Because Bob Pepper is sick, Kevin is asking the FCC people in the audience to form a panel. They gamely do.

Amy Wohl asks what they think about Reed Hundt’s idea of moving money from over-the-air digital tuners to a project that provides broadband to everyone. The panelists are being evasive and then negative. “I don’t know that people need that much bandwidth today,” one says. I ask how much bandwidth people need. He points to a report that said we need to look at how much we need for today’s apps and for tomorrow’s. We have enough for today’s, he says.

Cory asks why they’ve taken on the role of legislators and ignored 750,000 messages opposing the media conglomeration decision. FCC person says that the FCC is appointed by elected officials and that now it’s easier than ever to communicate with the FCC. [Accessible but not responsive.] Cory says that Congress is sending the FCC issues that they don’t want to touch. Thus, the FCC needs to respond like representatives. FCC replies that it’s very hard for an administrative agency to be contacted by the public that expects to have an impact on the complex issues that are before the agency. Traditional legislative lobbying tactics are being addressed to a policy agency set up to dive into a nuclear toxic waste area. It’s a “data point” that 750,000 Americans feels one way, but at the end of the day it’s more important to work with someone with expertise working out a compromise.

What about the broadcast flag? FCC says the broadcast industry doesn’t want to move into the digital age because they don’t want their stuff copied. The rule is pending. The transition to digital TV is an area of high interest to Chairman Powell.

Kenn Coukier asks about open spectrum. What is the process for going forward to make a decision about spectrum? Kevin explains that the FCC has a task force but Bush just announced his own. The FCC report covered issues around commercial and public safety. It covered interference protection, access protection. They came up with bold suggestions that they are implementing. The report suggests opening up some spectrum and creating underlays. They also suggested an easement by which software-defined radios could sense and use unused bandwidth. Now they’re in the implementation phase. More studies are going on about cognitive radio, interference temperature…The president’s commission parallels this.

An audience member asks how changes in the industry and market are handled when they cross organizational boundaries. How can you make the regulatory landscape more consistent across wireless, wireline, etc.? The FCC guy says that the question is right and it’s really hard. “The regulation is in terms of the service seen by the end user, not by the technology.” The Europeans have implemented a truly tech-neutral policy.

The FCC guy now tells us that they don’t hear enough from the likes of us to help understand what’s possible now. (My shouting out, “So, let’s set up a meeting” didn’t go over real well.) We don’t hear nearly enough from ISPs, etc. I’m a populist, he says, and wants to get the broadest public input. We need to be listening to those 750,000 voices. Another guy says that the FCC can be cloistered so it’s important for them to conferences like this. Another one says, helpfully, that they can tell us how we can get ourselves invited in while following the government regs.

Cory, in the Joi Ito IRC, says that it’s a bad thing that an expert commission is getting thrown issues too hot for the legislative branch to handle.

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