 So, first of all, thank you for joining us and joining us on the platform. Thank you for having me, but I have to say this is the first time I've actually gotten a thank you gift before speaking. So, we'll put it in the description. We're inherently very optimistic about your remarks. There's been a lot of crowded coverage during the course of the afternoon. What is your spectrum vision for the next short term, say, four years? I'm just fairly general presidential term. And what are the things that should be happening in the next four years and what are the things that should be happening? What are the priorities and sort of the non-priorities? Well, first of all, the priorities should be what Congress tells us the priorities are the first four months. That's the first priority. And that, of course, most importantly would be in the incentive auction legislation. So, having to sort of expand upon that if you want to follow up there's a whole other... Actually, we have a whole event just on that. So, we obviously need to bring more spectrum to marketplace. So, auctions, repurposing. I've been talking for a long time about federal spectrum and I think the value of trying to encourage auctions for exclusive licenses. I've made no secret of the fact that I was a bit disappointed with the primary emphasis I'm sharing. While that can be beneficial and I've been a proponent of sharing in other contexts such as white spaces and licensees to white spaces, we need to do more. And so, there's a lot to talk about. We don't want to follow up any one of those. But that would be a rough outline to check with the next either four minutes or four years. We have 30, so somewhere in the middle. What should the commission avoid doing? What would be the negative possible latch with the commission to take that would make it hard, the wireless system? So, making it harder for secondary markets. We want to make sure we are respecting any trust in competition law, looking out for concentrations of market power, the use of that power that results in consumer harm. But having said that, we want to allow a spectrum that's already in the market to flow to as high as possible. And that, I'll put a lot of things, a lot of secondary trends in the market transactions, but also repurposing. So, to work with the great malacrity in terms of trying to repurpose a spectrum. And we have been working on a number of items in the issue to several in the past couple of years. All while observing the prime directive of the FTC, which is to prevent harmful interference. So, that's important. But when we do auction spectrum, or if we do approve transactions, do not impose unnecessary incumbrances upon that spectrum. And I learned, in part the hard way and in part the easy way, going back to my 100 years as commissioner, July of 2007, when we voted out the 700 megahertz order, the differences between the success of what happened with the C and the D blocks. Both had a large number of incumbrances placed upon them. Long story short, as a result of that, on the C block, we saw smaller, smaller market players driven out of the market. The C block went for about 77 cents per megahertz pot, compared to the A and B blocks, which went for about 270 cents per megahertz. And so, the idea, the foundation of that VAMP plan, which was to try to find a home for small, medium, large players, kind of got flushed out of the toilet as we were small. So, let's avoid that. And then there was the D block. So, that was obviously overly encumbered to the point where nobody could get a critical bid for that. So, that's the number one thing to avoid, but I will continue to be a squeaky wheel that, for federal spectrum, it needs to be the highest of priorities emanating from a West Wing and a White House, and I said this before the election, I would have said it regardless of the outcome of the election, to offer, to provide executive branch agencies with incentives that are necessary. These are old concepts, by the way, of getting into executive branch agencies, financial incentives to yield more spectrum, because right now it's a very opaque process. We have, literally, a nameless and faceless bureaucrats who are coming up with numbers as to how much it costs to relocate those federal users. We have no idea what the cost assumptions are that underlie those numbers, and there's a disincentive. Nobody really comes to the FCC, nobody's saying here, get all this leftover spectrum, please get rid of it for me, right? So, there's a disincentive to come up with a number that makes it economical or legal for the federal user to move. Right, and there's been some progress on the federal incentive side. There's the CSEA, CSEA originally, and then the enhancements that were recently passed that gave more money for planning and that sort of thing in advance. There's going to be Circular 11, which folds into the budgetary process, cost of spectrum and things like that. There have been other proposals about things like spectrum fees, for example, to be opposed on federal users. I think every administration, last three or four, at least, have all proposed this for other budgets, potentially extending it to federal as well as commercial. When you think about incentives for federal users to be more efficient, what types of incentives do you think just serve to have that kind of exploration and how would that look? Do you look at what has worked in the past? If you look at the early part of the last decade, you can find some programs of which you cited and ideas and policies that worked. As a result, we saw what 60MHz or so auctioned the 700MHz auction and 90MHz and 80MHz one. Julie, does that sound right? About 150MHz, yeah. He's just testing the spectrum availability or the reliability of the device. Reliability of the device. It's working on a fancy football game. So that yielded 150MHz, the two largest spectrum auctions in history. Plus, we've had some sort of garage sale type auctions since then. But let's emulate what worked then. That is to try to adopt maybe a cooperative model rather than a coercive model of users. Let's see if we can give them financial incentive. Of course, sticks aren't working tricarats, but it's got to be a priority at really the highest level of the executive branch. The executive branch has an advantage over the legislative branch and that there is one person who embodies the executive branch. It's a pyramid with one person and it should be easier to get federal users to actually yield spectrum for exclusive use licenses for auctions. Sharing can be good, but it's confusing and ill-defined and doesn't really solve the challenge. So, Judge and Sharon, it's the one we pivot to that next. The Pcash report came out in reactions to Pcash. It's been talked about a lot, but maybe it's had an electrical framework for the next four years of spectrum planning. So, I want to go out of my way to compliment our friends at NCIA and the folks in the White House who work very hard. A lot of good ideas and I don't mean to take away from their thoughtfulness and their good faith effort there. But I think the end result of really stopping short of pushing for auctions is going to improve a cumbersome. If the next best auction we have is the incentive auction, I have been a bit pessimistic that it's going to yield as much as it was hoped for. I hope I'm wrong. This is one case where I really do hope I'm wrong. But I think we need to be prepared for that to not yield as much spectrum in, especially in these large markets where it's needed. 80 megahertz, 60 megahertz, whether the estimates are, I like to respond by asking, where is that going to be? So you mentioned the big-ass report obviously 1755 to 1850 is teed up as part of this ongoing process at the Commerce Department and through the White House. Some of that spectrum, as part of the spectrum act, has to be auctioned off in 2015, I think, where we have some deadlines coming up from the commission. So, when you think about sort of the decision point that has to be reached with pairing and not pairing, all those things coming up, you have some 15, and it has to be auctioned by 15, how patient are we about waiting for the federal government to figure out the 1755 to 1850 process? How important is it to try and get the pairing done so that you, 1755 to 1780 is paired with 2155 to 2180? How do you think of any of those six questions at this time? 25 words or less. Exactly. So, we need to work with alacrity, but we want to make sure that we don't get it wrong to be, we don't want to be hasty. So, during the course of, during the course of the 700 members auction, we actually had industry coming to the commission saying slow down. But then there were also indications of an economic slow down. And so I was actually pushing for actually a late 2007 to, you know, I guess as soon as it was an early 2008 auction, but let's hurry up before something happens to financial markets. So there are a lot of variables that play. You want to be quick, but you want it to be good as well. Let's just focus on incentive auctions out of that, so Florida, the questions you just gave me. So, if we are indeed trying to tackle the most complicated spectrum auction in world history, and that's not an exaggeration, do we want it to be a simultaneous auction? Or sequential? And simultaneous to me, it does seem like you're moving from 3D chess to playing, or 2D chess to 3D chess to playing that while blindfolded. So, but, you know, there's a problem to do on December 21st. So please tell me I'm wrong and why that's beneficial and why that will yield more structure. We need all the goals at the end. So, if we want to get that done, we want to get all with them. Should we be patient for the executive branch? I guess we have to be. There's no other alternative. And we, as an independent agency, can't make them work any faster. But you need to be prepared to be unexpected, because there's always that when you're dealing with these things, especially when you're plowing new ground, as we will be with incentive auctions in particular. Student incentive auctions and the government spectrum are all part of this quest for 500, which I've all been talking about for a long time. How do you feel like we're doing in getting to 500? And what are the roadblocks you see you've been in the fight a couple with? What else do you see out there? Yeah, I I don't think we're doing all that well. And that's going to be frustrating. You know, I think we could be here two, four, six, or eight years from now and be very concerned the possible silver lining I'll segue this point to pitch for policies to adopt to create an environment for better spectral efficiency. So that could be the silver lining that something is produced more as a result of received spectrum shortages in our regard. New innovations, new investment, et cetera. I think regardless even if we could bring 500 megahertz it's marked over the next couple of years. You're still going to have policies that look at localities I really a couple of times in the past couple of years which is the commission really ought to have a summit on structural efficiency looking at all what can we do to remove regulatory roadblocks in order to foster that. This is where we are at this point. I said this when the National Broadband Plan was hatched that even if everything could be met on the fastest tables it's still the better part of a decade before that spectrum is put into the hands of consumers so what do you do in the meantime and you have to focus on making it easier to develop new technologies and deploy those technologies that make this more spectrally efficient. So that's got to be more of a dialogue rather than just what's Sharon going to look like. These other important questions in the meantime consumers are hungry for spectrum so what can we do to help them? So, quickly. And then to the timing point so there's been in the National Broadband Plan there was a schedule for various things happening. They also called for a National Spectrum Plan that would have a sort of long-term planning document I think is part of the spectrum policy task force in Peter's. Did we call for that to appear yet? Did we call for a long-term spectrum plan? Do you believe there's value in having a plan a 5 to 10-year spectrum plan? I know we oppose them in political context but a 5-year plan a vision of what it looks like or is that Yes, Chairman Joe. You know, is that Does that make sense? Well, you have to have strategic long-term planning in the area I think but this area and this isn't industrial policy at all but because the government manages the use of the spectrum you have to be doing that because the federal government is by far the largest user of the best spectrum or occupier, which I'll probably say about an user because you don't know how it's all being used that we have to have some planning in some incentive in Congress helps lay out some rules for us there and we have to do the rest and the NCI has to do the rest as well but you have to have some planning and then you have to be able to improvise so we were just talking about the set down here which is plans are good but you want to be able to throw them away if you have to and start all over again but at least you have a basis or a context a basis from which to act or context within that improvisation So the commissioners say 3 years from now we're auctioning this off instead of auctioning it to be in 16 and we sort of denounced that and they break over something like that you think that has value as a good government kind of vehicle Absolutely, I mean a sort of the broadband plan was a matter of statute part of the stimulus bill but it doesn't hurt it was under the Michael Powell SEC as well, you all came up with a plan and a strategy to get more spectrum to market and that produced positive results so it could be very valuable and if you disagree with the ideas at least I guess the ball rolling starts the conversation and it leads to some sort of action There's been a lot of talk about so the commission obviously has a role in making spectrum available through the auction process and what have you as a statutory obligation on certain issues but there are many folks from all from all kinds of divergent positions have come together around the idea that commission should have a less robust role going forward in spectrum management by the way, Tom Paisel has talked about this what's your reaction to those calls and do you think that is that their right direction for government going forward that should sort of pull back a little bit from its centrality in spectrum management I think as we touched on these ideas come from across the political spectrum and they come in many different forms you can say that part of the entertaining of the lot behind unlicensed so that's a feeling and you know perhaps technology when the brain here turns white or whatever maybe technology will squeeze so much efficiency out of the airway so that there will be less need for this type of regulation that again the prime directive of the number one goal is to prevent harmful interference and how do we go about doing that so I've never been one to be jealous of the jurisdiction or to say that the FCC must live forever or that it must live forever in its current form so let's see where technology and competition lead us and see if we need to downsize at some point as a result you've been very active internationally to kind of look at issues lately but have you seen in your international travels any sort of models of spectrum management do you think that's interesting or you should try this or try that well the as a macro matter what is a little unsettling is that as an agency commissioner when you travel the globe really all the eyes are on the US and I'm reminded of this every time I travel and there are teams of people for instance at the ITU do nothing but read all the stuff we write so it sounds like a pie for you don't just get me the content word about this so the eyes tend to be on us I think in hindsight the way the UK's phased in their digital television transition region by region was kind of what we ended up doing as a result of the extension I was sort of phased in or rolling so that might have been more helpful to criticize anyway and a lot of discussions regarding harmonization some of the makerhards some of the countries use it differently and so whatever you do about that those are important ideas so there's a lot that's aired out at the World Redicitation Conference or other conferences that I think we need to listen to and learn from but I think most of that analysis really goes the other way which is we need to be very careful what we do here because either we can send the wrong wrong signal or an idea that we figure out too late might be a bad idea it gets amplified abroad people start running with it so just be careful is there any particular example of a careful where you think that maybe we've sent a confusing signal well this isn't specifically spectrum but it may be applied which is the title to docket and I was trying to avoid this because I'm trying to be a little bipartisan you never put the wicket but it comes up in every conversation I have when I travel abroad and talking about the wicket which is G, if the US is contemplating classifying a portion of the internet as a common care extent what's wrong with the rest of the world looking at that way as well and then why don't we just bring in the rest of that animal so whether that was the intention or not it doesn't really matter that's how it's being sold whether that's cynical or not it doesn't really matter that's what's happening so just be careful what you do so in that same vein and sticking with her current events Storks Sandy, the Superstorm created a lot of disruption obviously and we're all thankful for all of her responders and telecommunications companies and electric power folks who are out there at the front lines restoring service are there lessons or regulatory to-dos coming out of the Superstorm there's been talk from various sectors about that I just wanted to get your views on that to give you some more analysis well certainly there's a lot to learn here as we learned from Katrina in 9-11 as to what the private sector's role is what government's role is how can we help rebound in these things natural disasters and catastrophes are going to happen and we can't always predict how where or when they're going to happen but so we need to I think learn from it but I want to caution that we not use it as a pretext to get more unnecessary regulations in the space specifically the wireless space I've seen a lot of press about where the cell towers went down what less press about how quickly they spring back into action and almost no press about the effects on the wire line network so the copper network actually was harder hit than anything and once you flood that with the seawater it's kind of shot so while at our house we have wire line and wireless we like redundancy we need to make that sort of part of the conversation so that also starts begging the question of will fiber actually will hold up much better under such circumstances so what do we do about replacing copper with fiber with sort of incentives can we provide for that and hearing a conversation also regarding backup power and again like with the conversation about what sort of incentives we can we give the executive branch users a spectrum to relinquish their spectrum that's an older idea which should be revisited that's fine but when we talk about backup power I've seen this moving before and I think in 08 was when the court held things in abeyance and no one would be shot down our last rules in that regard and here we are four and a half years later I don't know there's no number of 08 I guess so about exactly four years later we're still having this conversation I think we need to be very careful there are a lot of practical implications do you want a thousand gallons of diesel fuel on your roof during a thunderstorm things like that and is there one size fits all federal rule that applies so this is complex let's not rush to judgment let's not rush to see a bunch of regulations in the space carriers have every incentive to harden their networks and to keep them up and running or to repair them quickly so let's make sure we have an environment that's conducive to that so one of the themes of the conference is sort of looking back ten years and we're opening up to questions after this a couple of minutes for questions if you're still awake that was my effort what made that fight look alive what are the key things you draw from the last ten years you touched on a couple but if you want to draw it might seem like ten years but I've only been on the commission six and a half but my hair was a lot darker what are the things as you look at them your tenure before the lessons that you learned from the last ten years inspection management as you look at those who will follow you this commission in ten to twenty years from now what are the lessons that they should draw from this period light touch regulation the wireless sector has been one of the most successful sectors of the U.S. economy ever it continues to be so I've argued that it's always been it is a world leader and we are looked upon by other countries and manipulated by them as well so flexible use policies I think that's something we've sort of proven made more sense so if you when the government tries to pick a specific use maybe specific technology or type of use of a frequency and by the time it's actually in the marketplace that idea might be obsolete so let's try to avoid that let's look at flexible use policy whenever we can so just macro level light touch and that's worked well so let's think of what works and what's not well they discussed a little bit of the last panel but I'm curious what do you think the lessons are on the license versus on the license debate or discussion well you know as I so early my tenure in 2006 I became a loud actor for our license use of TV white spaces and we have really we've had several milestones 08, 2010, a lot of big quotes but I've yet to really see any devices in the marketplace for a variety of reasons so it's hard to derive a ton of lessons from that other than it's taken I think the VAL Commission initiated this discussion 02, so it's been over 10 years so I guess it takes a very long time with one lesson and it shouldn't we've had some opportunities along the way I think to provide us some certainty to actually get these things made but I think unlicensed can be very valuable as we're seeing with the amount of traffic that's going over Wi-Fi networks right now I think it provides positive and constructive destruction in the marketplace I think it's is a bit of a general strong term but for concerns for very anti-conventive conduct in the marketplace but I also think that we explicitly use licenses you need to build out of infrastructure the history has proven time and time again the best way to do that is with auctions, licenses that are auction and that unlicensed should be used for more low power type scenarios for offloading for the most part so I think you need to mix the two but let's make sure we're doing that the right way let's open up for one or two quick questions before we just want you to identify yourself as I call on folks I'm getting a this is from an anonymous from the web which could be very interesting in set of auctions what will be done to prevent incumbents which are already cold ample spectrum from using preemptive bids for closed competition I don't know why not just put that in your comments I don't know someone can file that answer for me on December 21st or February 26th I think so that's me flipping but you know this just reminds me that we have the spectrum aggregation item as well you know curious coincidence that it would be a conspirator so so I think we need to be careful of going back to the hard spectrum cap days spectrum is a lot like real estate because it's a time and time again each transaction is unique and needs to be analyzed for some of the characteristics but so going forward I will be skeptical of hard caps or things that might not be cold caps but really are functional we'll call them sombreros berets but old material so let's just be careful we don't want anything too inflexible you need to be flexible in this space while being mindful of concentrations of market power abuse of that power that results in consumer harm probably projects I think I'm going to state here one other statement that you made in your initial discourse you said the sharing technology is an unproven and so we need to I think there's technologies that aren't invented but that we don't know it's ill-defined I think is what I said in terms of the policies and what PCAST is pushing there's a lot of there are a lot of ideas in there the concept is ill-defined is it likely that the regulatory body is taking off the notion of shared user spectrum and I did likely license or unlicensed modular regulation and how to make that available in the marketplace in the near term is that a very long term option that you're looking at is completely off the table as you go forward and only reallocation is the thing that you're looking for in the short term so the FCC is not putting anything on or off the table regarding sharing so that's you know PCAST that's the executive branch sorting that out we certainly have a role but they are the ones that have to define those federal users of spectrum executive branch users they have to define what that means one final question and generally speaking what happens in 112th if the job is built and that sort of comes back and the house starts coming to you and talking to you about the incentive options and how does the commission you know take care of that of those kind of politics that are very very important that was to Brian so I thought I thought we'd get everybody out we're an independent agency we're always here for a second we're overseen by congress and directly elected representatives of the American people so what they have to say is very important about the best way for them to express what they want done is to pass legislation and have the president sign it into law so that was done and thus far we are executing our mandate I'm sure there will be lots of discussions and letters from congress trying to shake our proceeding and that has never happened before how would I do that it's important and we will do our best to at least I will do my best to try to faithfully implement congresses and we will do our best to at least I will do my best to try to faithfully implement congresses