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Tag: Tom Wheeler

  • FCC Chief ‘Confident’ Net Neutrality Rules Will Stand

    Wheeler Also Discusses Spectrum Incentive Auction on CTIA Stage

    LA Times writer Jon Healey interviews the FCC's Tom Wheeler in a fireside chat at CTIA.
    LA Times writer Jon Healey interviews the FCC’s Tom Wheeler in a fireside chat at CTIA.

    As one of Super Mobility 2015’s first speakers, Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman Tom Wheeler reaffirmed his support for the net neutrality rules that CTIA-The Wireless Association, the event’s host, has been fighting in court.

    Wheeler harkened back to his speech to this same audience last year where he received a “less than thunderous response” to his suggestion that broadband should be classified as a public utility. Previously, the FCC had treated broadband as an information service separate from the telephone network.

    “If you have that kind of a role in delivery of Internet, then you ought to be governed under a similar set of rules that apply to everyone and not have a wireless exception,” Wheeler said.

    Net neutrality rules enacted by the FCC early this year prohibit mobile broadband providers from throttling Internet content and utilizing paid prioritization. CTIA filed a brief with the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C., this summer in conjunction with other industry associations, opposing the regulation saying it could have “devastating impact on Americans and the U.S. economy.”

    “Imposing Title II on wireless would be a gross overreaction that would interrupt the world’s best wireless industry and interfere with the significant innovations and competition consumers enjoy today.”

    Wheeler disagreed on stage during a fireside chat with Los Angeles Times editorial writer Jon Healey. He pointed out the “tens of billions of dollars” the wireless industry has invested.

    “I’m very bullish on the continued growth of this industry and the continued protection of consumers and how they use the net,” he said.

    Wheeler said he was also “supremely confident” that the incentive auction for 600MHz of broadcast TV spectrum, scheduled to start March 29, 2016, would go off without a hitch and that broadcasters would be there and would agree to sell their spectrum rights. Don’t believe him? Take it from James Murdoch, new CEO of News Corp., he said.

    “I told him I was going to be talking to you today, and I said, ‘Can I tell him you’re going to show up?’ and he said, ‘Yup,’” Wheeler explained to Healey. “We had a fascinating discussion about how the broadcast business has changed. The most interesting part of my conversation with…Murdoch was talking about innovation and need to be continually innovative. The broadcast auction offers incredible opportunities for broadcasters to get a pot of money to innovate with without losing the business model they’ve been successful with.”

  • FCC Chairman to CTIA: Competition, Net Neutrality, Spectrum Top Priorities

    Crowds streamed into the Sands Expo and Convention Center, Las Vegas, to the sounds of ’80s music icon Thomas Dolby and a string quartet covering the ’90s hit “Bittersweet Symphony,” but the buzz wasn’t about the morning keynote speech that would kick off CTIA Super Mobility Week. Instead, the impending Apple Live Event had taken over as a countdown clock ticked on the big screen.

    The Apple circus — though alluded to in introductory remarks by CTIA Chairman Dan Mead, CEO of Verizon Wireless, and CTIA President Meredith Atwell Baker — would have to wait. First on the agenda: Several topics affecting the industry, with an emphasis on spectrum allocation.

    Atwell Baker set up the three-day show, the first combining the CTIA conference with MobileCON. She cited dozens of figures about the incredible growth of the industry before focusing in on the need for a successful spectrum incentive auction with projected 886% mobile data usage growth by 2019.

    “The U.S. had the third-lowest amount of spectrum dedicated to LTE,” she said. “How do we close the gap? The AWS-3 and 600MHz auction are a great start. We hear the wireless carriers may sit out of these auctions. Really? Given our track record, I’m incredulous wireless carriers wouldn’t bring billions of dollars to these auctions.”

    The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has been pushing for the spectrum incentive auctions to reallocate spectrum from television broadcasters to wireless providers for ever-increasing mobile usage.

    In introducing Tom Wheeler, chairman of the FCC, Atwell Baker lauded his determination to bring the auctions to fruition.

    Wheeler jumped right into his list of the Top 3 issues facing the business for the standing-room only crowd: the incentive auction, net neutrality and competition in the wireless industry.

    Wheeler balanced his concerns with equal doses of praise, lauding CTIA for a “very thoughtful” paper arguing that mobile broadband should not be subject to the same rules as fixed broadband while alternately questioning why some consumers have been led to believe they have unlimited data usage or why others are targets for throttled usage.

    “I’m hard-pressed to understand how either practice, much less the two together, could be a reasonable way to manage a network,” he said.

    RELATED: CTIA’s “Net Neutrality & Technical Challenges of Mobile Broadband Networks”   |   Chairman Wheeler’s Prepared Remarks to CTIA

    He also touched on the need to keep competition alive in the business and avoid the “walled gardens” of the past that created barriers to entry in the market.

    “Where competition exists the commission must protect it. This industry has always told policymakers, ‘We’re different, we’re competitive, but in the last couple of years the FCC and Department of Justice had to be poised to protect that dynamic.”

    Wheeler pointed out the wireless industry’s $260 billion 10-year infrastructure investment as “living proof that profit and progress can go hand in hand” before concluding on the topic of a shared front: spectrum allocation.

    “Our greatest public asset is that which we cannot see: Spectrum. Your government has heard your cry for more spectrum. The Congress responded with a creative and courageous solution,” he said, “an incredibly complex, never-before attempted undertaking.”