FCC Chairman Pushes Spectrum, 'Proud' of Net Neutrality Efforts

The chairman of the Federal Communications Commission made his annual appearance here at the Consumer Electronics Show this afternoon, and his message was a familiar one—more spectrum, please. He also touched on the AT&T, T-Mobile merger (sort of) and net neutrality. "Nowhere are the opportunities and challenges greater than with mobile broadband," Chairman Julius Genachowski said. "Tablets, ultrabooks, 4G phones, machine-to-machine all ... consume now and are going to consume more and more data." Genachowski reiterated his support for spectrum auctions, which would allow TV broadcasters with excess spectrum to sell to the highest bidder. "We need to get it done now and we need to get it done right," he said. "The plain fact is that the aggregated consumer demand for spectrum for broadband is increasing at a very rapid pace while the supply ... of spectrum remains essentially flat." If that sounds familiar, it is. It's the exact same thing he asked for during his appearance at the 2011 CES. "The coming spectrum crunch threatens American leadership in mobile and the benefits it can deliver to our economy and our lives," Genachowski said last year. Very few things happen overnight in Washington, however—or over the course of a year, it seems. Congress, the FCC, and stakeholders have been battling for ages over how to solve the spectrum crunch, but as more and more people snap up data intensive gadgets like the iPad or Galaxy Nexus, a spectrum crunch looms. The carriers currently have enough spectrum to keep those calls and that data coming, but for how long? Genachowski also sat down with CEA president Gary Shapiro and the two talked about the failed AT&T, T-Mobile deal as well as net neutrality. Well, Shapiro tried to get Genachowski to talk about the AT&T, T-Mobile merger. Without addressing the companies specifically, all the chairman would say was that the whole process "was a reminder of to all of us of the benefits and power of competition." Congress, meanwhile, gave the FCC and Justice Department the power to preserve competition and "on balance, the system ... has worked," Genachowski said. On net neutrality, meanwhile, Genachowski admitted that he wished he "had inherited something different" when becoming chairman, "but that's life," he said. The net neutrality rules the commission approved in December 2010 and which went into effect on Nov. 20, 2011, were an effort to preserve the broadband economy, Genachowski said. "The vision that I have ... is for a virtuous cycle of investment and innovation and I thought that we had to try and do what we can to bring peace" to the situation, he said. "I discovered that the gap ... in this fiery debate wasn't that large. We [did] everythig we can to bridge this gap and try to have a simple framework that gives much more certainty, [and] that's what we've done. It was controversial and not something everyone agreed with ... but I'm proud of the result." The FCC is currently facing various lawsuits from groups and companies that believe the FCC does not have the right to hands down net neutrality rules, as well as a suit arguing that the rules don't go far enough.