REMARKS 
COMMISSIONER MICHAEL J. COPPS
THE CABLE CENTER, KEY ISSUES SERIES
DENVER COLORADO, OCTOBER 17, 2008
Thank you for your warm welcome and to Phil Weiser for inviting me to address 
this prestigious group.  And thanks to everyone here who has made the past couple of 
days in Denver so informative and enjoyable.
It seems I missed an interesting few days in FCC world.  First was the meeting 
that never was in Nashville.  I think there are still panelists waiting to testify, thinking it’s 
just another late-convening meeting.  Now I learn that I missed helping pick out the 
NASCAR driver who’s going to race the FCC around the DTV track.  Let’s hope he 
doesn’t crash.  That would be an ominous omen.
Next up is our Commission meeting on Election Day, November 4.  I can hardly 
wait for that one.  Let’s see—for openers we have Universal Service reform.  Then the 
tangled web of Intercarrier Compensation.  A couple of little transactions involving 
Sprint-Clearwire and Verizon-Alltel.  And a non-controversial spectrum issue about 
something called “white spaces.”  Talk about top-heavy!  I’ve put in for my absentee 
Presidential ballot for that day, as I think Commissioners will all be trapped on the 8th
floor all day and night on the 3rd and I frankly wonder if we’ll be able to convene on the 
4th before the polls close in California.
Seriously, we’re just beginning to see some of these items, they are obviously 
deep in the weeds, and I don’t think most of my colleagues feel comfortable yet in saying 
much about them.  In any event, they are not what I came here to talk about today.  
Because big as these issues are for our future, there are some deeper questions we need to 
be asking, and dialogues we need to be opening, about larger changes taking place that 
are transforming our communications environment.   
Over the next several years—and it will take a while—our country’s 
communications environment will be profoundly transformed.  The implications of these 
changes are enormous—not only for our arts and entertainment, but for our core
American values such as preserving the civic dialogue upon which our democracy 
depends, nourishing our cultural and ethnic diversity, and for how we all relate to one 
another.  A lot of us have theories and conjectures about how technology is affecting and 
will continue to affect our media—but I don’t think there are many of us who can claim 
to have much in the way of certainty.  
Perhaps that’s not surprising.  It’s not easy to focus on a target that is constantly 
moving.  On the flight out here, I was remembering back to 1970 when I first went to 
work in the United States Senate and how communications were back then. The fanciest 
piece of work-saving equipment in the Fritz Hollings office was our robo-machine that 
cranked out some really awful-looking mass mailings. Everything else was typed by 
hand and when IBM Selectric typewriters came along, we all fought tooth-and-nail to be 
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one of the lucky few to get one. When Senator Hollings dictated even a minor change to 
a speech draft, his poor secretary had to retype the entire text—sometimes into the wee 
hours of the morning before the speech. When we needed to phone back to the state, we 
had a WATS line, but initially the Senator had to share it with a more senior colleague, 
the legendary Richard B. Russell from Georgia, so when Senator Russell wanted to get 
on, freshman Senator Hollings had to get off. Saying that world was primitive doesn’t 
get close—it would be just plain unintelligible to the kids of the Internet Generation.  
That was before the great technology flood and the knowledge tools that have so 
dramatically transformed everything.
But I’m not here to revisit the Ghosts of Communications Past.  I’m here more to 
talk about the future.  Let me begin with four basic ideas about how the Internet both is
and is not going to change everything.
Change Number One:  The Internet is going to change the way media is 
delivered—rather than learning about the world’s great events through big sheets of paper 
delivered to your door before dawn, or waiting for the mailman to deliver your movie 
from Netflix, we will be doing much of our reading and watching our entertainment on 
some sort of device connected to the Net—a lot of it wirelessly.  
Change Number Two: The Internet is going to change business models—
obviously for entertainment, but also for information and for how people in media and 
journalism make their living. Indeed, the current model of journalism that has too often
crowded valuable political coverage out of traditional media—covering city hall and the 
state legislature, for example, or doing in-depth investigative reporting—is ripe for re-
invention in the Internet Age. We can do that right or do it wrong.
Non-Change Number One: The Internet is not going to change the need for 
citizens in a democracy to be informed about politics, nor will it change the fundamental 
importance of having a media that reflects America’s diverse ethnic, religious and 
cultural backgrounds. 
Non-Change Number Two:  The Internet will likely not change the fact that pure 
commerce has never produced the full range of news and cultural programming this 
country needs.  In a world run purely by free market principles, we wouldn’t have had C-
Span, McNeil-Lehrer, or even the New York Times or Washington Post (which benefit 
from ownership by very remarkable families). The current system is not on-track to get 
us from here to there.  
We don’t know when the Internet-changed media environment will be complete.  
But putting these four points together, I see two critical challenges.  One is getting the 
technology of the new age out to all those who will live in that new age.  The other is 
how to ensure that this technology serves us as citizens.  
Let’s begin with a point that historian Paul Starr has made—delivery systems 
matter and government choices can make all the difference in how those delivery systems 
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develop.  For example, the federal government decided near the beginning of the republic 
that it would subsidize the postal service.  The result? Newspapers and newsletters made 
their way to the frontier and smaller cities very fast—much faster than in Europe.  
America’s choice about how media would be distributed reflected our democratic 
values—and there were more newspapers, a more active public debate, and a more 
educated and involved citizenry because of it.
The federal government made very different choices when it came to handling our
nascent broadcast industry in the 1920s and ’30s.  There was a real movement in the 
1920s to give licenses to local educational and non-commercial institutions.  But the 
commercial broadcasters won out and we ended up with public airwaves dominated by a 
handful of national networks operating under the condition that they serve the “public 
interest.” Although we’ve seen some changes over the years—like the advent of public 
broadcasting in the ’60s which opened a space for non-commercial voices on the dial—
much of the original blueprint remains in place.  The “public interest” standard itself, 
albeit battered by the deregulation of the past few decades, still stands as a testament to 
choices made over 70 years ago.  I’m not here to debate the wisdom of those choices—
although I think you know where I stand on the need to reinvigorate the public interest 
standard.  My point is that government choices, particularly at the early stages of a new 
medium, can have effects that are profound and long-lasting.  
Right now, we are at such a transformative moment with the Internet.  I will spare 
you my stump speech on how poorly we are doing, when compared with our international 
competitors, in bringing high-value, high-speed broadband to all our citizens.  The OECD 
ranks us 15th in the world; if you don’t like that study, I can point you to others that have 
us doing even worse that that.  The rank is less important than what is actually happening 
on the ground.  If you live here in Denver you probably pay twice as much for a 
connection that’s one-tenth the speed of what you’d get if you lived in Tokyo, Seoul, 
Paris or London.  If you live in exurban or rural America, you’re looking at slower 
connections or, in many places, no connection at all.  Only about half of American homes 
have broadband.
So Job One is doing better on access and giving Americans reasons (like lower 
prices and higher speeds) to sign up.  The federal government gives out nearly $8 billion 
a year of subsidies as part of the Universal Service Fund—and while some of it goes to 
wiring schools, libraries and hospitals with high-speed lines, most of it goes to supporting 
voice service.  The kicker here has been that—under the FCC’s rules, this money is 
reserved for ordinary telephone service and cannot be used to directly support broadband.  
And it’s 2008!  That needs to change.  I think my colleagues realize that Plain Old 
Telephone Service—the POTS of the 20th century—has to give way to the PANS—the 
Pretty Awesome New Stuff—that consumers and businesses need today.  Our policies 
need to be adjusted accordingly.
Getting that job done is, however, about more than changing the Universal 
Service Fund.  It’s also about having a national strategy—a commitment at the top to get 
high-speed broadband out to everyone, no matter who they are or where they live.  It’s 
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about building basic infrastructure.  We’ve always managed to find ways—the public and 
private sectors in all sorts of creative partnerships, operating under many kinds of 
incentives—to build the infrastructure America needs.  Going back to the bridges and 
turnpikes and roads and railroads and later the electricity and highways that we needed to 
move the American people and the American nation forward.
So first we need a realization at the top about how critical this is.  Then we need a 
strategy and tactics to make it happen.  The FCC has a role here.  Congress of course has 
an even larger role in devising the strategy and considering the programs and incentives 
to achieve the objective, ranging far beyond what our little agency can do.
The good news is that I think there is reason for some optimism. There’s growing 
grassroots support to get this done.  Just three days ago, Communications Daily ran a lead 
story on how numerous Congressional candidates are being pushed by constituents to 
pursue broadband legislation.  The article quoted several Congressmen, like Zack Space 
of Ohio who said, “Increasingly, people are realizing that what electrification was to the 
country in the 1930s, broadband is to our generation.”  And, more than ever, the issue has 
achieved real visibility in the Presidential race.  Having a Chief Technology Officer at the 
White House, who is also kind of a broadband czar, to bring together the many 
government agencies who have a finger in broadband but who don’t coordinate and 
connect—and then to work with the private sector to develop innovative new 
partnerships, strikes me as a capital good idea.
Why, as a matter of course, when the Department of Housing and Urban 
Development is planning low-income housing, aren’t we coordinating to make sure that 
building is wired for 21st century communications?  Why don’t all the agencies with a 
finger in broadband, like the Rural Utilities Service, Commerce, Transportation, and the 
FCC, coordinate what they are doing?  Why, in the absence of having a truly 
interoperable broadband network for public safety, are the DoD and Homeland Security 
throwing a lot of money into a program for federal agencies while the FCC has to 
struggle to find a way to build an entirely separate system for state and local public 
safety?
It doesn’t have to be this way.  It shouldn’t be this way.  We need some real 
innovation and coordination to get this done.  We can’t get along without those bigger, 
fatter, more affordable pipes.  So I’m not talking do-gooder social theory here.  I’m 
talking economic growth, creating opportunity, creating jobs, making America more 
competitive, public safety, the list goes on.  This is about making you and me and 300 
million Americans part of—our current economic crisis notwithstanding—what can still 
be the most prosperous and exciting century ever.  It’s about jobs and the economy, and 
what our telecommunications sectors can do to help right the ship.  By some estimates, 
ubiquitous affordable broadband would quickly add $500 billion to the U.S. economy and 
create 1.2 million jobs.  Another study concluded that every percentage point increase in 
broadband penetration would mean 300,000 more jobs and increased national output. I 
think these estimates are too conservative.
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I continue to believe that an important piece of our larger broadband agenda is 
maintaining the openness of the Internet.  I understand the need for reasonable network 
management.  I daresay everyone in the room agrees on that.  And I understand that these 
are complex, difficult and always-evolving issues.  But this technology—broadband and 
the Internet—is truly paradigm-altering.  Life-transforming.  It was built on openness; it 
grew on openness; and its future must be openness.
Another part of the broadband challenge that doesn’t receive as much attention as 
it should is the need to ensure that we are doing everything we can to foster innovation.  I 
was just over at CableLabs this morning and got to see first-hand some of the impressive 
and exciting R&D efforts going on.  But I don’t believe we have enough of that going on 
in our country today.  We need to do better. And that’s not just me talking—I’ve met 
with lots of folks, including CTOs and CEOs and technologists and innovators who share 
my concern. According to a report by the National Research Council, industry-driven 
innovation over the last several decades is in decline and the United States’ role as the 
global leader in technology innovation is at risk. The NRC found that federal support has 
not increased sufficiently to replace the decline in industry involvement and it 
emphasized the shift in what research remains from long-term to short-term projects.
You know, the Telecommunications Act actually instructs the Commission to 
consider the impact on innovation and on the competitive posture of the United States of 
each merger that comes our way. That kind of studied analysis is barely ever a factor in 
what we actually do these days.  
The second, perhaps even broader, set of issues we need to address is what kind 
of content will flow over those hopefully abundant and non-discriminatory broadband 
pipes.  
Again, I think we’re at one of those moments where choices will be made that 
will be with us for a very long time.  Nick Lemann, Dean of the Columbia Journalism 
School, has written that each new medium gets a pioneer who defines it.  TV news had 
Ed Murrow and Walter Cronkite—who came along in the early days and showed us all 
what TV news could be. I think Brian Lamb and Ted Turner may be those kind of
pioneers on cable.   
But web journalism hasn’t gotten its Ed Murrow yet—someone who defines the 
voice and the ideals of the medium.  (Nor, for that matter, has traditional media been very 
good at cultivating new Ed Murrows.) But at least a few people are thinking about how 
to use the new media to take journalism to greater heights.  For example, I’ve talked a 
number of times with Google Founder Larry Page. He’s thinking of ways that the next 
generation of journalists can develop better local news.  He and I agree that we need to 
come up with ways to better use the Internet to inform our civic dialogue.  And the good 
news is that the Internet—with its ability to blend video and text, and to offer almost 
unlimited amounts of information—can be used to communicate a lot more, and in a 
more useable way, than a daily paper or 30-minute newscast can.
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Although it’s not the Internet, I think the Elections ’08 video-on-demand service
launched in over 32 million digital cable homes is the kind of innovative product that can 
make a real difference in our civic dialogue.  Kyle McSlarrow and I talked about the 
importance of this kind of information being available about a year ago.   I’m pleased to 
see the industry develop this type of public service.  I was navigating around the service 
and found not only the Presidential debates and convention coverage, but such 
information as to how to become a poll worker and how to find the polling place.  Here’s 
another idea to build on:  provide this service not only for the Presidential race, but for 
state and local contests as well.  Why not let every candidate for mayor or state 
representative at least tape a segment about why they should be elected and make them 
available for voters to review on demand?  And while we’re at it, why not on the Internet 
as well, for those citizens who don’t have On Demand service?  A virtual public square.  
The possibilities for our democracy are enormous.
More broadly, as content migrates online, how do we promote the goals that we, 
as a society, still care about?  How do we educate and protect our kids? How do we get 
information about local issues of public concern?  Typically, government regulation has 
been based on some sort of licensing relationship or statutory directive.  How does that 
apply to the online world, where websites not only are not licensed, but they may not 
even be in the United States?  What if the market fails to provide the things we care 
about—the things we need? How do we advance those interests in ways that are 
effective and respectful of constitutional and jurisdictional boundaries?  How do we 
accomplish our goals as a free society while making sure we don’t impinge the potential 
of these life-changing new technologies?
 I don’t pretend to know the answers, but I do know we need to begin the dialogue.  
Going forward, this is not about parsing the provisos and nuances of the 
Telecommunications Act of 1996.  It’s about a serious national discussion that we’re not 
having.  And, for Heaven’s sake, let’s not allow this dialogue to get teed up as yet another 
sterile round in that tired old debate between “regulation” and “deregulation,” which has 
pushed so much substantive public discussion off to the sidelines.  This isn’t, or shouldn’t 
be, a multiple choice question with only two take-it-or-leave-it options. All kinds of new 
direct regulation isn’t going to get this done.  Maybe we need a way to address market 
failures in a more affirmative way. Take children’s educational programming. If the 
Internet ends up as broadcasting’s eventual home and it isn’t producing enough good, 
educational programming for children, maybe we could at least talk about something 
other than trying to force private industry to do it.  Should we find a way adequately to
fund PBS or some other group that is actually interested in doing the job?  Maybe 
PBSS—a Public Broadcasting System on Steroids.   That can’t be done on the cheap.  
And Lord knows in this environment there’s not a lot of extra cash floating around.  Then 
again, neither is this a short-term problem.  The point is we need to start talking, start 
planning, now.  I hope when we do, we’ll find lots of creative ideas out there.  It is time 
to get serious about a future we know is coming, don’t you think?
There are so many other questions. We need to be thinking much more broadly 
and deeply about where this all is going—and where it should go.  Media’s migration to 
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the Internet won’t be accomplished immediately.  I think it will take some years—but, 
then again, change can come more quickly than we think.  And in no case should we 
believe we have the luxury of not stepping up to the plate and considering these 
questions.  
At the end of the day I remain an optimist. I believe that the questions you and I 
are grappling with are formative questions in determining how well our country will fare 
in this still-new century. I believe the issue of a national broadband strategy is beginning 
to take on—belatedly but assuredly—a life of its own. And I believe with all the great 
talent and resources we have, we can meet the challenge and create the opportunities that
300 million Americans must and should have in this competitive century.  It’s a big 
challenge, to be sure, but we’ve met similar challenges in the past, and I believe we can 
tackle this one the same way—with business, government and communities all pulling 
together to get the job done. After all, that’s how we built this country.  I look forward 
to working with you, with my colleagues on the Commission, with Congress, with states 
and localities and with all the diverse set of stakeholders that make up our great country 
to make it happen.
One last thing before I say those two words you’re maybe ready to hear by now—
“in conclusion”—and that’s DTV.  Exactly four short months from today, we are going to 
flip the switch nationwide and end full-power analog broadcasting in this country.  I’ve 
been sounding the alarm for a long time that we needed to treat this as the national 
priority that it is and create a coordinated public-private partnership at the highest levels.  
Unfortunately, that didn’t happen.  So now we’re scrambling in these final weeks and 
coming across problems that could have been—should have been—identified and dealt 
with long ago.  But we are where we are and we have to make the best of it.  I spent the 
day yesterday trying to spread the word here in Denver, and all my colleagues are doing 
the same kind of things in other cities.  One other proposal I’ve made to Chairman Martin 
is to find a way to permit stations to continue to broadcast an analog message for a short 
period after February 17.  The message would tell consumers who were unprepared for 
the transition what happened to their TV signals and what they need to do to restore 
service. It could avoid a lot of problems, a lot of heartache, a lot of consumer backlash.
We did just that in Wilmington and it proved very effective.  Over 80% of the 
calls from troubled consumers were made to the toll-free number provided in the analog 
on-screen message. I think many in the broadcast community will support this effort.  
And it’s gaining support in Congress as well.  Senator Rockefeller and Congresswoman 
Capps have introduced bills calling on the FCC to make this happen.  I hope all of you 
will get behind this idea too.  I haven’t met anyone who doesn’t think it’s a good idea.  
But, as you know, Washington can sometimes be the place where a good idea goes to die.  
We can’t let that happen here—the stakes are too high.
So thank you again for having me.  It’s an uncertain time, I know—but also an
enormously exciting one.  I believe we can redress the errors and excesses of the recent 
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past if we’re smart about it, and we can harness the power of all these exciting new 
technologies and 21st century communications to expand opportunity for all our people 
and keep this great nation of ours the leader it has for so long been.  Old models are 
giving way, but who better to invent new models than us?  And where better to invent 
them than right here at home?  That’s prospect enough to get me excited.  We’re not—
any of us—bystanders to the story of America.  We’re its authors.  Let’s step up—
government, industry, labor, consumers, academe—and make it happen.  
Thank you.