Today was “Let’s all bow in front of Jay Rockefeller” day for the FCC commission.
C-SPAN thoughtfully recorded the hearing and has the complete video online for free.
So you can see the 5 people President Obama has chosen to regulate communications. They say a picture is worth a 1000 words…
Highlights so you can skip through Jay Rockefeller’s bluster – the bantor and tension with Senator Hutchison is this hearing was scheduled for 2:30 PM, and Rockefeller started it at 2:27 in order to start it without Republicans being present
USF = Universal Service Fund
RUS = US Agriculture Department’s Rural Utilities Service loan fund
ITU = International Telegraph Union – the global entity that coordinates global spectrum use and technolliges
36:30 Commissioner Clyburn demonstrates her abilities that got her on the FCC [watch her eyes]
39:00 Senator DeMint (R-SC) hits Genachowski with a bull-eye right between the eyes (metaphorically of course)…. asking him how many complaints the FCC has received before or after it decided on its own to regulate the internet without any governmental authority and the absence of any reason beyond “Because we want to” (which courts have already thrown out). Wired Broadband internet uses no spectrum and doesn’t have any impediment to unlimited numbers of competing services, so the FCC has no business being involved in it.
44:00 Senator Begich (D-AK) makes his pitch that the 134 people living in Adak need money from the Universal Service Fund to keep their phone service. Adak is a tiny community at the very end of the Aleutian islands – it had been the location of a naval base that no longer exists
58:00 Senator Lautenburg (D-NJ) uses his time to go after News Corp “Hacking” case in England, which has nothing to do with the subject matter of the hearing and runs over his 5 minute time limit
1:00 Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) wants to know why Puerto Rico isn’t getting money to build out their broadband internet [PR is not a state, and pays no taxes to the United States – if they want free federal money, become a state], and how the FCC intends to interact with the ITU abour global regulation of the internet
1:29:00 Senator Warner (D-VA) makes the important point that with all the talk about “freeing spectrum”, 65% of the spectrum is reserved for government use (like NASA and the Military)
1:35:00 There is some vote going on for the full Senate causing the members to have to leave, and Senator Wicker (R-MS) makes an inside joke that since he’s now in charge, he’s going to report bills out of committee to go to the full Senate since he’s the only one left in the room
So I conflated two things, but when you hear the details you’ll figure out why.
The Dog and Pony show with Jay Rockefeller’s committee (above) was scheduled for exactly the same time the FCC staff were holding the “Public Forum” to announce the details of their decisions about the LPFM and FM Translator mess:
http://www.fcc.gov/events/low-power-fm-and-fm-translator-public-forum
Peter Doyle is the head legal guy for the FCC and he is involved in every really important decision the FCC makes.
Unfortunately, I don’t see an archive of the webinar and the 4th and 5th notices mentioned in the agenda aren’t online yet, or I can’t find them