As AWS-3 and D-Block auctions hang in limbo, Copps’ FCC aims to improve morale

The Federal Communications Commission is unlikely to take major actions on key wireless policies anytime in the near future, as the agency awaits a new Obama-appointed chairman and as acting head Michael Copps remains laser-focused on ensuring a smooth re-set digital TV transition, even as he begins to lay the foundation for anticipated management reforms.
Indeed, owing to a confluence of factors, wireless policymaking appears to have entered into a lull of sorts that may unwittingly benefit a mobile-phone industry that – like other business sectors – is feeling the repercussions of an economic crisis. As such, the wireless space may not necessarily be ready to digest a potentially disruptive wave of regulatory and legislative changes right now.
Though it is hard to find any silver lining in these dreaded economic times, the wireless policymaking timeout might just be one.
Most serious wireless policymaking halted in December when the then-incoming chairmen of the Senate and House Commerce Committees – Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.) and Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) – urged Kevin Martin, chairman of the FCC at the time, to pay attention during his waning weeks to the DTV switch and to steer clear of controversial proceedings that the new Congress and administration would want to review.
The FCC was poised in December to vote on a free wireless broadband plan in the advanced wireless services-3 band (2155-2180 MHz). T-Mobile USA Inc., the smallest of the four national wireless providers, vehemently opposed agency action because of fears it would cause interference to adjacent AWS-1 spectrum it purchased for $4.2 billion at a 2006 auction. An FCC engineering analysis, which concluded AWS-3 did not pose a serious threat to T-Mobile operations, subsequently became a political hot potato itself.
Late last year, the FCC also appeared to be nearing a decision on revised rules for the re-auction of the 700 MHz D Block, following a failed attempt to attract a private-sector bidder that could partner with public safety to provide advanced broadband wireless service to first responders and consumers throughout the country. Both the AWS-3 and D-Block auctions were to be held in 2009.
Whether such auctions go forward remains to be seen.
Another piece of unfinished business from last year involves reforms to the universal service fund and inter-carrier compensation regimes. Moreover, the FCC has yet to clarify its intentions regarding litigious backup-power rules whose reporting requirements were struck down by the previous administration.
Acting FCC chairman Copps is unlikely to schedule votes on those or major proceedings as he prepares for the new June 12 DTV transition deadline, a posture he has made increasingly clear in public statements and at a recent press briefing.
At the same time, he is not standing idle. In fact, as he and the telecom industry await the arrival of a new FCC chief (presumably Julius Genachowski), Copps is quietly moving the D-Block process forward and taking steps to bring increased transparency and collegiality to an FCC that congressional Democrats and industry critics claim were sorely missing under former chairman Martin. Still, FCC deficiencies identified in a House Commerce Committee report last year and in various panel discussions in recent months indicate the desire for structural, procedural and administrative changes go beyond the shortcomings attributed to Martin’s management of the agency.
“The current policymaking tools and apparatus used at the FCC are broken,” said Philip J. Weiser, a professor of law and telecommunications at the University of Colorado at Boulder, in a new research paper. “Rebuilding the agency’s culture will require not only the right leaders for a new era, but a systematic re-examination of the agency’s institutional processes with an eye towards building a new culture. In this respect, the reshaping of how the agency operates will be equally challenging and important to the substantive issues that the agency will address in the years ahead.”
Copps, 68, provides a steady hand and calming influence at a fractured FCC in need of rehabilitation and prepared for new direction. Experienced in the ways and means of official Washington dating back to his days as chief of staff to former Sen. Ernest Hollings (D-S.C.), Copps is politically savvy, erudite and thoughtful. His folksy manner – combining attributes of a tenured university professor and a statesman from a bygone era – belies a tenacity that makes Copps as shrewd and tough a political fighter as there is in town.
Given the growing chorus of calls for FCC reform – including a resolution to that effect approved by the board of the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners – Copps’ efforts to restore morale and improve internal workings at the agency could amount to a contribution that far outweighs any particular decision by the FCC under his stewardship. In policymaking, style and substance are intrinsically intertwined.
In what amounted to his own inaugural address late last month, Copps effectively put the FCC on the road to reform in an address to agency staff that focused not on any particular policy but rather on public servants that produce it.
“This is such an important agency. So much of America’s future depends upon the nation’s success in bringing the opportunity-generating tools of modern communications to all our citizens,” stated Copps. “The FCC has been an essential part of shaping the communications landscape in our country for nearly 75 years. We haven’t paused to think about it much, but 2009 is our Diamond Jubilee year because it was1934 when President Franklin Roosevelt – my hero, incidentally – called upon Congress to establish the FCC as part of the New Deal. And, as recently as last week in his inaugural address, President Barack Obama called on the country to build the ‘digital lines that feed our commerce and bind us together.’ So today we face new challenges and new opportunities that make the FCC’s role more important than ever. My purpose in asking to speak with you today is not to discuss a particular FCC policy or program. Instead, it is to focus on the agency’s most important asset – its people – and talk about what we can do together, as members of an elite team, to create opportunities for people through communications.”