Copps Takes Aim at FCC on Media, Wants D-Block, ICC and USF Action

Now is the time to resolve the future of the 700 MHz D block, Copps said Monday, noting there’s been momentum to reallocate it to public safety. He said the stars are aligned among all his colleagues at the commission, and among legislators, for orders on intercarrier compensation and on Universal Service Fund reform this year. FCC spokespeople had no comment on his remarks.

"We don’t have a long time to wait” on setting up an interoperable network for broadband to be used by police, firefighters and other public-safety officials, with the 10th anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in five months, Copps said Monday. “We need to get a sense of direction and don’t have a lot of time to get moving before” then, he told us. “You don’t have to have been around this town long to have realized that the options have changed for dealing with the future of the D block, and I think the time is really ripe for all of us to recognize that,” he said. “If it seems that it’s more than a possibility that a reallocation might move, then we need to start thinking more seriously about that, and we need the commission to work with others to really begin to figure out how we finance that construction” of the network, he added.

The commission should be sharing staffers’ “expertise” with Congress, by “answering questions and trying to bring this to a head and move forward to get something accomplished in the cause of public safety,” Copps said. He said Chairman Julius Genachowski has done well in adding experts to the Public Safety Bureau. Copps said reallocating the block to public safety “has significant momentum apparently behind it, and we need to get something passed and built quickly.” He didn’t express a preference for a reallocation or for an auction of the spectrum. If reallocation goes forward, it should happen “as expeditiously as possible,” he told us. Copps’ term expired at the end of the last Congress, and he'll have to leave the commission when this Congress adjourns for the year. A replacement hasn’t been named.

The Democrat again sought action by the FCC on changes to USF and intercarrier compensation. “We have a genuine opportunity to reform USF and intercarrier compensation,” Copps said: “I do not know when we are going to have it again” at the FCC, so “it’s very important that we act this year” when all members of the agency want to push ahead. “I want to work with my colleagues to make sure that that job that’s been on the plate since I got here, this is the time to really get it done.” He cited a March 15 blog post by the five commissioners on USF and ICC, at http://xrl.us/bjnydt.

"The opportunity to get this done is in the months ahead,” Copps said of the two telecom issues. “It is not at all an unpromising environment in which to accomplish” changes, he said. “I don’t see it as a particularly partisan environment,” given there’s “interest on both sides of the aisle in Congress” for the FCC “to step up and make some progress,” he told us: “And certainly there is” the will to do so at the commission. He wants to develop “a good transition schedule” for funding broadband and get it approved soon by the agency. “I would hope that we would be well down the road to implementing reform ... well before the end of the year,” he continued. Genachowski and other commissioners have been clear, as in the blog, that there’s momentum, which is why it’s important for all stakeholders to come up with a list of what’s realistic, “rather than their wish list, because everyone is going” to have to make compromises, Copps said.

Copps meanwhile is “disappointed that we have not accomplished more on the media front,” he said in the interview. His Saturday speech in Boston said as much, Copps noted. The commission’s quadrennial review of media ownership rules, mandated for 2010 as part of the Telecom Act, is overdue, he told us. “I hope it’s not going to be too much more time before it moves forward,” he said. “We all understand why it may take a tad longer” from year’s end, he said, but “that doesn’t give us a license to just lope along for several months -- we need to get that report out.” He hopes the media ownership order will “really step up in recognition of the reality of the marketplace and realize that some things have gone seriously awry."

The election of President Barack Obama signaled to many that “media reform was right around the corner,” Copps said Saturday. It’s 27 months later, “and we are still waiting,” Copps said: “Waiting for even a down-payment on media reform, like an honest-to-goodness broadcast license renewal process.” That’s the sort of thing the FCC can do “right now, using our current statutory authority,” he said. “Just give us some sign that the FCC is putting the brakes on a system that is spinning dangerously out of control.” An NAB spokesman had no comment.

The Future of Media report, being worked on by the FCC, should be “filled with strong, hard-hitting, public interest recommendations,” Copps said. Otherwise, “it won’t be worth the paper it’s written on,” he added. “The clock has run too long on the media-essential steps you and I have been talking about this weekend,” he told the audience of media activists, many of whom oppose consolidation. “I pledge this: After my time at the commission runs out later this year, I am staying on these issues, I am sticking with them, and I'm sticking with you to bring them home.”