good question” whose answer he doesn’t “know yet.” He said the “competition and innovation that we're seeing in mobile is incredible” and emphasized the proliferation of wireless applications: “It’s in everyone’s interest for that … to continue.”

"We're focusing on the gatekeepers,” in the form of “communications access providers,” Genachowski replied to a question about the view of Columbia Law Professor Tim Wu that Google and Apple are suppressing innovation. The FCC’s first priority is ensuring that “the pipes that connect people … remain open,” the chairman said.

"You worry about a lot of things you see with kids and how they interact with digital devices,” including dangers of overdependence, Genachowski said. The commission’s emphasis is on providing parents educational materials, he said.

Genachowski defended the pace of the FCC’s accomplishments, citing its efforts to free up spectrum and remake the Universal Service Fund to support broadband. Some of the achievements -- such as tower siting, pole attachment and right-of-way actions -- are “boring and geeky” but the “blood and guts” of getting broadband built out, he said.

"We're going to keep doing what we've been doing” to promote broadband development as an engine of national progress “and to try to get it done,” notwithstanding the election results this month, Genachowski said. “The kinds of issues we're working on” -- like USF overhaul and incentive auctions to “raise billions of dollars for the Treasury” while fueling mobile broadband -- “shouldn’t be partisan,” he said.

The successes of 20th century communications technologies stand in the way of 21st century progress in the U.S., Genachowski said. Broadcast TV and the copper phone network are prime examples of entrenched institutions that pose “a kind of innovator’s dilemma” concerning moving forward, he said. Other countries can create strategies on a clean slate, Genachowski said. He indicated later that “a lot of wide-open spectrum” puts unspecified countries in enviable positions.

"Countries in Asia generally didn’t develop their broadcasting industry the way we did here, so they have much more flexibility in dealing with their spectrum,” and that has helped them promote broadband, Genachowski said. So has being densely populated, he said.