 Hey guys, it's Neil Iyer with The Verge and I'm here with FCC Chairman Julius Chynikowski, apparently in Miami. No, we're at CES in Las Vegas. The chairman gave a speech yesterday. He talked a little bit about opening up wireless spectrum. There's a ton of products on the show floor. What's your favorite thing that you've seen so far? My favorite part of CES is the fact that every single product is internet connected and almost every single product is wirelessly connected. If you shut down the internet, if you shut down wireless, not a single thing on the floor would work. I want to get right into the importance of the internet. You have been a champion of net neutrality and you brokered what I would call a compromised net neutrality solution. This is your policy. You believe in net neutrality. Yes. Yes. Okay. As long as you're out there. Are you a Reddit reader? Do you know what Reddit is? Yes. So Reddit is going to shut itself down on January 18th because they're protesting SOPA. And SOPA, there are provisions in SOPA that would kind of damage the net neutrality structure. And Wikipedia might join the protest. I think Facebook, Twitter, they've talked about it. Google's talked about it. It's a big deal. Where are you on SOPA? Well there clearly are issues that have to be addressed. Yeah. The piracy is a problem, sure. You know, absolutely. We have to find a way to protect intellectual property and not break the internet. Do you think SOPA is that way? Is it the solution? You know what, listen, clearly it's being debated by Congress and something that Congress should debate. But there's just no question that we have to preserve, and this is why we felt so strongly about net neutrality, we have to preserve the magic of the internet, the openness of the internet, and make sure that we continue to provide incentives for content creators to create content. So does it speak to you when a site like Reddit, which is totally community driven, right? Everything on Reddit is driven by its community, huge community. When they're saying this is so important to us that we will shut it down, and sort of the internet, the larger population of just citizens on the internet is freaking out about this. I mean, they tell me they're freaking out about it all the time. Does that speak to you, sort of on a personal level? Absolutely. I mean, one of the great things about the internet is it creates a platform, a forum for people to express their views. And I think those views are being heard, and it's important. You know, people are attached not just to the information, the services they get on the internet, they're attached to the concept of a free and open internet that we have. And it's great to see participation in our system, and a vocal expression of, listen, we want to preserve the internet that we have. Okay. So, I mean, I want to, because the Reddit thing to me is very interesting. It's such an outcry. We always wonder, I mean, does Washington see it? Do they see what's happening on the ground in my email when people are sending me animated gifs of the internet blowing up? Do you get those? Do you get a lot of animated gifs in your email? People, participation in public policy issues is really important. People do pay attention, and I think it's- Yesterday you gave a speech, talked about opening spectrum, you know, incentive auctions, making spectrum easier to get to. But more prosaically, let's talk about maximizing the spectrum that we have. And one of the themes of the show floor is you've got Verizon pushing LTE really hard. AT&T is coming out with a bunch of LTE devices here. Sprint demoed its first LTE devices. Do you think that there should be, I know the Rural Cellular Association is pushing for interoperability. Do you think that that's something the agency, I'm sorry, the commission should get involved with? Do you hear that call? Do you think it's going to happen? Or are you waiting for them to do it on their own? No, listen, interoperability is something that would really help drive and improve mobile ecosystem. It's one of a number of things that we need to take seriously. No one expected several years ago that we would be where we are now with an incredibly robust, innovative mobile economy. We've regained world leadership in mobile. Our apps economy is the envy of the world. We are leading the world in deployment of 4G, the next generation of mobile. You know, we've been focused on the opportunities of wireless, what we need to do with our wireless infrastructure and ecosystem to get this right. As you know, in many, many ways, things are great. We know exactly what the biggest threat to our mobile economy is, and that is the spectrum crunch. It's the fact that all of the demand that's generated by the applications and services that we love to use is going up like that, and the supply spectrum is going like that. I'm a Verizon customer, and I say, this network is choked. I'm at CS, LT is choked. I could just open my phone and switch to AT&T because it was interoperable. On the ground, real world solution, wouldn't that help? Sure. Listen, promoting, driving competition in the mobile economy is something that's important. I think we've proven recently how important it is to us and how seriously we take it. Interoperation in our economy is what drives investment. It's what drives innovation. Across the board, we're looking to foster the most competitive mobile economy. Are we working towards interoperability then as a policy, or are we taking kind of a step back? People use interoperability to refer to a couple of different things. There's the interoperability of spectrum that rural carriers received at auction and whether there are chips for those to be interoperable with other networks. It's largely a roaming issue. Then there's the ability of consumers to switch between carriers more easily. I think that would really foster direct competition between carriers. It's an issue that we continue to look at. People don't know that you actually can get phones now without a two-year contract. You have to pay more. You're technologically locked to a carrier though. You can get a phone without a two-year contract on AT&T, but where are you going to take it? I think that's really the problem. It's a technological problem. I think that's fair. I think working toward a mechanism that provides real competition, that also provides incentives to invest in networks, one of the mistakes we can't make is to push forward a set of policies that result in networks that are slow, congested, problematic. It's important as we look at all the different issues to say, look, we know what we want. We want to maximize competition. We want to maximize investment in networks so we have fast networks. We want to make sure that the platforms are open to innovators and entrepreneurs so that we can keep the apps economy growing and thriving. Those are the things that we're focused on. So we have four big carriers, right? T-Mobile, they went through an issue. The FCC strongly opposed the merger. They're trying to figure out what to do. Sprint, they're going LTE. They're saying to address our spectrum needs, we don't really have the money to go out and buy a bunch of spectrum. We'll go to LightSquared. And LightSquared is this, I mean, I get press releases from LightSquared every day saying we sign up a new partner and I always wonder what network are they going to run on because they're waiting for you. What's the worst case scenario for LightSquared? The worst case, you know, I'm not sure. I'll tell you what the status of it is. We are pushing across the board to free up spectrum for mobile broadband and to remove restrictions on spectrum use so there can be more spectrum available for mobile broadband. We also have an obligation to make sure that new uses don't cause interference to products and devices that consumers are using. And what's happening in this situation is that an interference issue has been raised. It's a legitimate interference issue. Right now it's being tested. And that's the process we should have. This comes up all the time. You know, whenever over time the FCC has looked to authorize new uses of spectrum, it raises interference issues. The way to resolve these kinds of issues is by letting the engineers through an inclusive process test the interference and that'll determine the path and the outcome. So one of the other huge themes at CS has been televisions. Smart televisions, smart televisions. Changing delivery of the television. I don't think smart televisions are going to be successful until they can integrate television until they can bring in cable, satellite, traditional methods of delivery. Right now they're kind of limited by cable card. That's the way that you authenticate digital cable in America. The cable card has kind of been, in terms of opening up the platform, has been somewhat of a failure. How do you evaluate that as you see the industry desperately trying to push for smart TVs? Yeah, listen, you're completely right that when you look at the different platforms, the innovation that we've seen on, you know, call it the living room platform, is behind other platforms. So you know, internet, millions of apps, mobile, hundreds of thousands of apps, I think it's over a million now, you know, living room, a smaller number. And we've been talking about that for a couple of years. Here's the good news. The trend in innovation around the living room TVs content is a very positive one. And so the innovation that we're seeing now, the choices for consumers and the ways, the content that they can access on their TV is changing in a very positive way. It reminds me in some ways of Wi-Fi. You know, the carriers initially didn't like Wi-Fi, the kind of licensed carriers. And if you remember back, it used to be that when you got a mobile phone, it wasn't compatible with Wi-Fi, it just didn't work. And over time, the carriers realized actually Wi-Fi was a net plus for consumers and for their businesses and started to integrate it. And now we're in a world where the default has flipped. So on tablets, all of a sudden Wi-Fi is the default and cellular is the option. Making that path around the living room. So you think IP television will become the default and traditional broadcast delivery will become the- I'm not sure. It's a different platform. It's a different set of players. But the point is we've definitely seen over the last couple of years a willingness and in fact a drive to provide more to consumers on the video platform than anyone would have expected. You know, no one would have said a few years ago that it would be easy for you to get Netflix and YouTube, for example, on your living room TV. You know, no one would have said that it would have been easy to get programming on a tablet. And those things are starting to happen and we're going to continue to push innovation in this platform. But to draw the parallels of phones, the thing that makes Wi-Fi powerful on a phone is that it operates in parallel in an integrated way to the 3G. So you're on Wi-Fi, you leave the house, it flips over to 3G, it's invisible to the user. Right now, regular television is one thing, internet delivery is another thing, and it's really hard to integrate them. Do you think, and you know, Netflix on a TV is driven by Samsung. It's not driven by Comcast. Comcast doesn't let you have Netflix on their devices. Not just by Samsung. Netflix arrives on a TV through an internet connection that we made, provided by whoever the provider is, that we made sure it stays open for providers like Netflix. And that's an important thing. It's why we were focused on it and it's why companies like Netflix can get to the TV and it's why companies like Samsung are seeing benefit in offering internet connected smart TVs. And so, I'm not saying there aren't issues here. There are. But we're seeing a trend toward more innovation, more access than people thought was possible a few years ago. We want to see that trend continue. And your point about Wi-Fi is a good one. That is one way to think about a historical model for where we can get to with innovation in the living room. What do you want to see? Last question. What do you want to see in the next five years? Well, we want to see ubiquitous broadband in the United States. Everyone both having access to broadband and having a real connection to broadband. We have two gaps when it comes to accessibility. One is there are still parts of the country that don't have infrastructure. The other is there are still many, many people who could have broadband but don't subscribe for various reasons. We want to see ubiquitous broadband. LTE is going to help you get there. Yes, absolutely. And that brings me to my next thing. We want to see a robust, thriving mobile economy. And we need to tackle the spectrum crunch, which again is the single biggest risk that our mobile economy faces. And those are the things that we're focused on. Great. Chairman, thank you so much for talking to us today. Good to see you. Thanks. Thanks.