UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

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FEDERAL COMMUNICATIONS COMMISSION

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CONSUMER ADVISORY COMMITTEE

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INAUGURAL MEETING

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FRIDAY,

APRIL 25, 2003

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The Committee met at 9:00 a.m. in the Commission Meeting Room, Room
TW‑C305, 445 12th Street, S.W., Washington, D.C., Shirley L. Rooker,
Chair, presiding.

PRESENT:

SHIRLEY L. ROOKER Chair

THOMAS ALLIBONE

MATTHEW D. BENNETT

DEBRA BERLYN

DAVID BRUGGER

ANNETTE CLECKNER

JIM CONRAN

CINDY COX

MICHAEL F. DelCASINO

MIKE DUKE

RICHARD T. ELLIS

LARRY GOLDBERG

JOSEPH GORDON

DAVID HOROWITZ

VERNON R. JAMES

BRENDA KELLY‑FREY

KAREN KIRSCH

JEFF KRAMER

CHERYL JOHNSON

REBECCA LADEW

RONALD MALLARD

SUSAN PALMER MAZRUI

PRESENT: (Cont\'d)

DAVID POEHLMAN

MARK PRANGER

JOY M. RAGSDALE

EUGENE SEAGRIFF

BYRON W. ST. CLAIR

DONALD SNOOP

CLAUDE STOUT

LINDA WEST

ANDREA WILLIAMS

DIXIE ZIEGLER

SCOTT MARSHALL Designated Federal Officer

PRESENT FROM FCC:

KATHLEEN ABERNATHY Commissioner

MARSHA MacBRIDE Chief of Staff

K. DANE SNOWDEN Chief, CGB

MARGARET EGLER Deputy Bureau Chief, CGB

STEPHEN GOREY Assistant Bureau Chief, CGB

DONALD STOCKDALE Senior Legal Advisor, OSP

PAULA SILBERTHAU Attorney Advisor, OGC

A-G-E-N-D-A

[MORNING SESSION]{.underline}

WELCOME AND CALL TO ORDER:

Shirley L. Rooker, Chair

Consumer Advisor Committee (CAC) 5

INTRODUCTION OF COMMITTEE MEMBERS:

(By Members) 7

INTRODUCTION OF THE CHAIRMAN AND COMMISSIONERS:

K. Dane Snowden, Chief

Consumer & Governmental Affairs Bureau 27

OVERVIEW OF THE COMMISSION PRIORITIES:

K. Dane Snowden, Chief, CGB 38

MEETING LOGISTICS:

Scott Marshall, CAC Designated Federal Officer

Consumer & Governmental Affairs Bureau (CGB) 66

CAC COMMITTEE GOALS AND OBJECTIVES: COMMITTEE

OPERATING PROTOCOLS AND THE ROLE OF WORKING GROUPS/

SUBCOMMITTEES:

Shirley Rooker, Scott Marshall 68

ISSUES PENDING BEFORE THE COMMISSION OF INTEREST TO

CONSUMERS:

Margaret Egler, Deputy Bureau Chief, CGB 87

A-G-E-N-D-A

[AFTERNOON SESSION]{.underline}

YOUR RESPONSIBILITIES AS A FEDERAL ADVISORY COMMITTEE

MEMBER:

Paula Silberthau, Attorney Advisor

Office of General Counsel, FCC 127

WEB RESOURCES FOR COMMITTEE MEMBERS AND THE PUBLIC:

Stephen Gorey, Assistant Bureau Chief for

Systems CGB 134

THIS IS THE FCC: OVERVIEW OF PROCESSES AND PROCEDURES:

Donald Stockdale, Senior Legal Advisor

Office of Strategic Planning, FCC 162

ESTABLISHMENT OF WORKING GROUPS/SUBCOMMITTEES AND

FUTURE AGENDA TOPICS: 198

COMMENTS FROM THE PUBLIC: 249

WRAP‑UP: FUTURE MEETINGS: 249

ADJOURNMENT: 249

P-R-O-C-E-E-D-I-N-G-S

(9:05 a.m.)

CHAIR ROOKER: We\'ve given you five extra minutes. People will tell you
from the last Committee that I\'m not usually that generous. If we could
take our seats, please. Thank you.

Good morning and welcome to this first session of the Consumer Advisory
Committee under our new charter. I\'m Shirley Rooker. I\'m pleased to be
chairing the group. We\'re going to have a jam‑packed program today. We
have several goals to accomplish throughout this meeting, and one of the
things that I want you to be thinking about as you\'re hearing our
speakers today is what are the working groups that we want to form to
bring issues to the Commission. And we\'re going to talk about goals and
objectives today. You\'re going to hear from the FCC staff, and I think
it\'s going to be very educational. And hopefully, you\'re going to be
real participants in this.

I do have a few housekeeping things that I need to bring to your
attention. Number one, when you\'re going to speak, would you please
raise your hand for two reasons, so that I can recognize you, and also
so that the people in the control booth can see where you are and turn
your microphone on, because I know that you\'ve got interesting things
to say, and we want to hear it, so if you would do that, please.

There\'s an exhibit booth outside in the hallway that has some samples
of the things that the Consumer and Governmental Affairs Bureau does.
They\'re consumer educational materials, so I recommend that you take a
look at it when we have a break.

Also, I would like to ‑‑ I hope all of you have had some breakfast. I\'d
like to thank MCI and Annette Cleckner, a new member of our Committee,
for being so generous to sponsor our breakfast and lunch. We appreciate
that very much.

There\'s also about 20 people at the FCC who were involved in making
this Committee happen. Betty Thompson, and we want to thank Betty. Is
she here? Where is she? Wherever she is. Betty, where are you? Thank
you, Betty. And, of course, there\'s the person that really makes it
happen too, and that\'s Scott Marshall, to my right here. Scott is
absolutely wonderful. He does all the work hopefully to make me look
good. Sometimes even he can\'t work that hard, but he tries really hard,
so when I screw up, it\'s my fault, not his.

I think we\'d like to ‑‑ what we\'d like to do is to get acquainted. And
we\'re going to have a little bit longer for lunch today so that you\'ll
have a chance to meet other people, because over half of our Committee
is new. And I will tell you, there were over 100 people who applied to
be on the Committee, and so we\'re so delighted that you\'re here with
us this morning. And I think the first order of business should be for
us to go around the room and introduce ourselves, tell us just a little
bit about what organization or company you represent, and what your
particular interest is in being on the Consumer Advisory Committee, so
let\'s start with Mike DelCasino.

MR. DelCASINO: Thank you, Shirley. I\'m Mike DelCasino. I\'m
representing AT&T\'s Federal Governmental Affairs organization right
here in Washington. Primary interests are, of course, the consumer
issues. We have some interest in working on the issues associated with
persons with disabilities, as well.

I would like to also introduce my alternate who is here with us today,
Lynn Crofton. Lynn, would you please raise your hand. Thank you.

CHAIR ROOKER: Cindy.

MS. COX: Good morning. I\'m Cindy Cox. I\'m with BellSouth in our
Regulatory Department in Atlanta, Georgia. I\'ve been with BellSouth for
about 19 years. I\'ve been in ‑‑ the State Regulatory Offices I\'ve been
in are Washington office here, and now I\'m back in Atlanta.

My particular interests are the new technologies and emerging
technologies, and how we address various consumer issues that apply
there. I would also like to introduce ‑‑ my alternate is David
Hartington. David is sitting right there, and he\'s also up from
Atlanta. We thank you, and I look forward to working with you all.

MR. CONRAN: Good morning. My name is Jim Conran. I\'m from the San
Francisco area in California and delighted to be here. I expect I\'ll
learn a lot and hope I can contribute something to the process. I worked
in the telecommunications industry for over 15 years, both for AT&T and
Pacific Bell, and then ran the California Department of Consumer Affairs
for the Governor, and since 1994 have been ‑‑ started Consumers First.

I also am the Chairman of the Board of Directors of the California Small
Business Association, so when I speak, I will speak on behalf of both
residential, as well as small business consumers.

CHAIR ROOKER: Mike.

MR. DUKE: My name is Mike Duke.

CHAIR ROOKER: Could we give him a microphone there? We want to hear you,
Mike.

MR. DUKE: Okay.

CHAIR ROOKER: There we go.

MR. DUKE: My name is Mike Duke. I\'m from Jackson, Mississippi. I
represent blind and visually impaired consumers, amateur radio
operators, and management of audio information services for the blind
and impaired.

I have worked my entire life in broadcasting, and have had a radio
license since I was 14, a long time ago. And my primary interest is
making sure that people with disabilities, especially vision loss, are
able to operate new technology as it comes out, rather than after the
fact.

CHAIR ROOKER: Thank you, Mike. David.

MR. HOROWITZ: My name is David Horowitz, and I have been most of my life
a communicator working for the networks as a reporter, correspondent in
Viet Nam, and accidentally got into the consumer area after my Viet Nam
experience, and worked with some friends that Shirley knows, put
together something called \"Call for Action\" in New York at WMCA, and
then went back to NBC and got involved full time in consumerism because
they couldn\'t find anyone else who wanted the job. So I took the job,
and I took the complaints, and did a television show for a long time. We
still do radio and television. I have a website that is called
\"Fightback.com\", which carries no commercials, no ads of any kind. And
our mission is basically to watchdog the world, particularly the
communications area, because it\'s an area that I sort of accidentally
also fell into and learned a lot about while it was in the making as far
as the new law is concerned. And my deepest concern about this whole
area is that nothing is moving, that consumers are still basically being
not listened to in terms of customer service at utilities, lack of
information as far as the public is concerned about what\'s going on,
lack of basic control and oversight by many of the states who are just
letting some of the public utilities, particularly the Telco people
literally walk away with the store, and not go after them.

CHAIR ROOKER And, David, we\'re going to expect you to give us some of
those suggestions.

MR. HOROWITZ: Oh, I\'m going to end this.

CHAIR ROOKER: Okay.

MR. HOROWITZ: It\'s just that I\'m sort of very into this area, and from
a standpoint of fairness and objectivity, not from the standpoint of
being a consumer person who\'s just looking to shoot an arrow and try to
get it right on the bull\'s‑eye.

CHAIR ROOKER: Thank you.

MR. HOROWITZ: And I want to thank everyone for letting me come here.

CHAIR ROOKER: Thank you. Andrea.

MS. WILLIAMS: Good morning. I\'m Andrea Williams, and I\'m Assistant
General Counsel with the Cellular Telecommunications and Internet
Association. I know that\'s a mouthful, so we just say CTIA. I have been
at CTIA now it will be 9 years next month. Boy, time flies when you\'re
having fun.

My particular interest is accessibility issues for wireless consumers,
and also service quality and wireless consumer complaints. That\'s my
latest topic that I\'ve been taking up, and I\'ve been doing regulatory
work now for about oh, since \`92, \`94.

CHAIR ROOKER: Thank you, Andrea.

MR. BRUGGER: Hello, I\'m David Brugger. I spent most of my time in
public broadcasting working at local stations and Corporation for Public
Broadcasting, and then ran their national association when we handled
all of the policy regulatory lobbying functions for public television.
And now I\'m doing consulting, a lot of it international at this point.
But my interest in being the ‑‑ one of the things that I\'ve always
worked hard at is public representation, and getting the voice of the
public into policy and regulatory issues. And I want to do everything I
can to make sure that happens. Thank you.

CHAIR ROOKER: Thank you. Joy.

MS. RAGSDALE: Good morning. I\'m Joy Ragsdale. I\'m representing the
National Association of State Utility Consumer Advocates, more commonly
referred to as NASUCA. I am with the local Washington, D.C. office
working with Elizabeth Noel, who is the people\'s counsel for
Washington, D.C. And NASUCA primarily is interested in all
telecommunication issues on the state and local level, representing our
rural and major metropolitan consumer constituents.

Primarily, we focus on rates to make sure that they are just and
reasonable, and to make sure that state rights and laws are not
pre‑empted by federal laws, and make sure that we continue to marry
federal laws with our state consumer issues.

CHAIR ROOKER: Thank you. Joe.

MR. GORDON: Good morning. I\'m Joe Gordon. I\'m here representing the
League for Hard‑of‑hearing. My interest is in accessibility for
hard‑of‑hearing consumers, to list a few, closed captioning, open
captioning, wireless phones. And also accessibility on the web, and also
it\'s important to have an easy way for consumers to complain, and for
my organization and your organization to get a report on compliance with
the regulations. Thank you.

CHAIR ROOKER: Claude.

MR. STOUT: Hello, everybody. My name is Claude Stout, and I\'m an
Executive Director with the Communication Services for the Deaf. I
represent Communication Advocacy Network, CAN, and we work on consumer
advocacy. We\'ve done that for 13 different organizations, for
individuals who are deaf or hard‑of‑hearing, or late‑deafened, and
deaf‑blind. We appreciate the opportunity to serve on this Committee,
and now we\'re in our second term being here, and so really want to
focus on disability accessibility, and captions, relay services, access
to broadband services, access on the Internet and those issues. And I
want you to know that we are not only concerned with those issues, but
we\'re also concerned about access for general consumer areas,
telemarketing problems and other issues that come up, and so we\'re
looking forward to ‑‑ I\'m really looking forward to working with all of
you. Thank you.

CHAIR ROOKER: Thank you, Claude. Brenda.

MS. KELLY‑FREY: Good morning. I\'m Brenda Kelly‑Frey, and I\'m with the
Maryland Relay Service. And I\'m here representing the National
Association of State Relay Administration, which is the National
Organization of Administrators for the Relay throughout the nation. And
also, I am a Chairperson of the TEDPA Organization, which is
Telecommunication Equipment Distribution Program Associations, and this
is the representatives who distribute equipment, specialized telephone
equipment to individuals who are disabled throughout the nation, so I\'m
here kind of wearing two hats, although my primary is towards relay.

I\'ve been an advocate for disability rights for my whole life. My
parents are both deaf, and so I\'ve been fighting for the rights of the
deaf and hard‑of‑hearing forever, and I\'m not going to mention how many
exact years until you get to know me a little bit better. And I\'m just
happy to be here.

CHAIR ROOKER: Thank you.

MS. KELLY‑FREY: Thank you.

CHAIR ROOKER: Next. I\'m sorry. I haven\'t met the gentleman to your
right. Good morning. Please introduce yourself.

MR. PRANGER: I\'m Mark Pranger. I\'m an instructor at Rogers State
University ‑‑

CHAIR ROOKER: We can\'t hear you. Just a second. Start that all over
again if you would, please.

MR. PRANGER: Okay. My name is Mark Pranger, and I\'m an instructor at
Rogers State University. I\'m representing the academics of the world,
if you want to say that. I\'m also working on my Ph.D. at Oklahoma State
University.

CHAIR ROOKER: Thank you and welcome. Debbie.

MS. LADEW: I\'m Rebecca Ladew. I sit on the Governor\'s Advisory Board
for Telecommunications Relay. I\'m the speech‑ disabled representative.
I am here to represent speech‑to‑speech relay users, and I have been
asked to take over this position from Bob Segalman, who\'s the founder
of Speech‑to‑Speech, who was also on this Committee for the past two
years.

CHAIR ROOKER: Thank you, Rebecca. Cheryl.

MS. JOHNSON: My name is Cheryl Johnson. I\'m a member of the Lummi
Tribe, which is located in northwest Washington. I work for the
Affiliated Tribes of Northwest Indians Economic Development Corporation.
That\'s a mouthful. We\'re usually ATNIEDC. We\'ve had a tribal
telephone outreach program for the last year and a half, focusing on
getting people involved in the Lifeline Link‑up program for tribal
lands. We\'ve also worked on making the consumer rules in the State of
Washington a little more user‑friendly.

We\'ve been very involved with several other non‑profits in the state.
We formed the TCEC, which is the Telephone Consumer Education
Consortium, and we worked together to lobby for changes to the
Washington Administrative Code. We have also testified on behalf of our
constituents, and we\'ve made a lot of strides in making some changes to
make things better for consumers, and we\'re honored to be here. And
even though it says ATNIEDC, I\'m actually representing all of those
consumer groups of the State of Washington. Thank you.

CHAIR ROOKER: Thank you. Pass the microphone. Hi, Vernon.

MR. JAMES: Good morning. It\'s good to be here. My name is Vernon James,
and I\'m with the San Carlos Apache Telecommunications Utility
Incorporated, another mouthful. We can it SCATUI, for short. I\'m the
General Manager, and I\'m pleased to be back here. My mission is to
educate the world as to what a small telephone company is in rural
America, rural Arizona, and on a reservation. Thank you.

CHAIR ROOKER: Thank you. Hi, I\'m Eugene Seagriff. I\'m Group Manager of
the Accessibility Program at Panasonic. For the past 20 years, I\'ve
been involved in product development either as an engineer, in sales and
marketing, or in my current responsibilities.

My personal interest is in accessibility, obviously. However, here on
the Committee, I\'m representing the Telecommunications Industry
Association, TIA, which is an association of telecom manufacturers and
carriers, both wired and wireless, so I look forward to working with you
all.

CHAIR ROOKER: Thank you. Rich.

MR. ELLIS: Good morning. I\'m Rich Ellis from Verizon, and my
consumer\'s use go back to my college days. My first job out of college
was working for Betty Furness, who was the consumer reporter at NBC News
in New York, and when Betty learned I was going to work for the
telephone company, she accused me of going to the dark side, but made me
promise to shake things up if I was going to stay there, so I hope I\'ve
been doing that for the past 20 years.

I currently am doing tariff work, but also am involved in consumer\'s
use and disability issues for Verizon, and a former member of Shirley\'s
Board, Call for Action, and am now a member of the board of the American
Association of People with Disabilities.

MR. ST. CLAIR: Good morning. I\'m Byron St. Clair. I\'m President of the
National Translator Association. And first I must tell you that this has
nothing to do with languages. Translators are small licensed television
and FM stations that automatically repeat free over‑the‑air television
and radio signals into areas that do not get direct reception. There are
some 6,000 translators, three‑quarters of them in the Western United
States, and probably a comparable number of FM translators.

We think inadvertently through neglect and because we are in out‑of‑the
way areas, the policies of the FCC and other government agencies have
inhibited the full growth of this consumer‑friendly free over‑the‑air
relay service, and I am here in hopes that some people will listen to
our problems.

CHAIR ROOKER: Thank you. Ron.

MR. MALLARD: Good morning. I\'m Ron Mallard. I\'m here representing,
contrary to this sign, the ‑‑ Brenda was wondering who was here on
behalf of the Relay Administration. I\'m here representing the National
Association of Consumer Agency Administrators. I\'ve long been involved
in that organization in leadership positions. I am also the past
president of the National Association of Telecommunication Officers and
Advisors who I\'m kind of indirectly representing here in some
subsidiary fashion because they were interested in having a seat at the
table here.

With all of that local government experience, and that is what I do,
it\'s the local government administration of consumer protection
functions and cable television regulation for the most part, and
telecommunications construction in local government areas. I\'m here
pretty much representing the consumer interest point of view, as well as
getting enforcement of telecommunication issues and problems down to the
proper level of local governments, and the local franchising
authorities. And another obviously specific interest for all of us, as
it is high on our list, is increasing the competitiveness of the markets
in telecommunications.

MS. KIRSCH: Good morning, everyone. My name is Karen Kirsch, and I am
Vice President of Regulatory Affairs for the National Association of
Broadcasters. And contrary to my sign, I\'m not with the Media Access
Group, even though Larry has told me that I\'m welcome to join.

Once again, I work for the National Association of Broadcasters. We
represent free over‑the‑air radio and television broadcasters across the
country. I was a member of last term\'s Committee, and so it\'s good to
be back to continue our work. And it\'s also good to see so many of the
people that were on the last Committee, so thank you very much.

CHAIR ROOKER: Thank you. Larry.

MR. GOLDBERG: Hi, I\'m Larry Goldberg. I\'m Director of the Media Access
Group at WGBH, Public Broadcaster in Boston where closed‑captioning was
developed, and video description. Interestingly, David Brugger provided
some of our first grants to enable video description, so anyone who uses
video description should thank David.

We also have our National Center for Accessible Media, which examines
the issues of accessibility of new and emerging media of all forms.

CHAIR ROOKER: Thank you. Linda.

MS. WEST: Good morning. I\'m Linda West. I\'m from Ronan, Montana, a
member of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes. I\'ve been a
member of the Ronan Telephone Company\'s Consumer Advisory Committee for
the last 5 years, and I welcome this opportunity from our part of the
United States of America to share our concerns and the problems that we
have with the Committee.

CHAIR ROOKER: Thank you.

MR. SNOOP: Good morning. Don Snoop. I\'m with Hometown Online, which is
a subsidiary of Warwick Valley Telephone Company, and we have just
launched about a year ago digital TV over telephone lines with VDSL
technology. And one of the gentlemen here mentioned emerging
technologies, which that is one of them. And I want to make sure that
there gets to be a better understanding of the impact that it\'s going
to have, and how it can actually contribute in a competitive world,
actually competing against not only the cable operator, but also Direct
TV.

And by the way, I did come from the cable TV industry. I spent 33 years
in the cable industry, so I have very well‑ rounded experience on that
end, and also now am learning on the telephone side.

CHAIR ROOKER: Thank you.

MR. ALLIBONE: I\'m Tom Allibone, President of LTC Consulting, and also
the Executive Director of Auditing for Teletruth. LTC is involved with
auditing phone bills, so of particular interest for my involvement with
the Committee, especially seeing the revision statement, I saw all these
consumer issues, truth‑in‑billing, bundling of charges, phone bill
related types of issues, that is my hot button, so I\'m looking forward
to bringing my expertise to the table and working with everybody on this
Committee.

CHAIR ROOKER: Thank you. Annette.

MS. CLECKNER: Good morning. My name is Annette Cleckner. I\'m with MCI.
I\'m Senior Manager of Consumer Affairs and Quality. We\'re particularly
interested in issues that affect competitive local exchange carriers and
long distance carriers, as we are both of those. And interested in
issues involving telemarketing, slamming, cramming, and the various
issues that consumers face, and so I hope to be able to contribute to
the discussion now that I\'m sitting at the table. I was glad to join
the Committee at the table. I\'ve been participating just in the
audience in the past, so I appreciate that. Thank you.

CHAIR ROOKER: Jeff.

MR. KRAMER: Thank you. I\'m Jeff Kramer with AARP. I serve as AARP\'s
liaison essentially to the FCC. I, too, am a returning member, and very
glad to be back here. As you can imagine from AARP\'s diverse
membership, we\'re involved in quite a few issues at the FCC. We care
about wireless, wire line, broadband, broadcast, just about everything
that runs the gamut of the issues at the FCC.

Our major concerns, as you can imagine, center around accessibility,
reliability, affordability, those type of issues, and I look forward to
working with everyone. Thank you.

CHAIR ROOKER: Thank you, Jeff. Debra.

MS. BERLYN: Good morning. I\'m Debra Berlyn, and I\'m President of
Consumer Policy Consulting. I\'ve been working on telecommunications and
consumer\'s issues for about 14 years, starting as Director of NASUCA,
and then co‑founding and directing the Competition Policy Institution.
And about a year ago I went off on my own, and have been consistently
interested in bringing the benefits of competition to consumers, and
ensuring that the risks and disadvantages of the competitive market are
minimized for consumers.

I\'m looking forward to serving on this Committee. I\'m also interested
in new technologies and advanced services reaching consumers so that
they can realize the benefits of those services, as well. Thank you.

MS. MAZRUI: I\'m Susan Palmer Mazrui, and I work for Cingular Wireless
as Director of Federal Regulatory Affairs. Our interests are in
consumer, and also disability issues, and I\'m excited to be on this
Committee.

MS. ZIEGLER: Good morning. My name is Dixie Ziegler. I work for a
company called Hamilton Telecommunications. We are a small local
telephone company in Central Nebraska, but I\'m actually here
representing Telecommunications Relay Providers, one of the divisions of
our company is relay services for deaf, heard‑of‑hearing and
speech‑impaired, and look forward to working on TRS issues. And I am
very much a new person to this Committee and look forward to meeting all
of you and getting to know all of you better.

MR. BENNETT: Good morning. My name is Matt Bennett. I\'m with the
Alliance for Public Technology. APT is a broad‑ based consumer group
concerned with the universal deployment to and access to broadband
services, particularly to traditionally under‑served communities, rural,
people with disabilities, low income, and so our interests lie there.
I\'m looking forward to working on how this Committee can work on the
new and emerging technologies.

CHAIR ROOKER: And David.

MR. POEHLMAN: I\'m with you there, Matt. This is David Poehlman with the
American Council of the Blind, a new member of AARP, a Cingular Wireless
and Verizon subscriber.

CHAIR ROOKER: Can you plug anyone else?

MR. POEHLMAN: And I hope to learn a lot from the new faces here. I would
like to say not only good morning, but hello to those of you out there
who might be listening for whom it is not morning, and sometime in the
future for whom it won\'t be morning when you dig out the archive and
listen to it.

I am fond aficionado of the Internet and I hope to further the
Committee\'s prestigious work in the past into the ‑‑ into and
throughout the current Committee. We\'ve had a lot of very talented
people and we continue to have, and have talented people here that
really make things work well for us, and that I learn from. So thank you
all for having me again, even though I am a troublemaker, and thank you
all for being here who are here for the first time, and welcome back.

CHAIR ROOKER: David, that\'s why we have you sitting up here where I can
just crack you in the head. Right?

(Laughter.)

CHAIR ROOKER: Welcome, David. Thank you so much. I\'m Shirley Rooker. As
I said, I\'m the Chair of the Consumer Advisory Committee. IN the real
world, I\'m the President of Call for Action, which is a 40 year old
consumer group. Locally, I run the Call for Action at WROP Radio and do
consumer reports there, and also do consumer reports on the AP radio
network. I chaired the Committee the last two years, and I\'m honored to
be back. And among some of the reasons that I find it a pleasure is our
next speaker, and he is really one of the great pleasures of serving as
the chair of this Committee.

He\'s active in all kinds of charitable organizations. He has special
interest in those that address the needs of children and young people.
He\'s a volunteer with the Everybody Wins youth mentoring and reading
program, as if he didn\'t have enough to do. He\'s Dane Snowden. He\'s
the Chief of the Consumer and Governmental Affairs Bureau. Thank you,
Dane. Welcome.

MR. SNOWDEN: Thank you very much, Shirley. That was unexpected and very,
very nice. Well, welcome everyone. I am proud to be here. I\'m happy to
be here. I\'m the Chief of the Consumer and Governmental Affairs Bureau,
and a lot of folks behind the scenes are making me look good, so I want
to thank my staff for doing an excellent job of all the hard work in
putting this Committee together.

I have to say that we\'ve been going looking at your names for many,
many months, so it\'s great to actually finally see some faces. And as I
look around the room I see some new faces, and welcome aboard. And some
of you who were here last year, welcome back. It\'s a pleasure to have
you all here.

As Shirley mentioned earlier in her opening remarks, we had 100
applicants apply to be on the Consumer Advisory Committee, which is
outstanding. And, of course, it was very tough coming down to the wire
and figuring out who the 35 applicants were going to be to actually
receive the Chairman\'s nod to be on this Committee. And one of the
things as you all went around the room and discussed what your interests
are, and why you applied, et cetera, you probably noted what we were
looking for, and it was very clear ‑ our goal is very clear ‑ we wanted
to have a diverse group of people around this table to help this
Commission make some tough decisions. And I think we have accomplished
that. Of course, these meetings are open to the public, so we also have
public participation as we go forward. But this group here is very
diverse, and we\'re very fortunate to have all of you on board with us.

We\'re looking forward to, of course, a healthy, deliberate and
productive conversations from all of you throughout your two year term
here. And again, if there\'s anything that I can do for you, please call
on me.

Now before I ask some leadership from the Commission to come forward, I
want to just pause for a second and say a special thanks to you,
Shirley. As you mentioned earlier, you did chair the former CDTAC and
now you\'re chairing the CAC, and this is not an easy job because this
is what\'s you\'re doing, and you have a day job, and we recognize that.
And you do your day job very well. I\'ve been on your show a couple of
times, and I do enjoy it, but I know this takes a lot of time out of
your schedule, and the Commission really thanks you for all of your hard
work.

Now it is my ‑‑ actually, let\'s give Shirley a round of applause.

CHAIR ROOKER: Thank you. It would be better at the end of the day if
they really mean it.

(Laughter.)

MR. SNOWDEN: Now it is my pleasure to bring to the podium the
Chairman\'s Chief of Staff, Ms. Marsha MacBride. Marsha keeps trains
running on time, she keeps all of us in line, and she is also the left
and right hands of the Chairman, so she has great wisdom of all that
goes on here at the Commission. In addition to all of that, she\'s also
in charge of our Homeland Security Policy Council, so Marsha has a lot
on her schedule, and she\'s raising two boys and a husband, so with that
I say Marsha MacBride.

MS. MacBRIDE: I don\'t have a scorecard on how I\'m doing on that last,
but we\'ll give it a shot anyway. Well, thank you for being here. This
is a great organization. As Chief of Staff, I have actually the pleasure
of being able to work on a lot of advisory committees, actually all of
them, and the work that\'s done out of this Committee is extraordinarily
impressive. And I\'m so pleased that we\'ve been able to bring together
such a good group, and even expand the group from where we were last
time, because I think there\'s so much that needs to be done and can be
done in the area for consumers.

If I can put that in a context for you, at least from the Chairman\'s
perspective, there\'s nothing at the Commission that we don\'t do for
consumers. That is our soul here. It\'s not for business. It\'s not for
a special interest. It\'s not for anybody but to make sure that we
create an environment in communications that gives the consumers the
best that we think American society can give them. And the beauty of
this organization is it helps us in that measure. It helps us put kind
of a fine point on where the places where we really need to expand and
be doing more work, where are the places that our rules, for instance,
are not what they could be. And as Dane said, which I think is probably
the hardest one, to help us make some of the tough decisions that we
have to make when we\'re making policy judgments that have an impact on
everyone, consumers all alike. And I\'m very pleased that this Committee
on its own chose to expand its mission a little bit to include all
consumers, because I think that there are lots of issues that affect
individuals throughout the United States in terms of its diversity in
other areas, and I think this is really going to help us get a better
handle on those larger issues, as well. So I won\'t take a lot of your
time. I\'m so impressed that you\'re running ahead of schedule already
this morning. That\'s a good sign, but I did want to say thank you, and
I\'ll look for the opportunity to come and speak about specific issues
as we get a little farther into the end of the year. And the only really
smart thing I think I did was hire Dane, because I do think that he is
extremely dedicated to these issues, and I really am pleased that
Shirley and Dane are going to be helping everybody pull this all
together, because as everybody knows, it takes a little bit of work to
do that. So thank you very much, and I appreciate you being here.

CHAIR ROOKER: Thank you, Marsha.

MR. SNOWDEN: Thank you very much, Marsha. I also want to acknowledge
some of the other Commissioner Officers that are here. Jordan Goldstein
is Commissioner Copps\' Senior Legal Advisor. Jordan, stand up a little
longer for one second so we can get a good look at you. Jordan handles
the wireless issues now for ‑‑ excuse me, the media issues now. He just
switched, for Commissioner Copps, who unfortunately could not be with us
today. And next to him is Barry Ohlson from Commissioner Adelstein\'s
office, and Barry handles the wireless issues on behalf of Commissioner
Adelstein. He and I also went to college together, but that nothing to
do with anything here. Yes, we have stories. And unfortunately,
Commissioner Adelstein is traveling in California today and cannot be
with us.

Commissioner Martin hopefully will be down at some point today. He is
currently on Capitol Hill, and Commissioner Abernathy is on her way, so
while she is on her way, I\'m just going to go to some other remarks
that I wanted to make today, as well. So thank you very much all of you.
And actually, Commissioner Abernathy has just arrived, and so I will do
another audible, and introduce Commissioner Abernathy.

Commissioner Abernathy came to the Commission in May, 2001 from a career
in the private sector specializing in telecommunications. In addition to
her other responsibilities at the FCC, she also chairs the Federal‑State
Joint Board on Universal Service. She had earlier served as
telecommunications legal advisor, much like Jordan and Barry, to then
FCC Chairman, Mr. James H. Quello, and a legal advisor to Commissioner
Sherry Marshall, and special assistant to the FCC General Counsel. And
with pleasure, my driving companion out west, Ms. Kathleen Abernathy.

COMMISSIONER ABERNATHY: Thanks, Dane, very much. And thanks to all of
you for coming here. I promise the weather won\'t be too bad much until
later, but I do want to thank all of you for coming. The work that
you\'re going to embark on is very, very important, and it\'s something
that I think the FCC for while we simply failed to appreciate just how
critical it was. We\'re fortunate now to have Dane and his team on board
who are very, very focused on consumer issues. And that\'s why I wanted
the opportunity to talk today at this Inaugural Meeting of the Consumer
Advisory Committee.

I want to thank you, because what you\'re going to allow us to do is to
tap into the expertise of diverse and highly respected representatives
of many companies and organizations, and consumer representatives to
learn what more we can be doing to address consumer concerns, as well as
to encourage consumer participation in all of our proceedings.

I\'m looking forward to learning from all of you. We\'re doing what we
can, but there\'s no way that we can duplicate the knowledge‑base that
all of you have. And I have every confidence that you will do an
excellent job, and I know it\'s not an easy task. The Commission\'s
mission ‑‑ the Committee\'s mission is monumental, and it cuts across
numerous issues involving consumers, access to telecom services by
people with disabilities, consumer protection and education, increasing
consumer participation in FCC rulemaking proceedings, and the
availability of new technologies. But despite all these challenges, I
believe that you are absolutely up to this challenge, and I look forward
to your end‑product.

I thought today what I might do is spend a minute discussing two areas
of interest to me that I hope you will address since, you know, they
said I could talk, I thought well, I might as well lobby you. The first
issue is one that I\'ve been increasingly vocal on, and that is ensuring
that information is readily available to parents to help guide them in
their children\'s television viewing. As a working mother of a 7 year
old daughter who thinks she\'s in charge, I know how difficult is can be
to be proactive about what your child watches. And this is even when I
know what programming is available. Too often we simply turn on the TV
and react to what\'s there.

So what I found is that when I talk to broadcasters and cable companies
and others, they are delivering amazing new content that\'s focused on
informing and educating our children, but as parents I didn\'t know a
lot about much of this programming. And I didn\'t know how to access
that programming, or where to find it. So to that end, I\'ve been
working with the Consumer and the Government Affairs Bureau to set up a
new parents page on the FCC website. And this page will provide parents
with a new tool to assist all of us in determining is out there, and
what programming is appropriate for the age of the children that we
have. So specifically what we\'re going to do on the parents page, is
we\'re going to explain the broadcaster\'s children\'s educational and
information programming requirements. They have these programming
requirements.

We\'re then going to provide links to the stations that are willing to
make their programming schedules available right now, if you wanted to
know where to find this programming. You really have to be very
sophisticated to do that, so we\'re going to have links to the
programming schedules. We\'re also going to have an explanation of the
V‑chip and other blocking options that are tools for parents. We\'re
going to talk about what the rating systems are, what our indecency
rules prohibit, and how to file an indecency complaint.

I believe that having all this information together on a single page
that\'s focused on parents will improve our ability to provide useful
information to the public, because it\'s only with knowledge that the
parents can make informed decisions, so I look forward to any additional
recommendations that you might have about how to improve this page.

Again, the point is when you have 100 channels out there, or 150
channels, you just ‑‑ there may be great programming coming up on
Thursday that you absolutely want your child to see but you don\'t know
it\'s there. So that\'s what we\'re really trying to do, is take all
this great information and make it more accessible and manageable by
parents.

Another area that I look forward to hearing from the Committee on is
Consumer Education for Senior Citizens. We now know that with the
graying of the baby boom generation, that\'s me and my husband, the
population of senior citizens in this country is only going to grow, and
we know that. Unfortunately, we also know here at the FCC that older
Americans are often the most susceptible to unscrupulous tactics, or
they are unaware of the rights that they have because they just don\'t
understand, or they\'re not getting consumer information made available
to them.

And in addition, many of these consumers who are older don\'t have
sufficient information about the kinds of innovative telecommunication
services technologies or other programs that are available and might
assist them day‑to‑day as far as how they live their life, and how they
inform themselves, and how they communicate with their families. So I\'m
also extremely interested in hearing the Committee\'s recommendations on
how the FCC can ensure that senior citizens have adequate information on
which to base their communications decisions, and that they\'re not
simply staying with a single long distance provider because they\'ve had
that provider forever and they\'re paying ‑‑ I found out my mother was
paying so much more than I ever paid for long distance, and so I had to
tell her that, you know, you can change. There are many companies out
there, mom. And here\'s what you do. And she felt much more comfortable
calling any time of day or night to her children, and that was a huge
difference. So it\'s very small, but I\'m assuming that she was in the
situation that a lot of other consumers are in too.

These are just a couple of the numerous issues, and I could go on and
on, disabilities rights, access, you know, slamming complaints. There\'s
so many of these issues, so ‑‑ and they\'re just as important, and I
hope you cover all of them. I just wanted to mention two because I\'ve
been working on these for a while.

I look forward to reviewing your recommendations on all the issues you
discuss, and I want to personally thank you for putting the time and
energy into this Committee. You know, I know it\'s a personal
commitment. You have to fly. You have to get here some of you, and it
takes time away from your day jobs, but it is very, very important and
we do appreciate it, so thank you very much.

CHAIR ROOKER: Thank you.

MR. SNOWDEN: Thank you very much, Commissioner Abernathy. I want to go
over a few things that we\'ve learned from the Committee last year.
Basically, I like to call it being students of history, and the
importance of communication between this Committee and the FCC as we go
forward. And, of course, you all have been introduced to Scott Marshall,
who\'s our Designated Federal Officer in Charge of the Consumer Advisory
Committee. And he is tasked with making sure you all have information,
all the information you need that\'s going on here in the Commission.

The story I always tell, when I first came on board to the FCC, was when
I was talking with the Chairman about coming on board, I was trying to
figuring out what exactly he wanted me to do by leading this bureau, and
so I went on the website and I couldn\'t figure it out. I kept saying
what exactly does he want a non‑lawyer to do at the FCC? And so, when I
got here, I realized one of the biggest holes we had was to ‑‑ we
didn\'t provide information in an easily accessible format for
consumers. And so that is what a large part of our task has been, and
what Scott will do is ensure that you all have information that you
need, and vice versa. We will be calling on you sometimes individually
to get your opinion based on your various roles that you have in \"day
jobs\". We will also ‑‑ we want advice, and if you see something that we
should be doing differently, please let us know that. And you probably
can tell by our website, and I know a member of my staff, one of my
senior staff members will be down here later this afternoon to talk
about what we are doing on our website, et cetera, to make sure it is
not just accessible, but also has information that is good for you to
use. So it\'s very important that we have two‑way communication going
back and forth.

As I mentioned earlier, we will also seek to get your recommendations on
how we should make a policy cut. It\'s very important. Hopefully, we\'ll
take those recommendations every time you give them. Sometimes we may
differ, but it\'s important that we hear that voice, and that is one of
the central tenets of why we need to have this advisory committee.

I also want to put a little plug in, if I can, for something we created
called \"CGB News\", which is an e‑mail service, much like ‑‑ it\'s not
a list serve because I found out that that is trademarked, so I can\'t
say that\'s what it is, but it works very similar to that. And it
provides information to you about what\'s going on here at the
Commission, and that information is in your packets, and you can easily
sign up for it.

I also want to introduce you to my Bureau. For some of you who are new,
you may not know that we went through a major reorganization here at the
Commission last March ‑ excuse me ‑ March, 2002, so it\'s been a year
now. And it has been a very fruitful, very deliberate, very taxing ‑
I\'m not going to kid you ‑ process that we went through to get to the
Consumer and Government Affairs Bureau. And from that came some
wonderful benefits to this Bureau, and I mention this to you because it
relates to the work that you\'re doing on this Committee, and the work
that you do in your \"day jobs\".

We have three main divisions, our Policy Division, our Consumer Outreach
and Inter‑Governmental Affairs Division ‑ excuse me ‑ these are offices,
not just divisions. And also, an Inquiries and Complaints Division. We
added our Consumer Policy, which some of you may say that\'s ‑‑ I
thought you always had that. Yes, we were always doing Consumer Policy
within the Commission, but the Chairman said we want to make sure
there\'s a central repository looking at all consumer issues across the
board with everything we do at the Commission. And so we\'ve created a
Consumer Policy Division within the FCC.

Of course, we have ‑‑ we\'ve always had our Disabilities Rights Office,
which we like to say started as a task force, and now it\'s a driving
force, to what we do here at the FCC regarding issues related to people
with disabilities. In addition, we have a division that\'s dedicated to
Consumer Outreach and Inter‑ Governmental Affairs. This is the division
that actually, I like to say, makes us look the best. They put out all
the brochures, all the collateral materials that consumers need and use,
and you all will use that explains what the Commission does. It takes
some of those complicated complex issues and breaks it down to something
that is bite‑size that consumer, no matter if they follow telecom or not
can actually digest and understand.

In addition, that office also handles Inter‑ Governmental Affairs, and
this is a ‑‑ we\'ve traditionally always had Inter‑Governmental Affairs
at the FCC since, of course, we report to the United States Congress.
And in our role, we decided to increase our efforts in the areas of our
federal, state, tribal and local governments, and so we have gone
through a major task in the past year trying to develop relationships
with many organizations. Some of you are represented here and others ‑
for example, I see some of my tribal friends over to my left here. And I
saw NASUCA ‑ there you are, there. Our efforts in working toward making
sure that we understand how our regulations affect those various
entities. And I like to say that if I have a state person calling me
saying they\'re happy, that means I\'m probably going to have a local
person calling me saying they\'re not. So I know I can\'t win in this
game, but at least if we have the relationships, and we can explain the
rationale that we used to get to a decision, everyone will get hopefully
on the same page.

Now I know, as I can jump back to policy for a second, I know one of my
deputies, Margaret Egler will be down later on to talk about some of the
consumer‑related policy issues that are going on before the Commission,
because we wanted you all to have an idea of the landscape that we\'re
looking at here at the FCC.

Now when we look at Consumer Outreach with the recent war that I guess
has not officially ended yet, but we took it upon ourselves to relaunch
a military outreach campaign. And those are the type of things that we
do. We recognize for military outreach, we call it \"Calling Home\",
that so many military personnel were being deployed and they were not ‑‑
we had so many people making international calls or long distance calls
they weren\'t necessarily used to doing, and so it was important that we
capsule all this information so that consumers could make smart
decisions. And so, particularly those who were protecting our freedoms
back abroad and away from their friends and families. So you\'ll see
programs like that, that sometimes we\'ll bring to you to ask do you
think this will work? Do you have an idea how we can get this out into
the mainstream? And we also look to you to help us figure out what some
ideas might be that we could share, and we could develop for the
American consumer down the road.

Now I would be remiss if I didn\'t mention the folks who are on the
front line for the FCC and those are the individuals in our Consumer
Centers. They take all the consumer complaints. They take all the
consumer inquiries, and we have two centers, one here in Washington and
one in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. And their task literally is to answer
any question that is posed, or take any complaint that is posed by a
consumer. That is not an easy job. There are several members who do
this. We call them CAMS, which stands for Consumer Advisory Mediation
Specialists. They have a very tough job. Every so often, I won\'t take a
call because I don\'t have those skills, but I will listen to some of
the calls. And it\'s amazing what consumers come up with. And sometimes
what we do with that information is we use it to figure out how we
should develop an outreach program, or how we should do some type of
policy cut based on what consumers are saying, what they\'re
experiencing, be it slamming, be it the issue that Commissioner
Abernathy mentioned when she referred to the parents\' page.

We started hearing consumers say, you know, where do I go to find
information what\'s good for my child to watch on television. I have a 7
year old niece, so this project was particularly fun for me, and I was
watching her one day. And she came over, and of course, she knows how to
turn the television on. She was watching television and she turned on a
particular station which I frequently watch. And for the first time, one
I felt old, because I kept saying she shouldn\'t be watching this. I
realized I love it, but it\'s not something for a 7 year old to watch.
And when you look ‑‑ when we release this Parents Portal, as I\'m
calling it, some time in the next few weeks, it\'s a way for parents to
understand what they can do to help make sure their kids have good
enrichment through television. So we\'re doing many things like that,
and our Consumer Outreach folks will be working very hard with the
Commissioner on those areas.

So we use the information coming into our Consumer Centers in many
different ways. It\'s an informal process. The ultimate goal when we
receive a complaint into our Consumer Center, sometimes the information
does have to go a next level. We do share our trends in consumer
complaints with our Enforcement Bureau, because it\'s important that
when we see bad actors and some of the carriers in the room, they know,
not that they\'re bad actors, they know what this process is like. I see
Mike DelCasino over there looking at me. Our goal though is to ensure
that when we see a trend, we can talk to the carrier and say this is
what we\'re noticing. Can you solve it before we have to take some type
of enforcement action going forward. And it\'s been very helpful both to
the Commission and to the carrier, and ultimately, to the consumer in
the long run. So we\'re very proud of what we\'re doing in our Bureau,
and you\'ll hear more and more about this as you\'re doing your tenure
here on the CAC.

I wanted to switch now to talk about some of the priorities here at the
Commission. And the Chairman has outlined five particular goals, and I
call them ‑‑ we have six total, but he has five central goals that are
key to what we do here at the Commission. And a lot of this information,
again, is in your packets.

The first is broadband. And as we talk about broadband, the FCC\'s
strategic goal for broadband is to establish the regulatory policies
that promote competition, innovation, and investment in broadband
services. You will hear a lot about broadband. And one of the things
that is important to us, particularly as we look at this issue and this
revolution that is actually going on right now, is that we want to make
sure no consumer is left behind in this particular process of having
broadband services.

Currently right now we have DSL. You also have cable modem, you have
some wireless opportunities, you have some cellular opportunities, and
we\'ve recently said that you have some powerline opportunities. These
are all different issues we\'re going to make sure that we understand
how they affect consumers and that\'s all consumers, consumers living on
Indian reservations, consumers that are disabled, consumers who are low
income. So these are issues we want to hear from this body on as we go
forward.

Another priority for the Commission is competition. And the strategic
goal is for competition to support the nation\'s economy by ensuring
that there is a comprehensive and sound competitive framework for
communication services.

It\'s interesting as we look at this, this particular issue, we look at
the long distance market. Who would have thought 10 years ago that the
wireless market would actually be competition to what\'s going on to the
long distance market. I know I look over at Mike, and he\'s probably
saying we probably didn\'t necessarily want that, but it\'s working. And
I know I look at some of our wireless folks here and say that it is ‑‑
this is exactly what we want. We want consumers to have as much
competition as possible, because we know it does two things. It spurs
investment, and it also ensures that consumers get ultimately what they
want and need.

The next is our Spectrum Management. And in this area, the FCC\'s
strategic goal for spectrum is to encourage the highest and best use of
spectrum domestically and internationally in order to encourage the
growth and rapid deployment of innovative and effective communications,
technologies and services.

Now when you look at the use of spectrum management, it falls to the
area that I was referring to earlier with broadband and our wireless
market. You need spectrum to do a lot of that, so we need to make sure
we\'re managing that properly. We have developed a spectrum task force,
and all their information can be found on our website, if you\'re
interested in that, as well.

In addition, another goal is media. And as we look at media, we\'re in
the midst of right now going through a major review of our media rules.
And the FCC\'s strategic goal for the media is to revise media
regulations so that the media ownership rules promote competition, and
diversity in a comprehensive, legally sustainable manner, and facilitate
the mandated migration to digital modes of delivery.

Now I emphasize the word \"legally\", because the courts have said to us
you guys got to figure this out, FCC. You have to figure out how you can
legally substantiate your rules regarding some of the broadcast
ownership rules that we have in place. And we are currently doing that
right now, and we should have some decisions coming out, so I encourage
you to monitor that, as well.

And, of course, our fifth goal, which is not necessarily our last goal,
but it\'s our fifth goal and priority, is Homeland Security. We learned
a lot after September 11th, much like the rest of the world. And one of
the things we learned was that we needed a strategic goal that focuses
on Homeland Security, that will provide ‑‑ and our role is to provide
leadership in evaluating and strengthening the nation\'s communications
infrastructure. When we do this, we\'ve created two other Federal
Advisory Committees, the Network Reliability Interoperability Council,
that\'s a lot to say so we just call it INRIC, and the Media Security
and Reliability Council, which is MSRC, and our goal ‑‑ we\'re not too
complicated over here. And our goal with both of these committees, one
focuses on telephones and things of that nature and the other focuses on
broadcast, is to ensure that we have continuity of service in the
situation if we were to have an emergency, so Homeland Security is a
very big issue for us.

Each bureau, each office has a member of their staff who represents that
particular entity on the Homeland Security Policy Council that Marsha
MacBride oversees. My designee is my deputy for Consumer Affairs and
Outreach and Inter‑Governmental Affairs is Chris Monteith. And Chris is
in the back. I just want her to stand up real quickly. Chris, stand up
so people know who you are. Chris handles a lot of our outreach efforts,
our state efforts and, of course, our Homeland Security efforts on
behalf of the bureau, and so I encourage you to get to know Chris as the
day goes on.

And I said earlier that there are five, but really there are six goals.
The other is DTV, or digital television. And we are in the process right
now of going through a digital television migration effort, and by the
end of 2007, we plan to have digital television across the country.
It\'s important that we work to ensure consumers know about this
migration, know about this transition, and know why it\'s happening, and
so we are in the process of working with our colleagues in the Media
Bureau to figure out how we roll out a strategy to work with consumers,
and also the National Association of Broadcasters over here, to make
sure consumers are aware of what\'s going on in this transition, and how
it will affect them moving forward. So those are some ‑‑ those are the
top priorities here at the Commission. We have a lot going on. It\'s
going to be a very, very busy year for us, as you might imagine, and we
are very excited about all the activities that we have on our agenda.

Now I want to emphasize that the CAC is something that our bureau is
very proud to be involved in, and we consider working with this Advisory
Group to be crucial to our own operation. We need to hear from you as
often as possible. I encourage you not just to wait for this meeting to
occur for you to communicate with the Commission. I know some of the
other ‑‑ as I look around the room, I see some in my office, probably
more than others. I see Claude over there, and I meet with Claude
regularly about disabilities issues. We want to make sure that you know
that you have an avenue into this Commission, not just on this body, so
please take advantage of that.

And with that, I want to say thanks again for your participation. I know
all of you are volunteers in this effort, and you\'re taking time out of
your very busy schedules, and I wish you all the best for your service
on the CAC. So thank you very much, and have a good meeting.

CHAIR ROOKER: Will you take questions, Dane, if we have questions.

MR. SNOWDEN: Sure.

CHAIR ROOKER: Does anyone have a question for Dane? Yes, Mike. Could we
get the microphone there? Just a moment.

MR. DUKE: This is Mike Duke.

MR. SNOWDEN: Hi, Mike.

MR. DUKE: Are we working? Yes. Okay. This is Mike Duke. What ‑‑ as the
Commission seeks to both hear from consumers and to regulate the various
licensees, and media and so forth that they\'re in charge of overseeing,
where do you see the balance?

MR. SNOWDEN: You\'re referring to the Media Ownership Rules?

MR. DUKE: Well, no. I\'m referring to ‑‑ you know, the Commission has
regulatory authority over anyone who holds an FCC license for whatever a
license is required for. How is that role of being the regulator
balanced against the role of being ‑‑ of seeking consumer input?

MR. SNOWDEN: Well, everything we do we seek consumer input. The FCC ‑‑
we are proud that all of our rule makings are open to the public.
Everything we do ‑‑ we have something called ECFS, which stands for
Electronic Comment Filing System. We also have something called \"ECFS
Express\". Again, we try not to deviate too much from what works. And
ECFS Express is a tool that is used for the ‑‑ I call it beyond the
beltway consumer that is not necessarily familiar with how to make an
official comment within ‑‑ with the Commission but they want to ‑‑
they\'ve heard we\'re looking at a proceeding. They can go to that on
our web, and make a comment. That is one avenue that we hear from
consumers.

The other, of course, is through our outreach efforts that we do. No
matter if it\'s holding fora, which we do periodically across the
country, and office members of my staff going out and holding a meeting,
or the meetings that we take. The Commission is open. And one of the
misnomers about the FCC that I hear from time to time is that only the
lobbyist come into the FCC.

My office is ‑‑ my meeting schedule is full of people who are coming
into the FCC that are not necessarily lobbyists in the traditional \"K
Street Lobbyists\" as we call it. There are consumer advocates that come
in, and we want to encourage that. And the Commissioners, and the
Chairmen and their staffs, they encourage that, as well. So it\'s
important that individuals continue to come and meet with members of the
FCC, so how do we strike that balance? We already have struck that
balance in essence, and that is, we are constantly hearing from
consumers, not just the ways I just mentioned, but also through our
consumer center. That\'s another vehicle that we use, because we look at
that information to assess trends to understand this is what\'s going on
in the landscape with Mr. and Mrs. Smith, so to speak, of using telecom
services and products, so it\'s important that as we go forward, we make
sure that no door is shut, that consumers know that we\'re here. And
that\'s one of the challenges that we have in my bureau is to make sure
that consumers across America know they can contact the FCC.

CHAIR ROOKER: Debra.

MS. BERLYN: You mentioned that you watch for trends at your Complaint
Center, and then you communicate those trends to the Enforcement Bureau.
Is there a mechanism for this Advisory Council being apprised of various
trends in terms of complaints, not so much about individual carriers,
but more in terms of we\'re seeing an increase in this type of
complaint, or here\'s even a new situation that seems to be arising in
terms of complaints.

MR. SNOWDEN: Right. That\'s a great question, and absolutely. One of the
things that we do do, in addition to sharing this information on a
real‑time basis with our colleagues in the Enforcement Bureau who do an
excellent job of enforcing our rules, we also work toward ‑‑ we release
this information quarterly on some of the major trends that we\'re
seeing across the country, in all of the various industries, be it the
telephony side, both wireless and wire line, and also in the broadcast
side. Everything we do here at the Commission where we can receive a
complaint, we make sure that information in terms of the trends is
released. And that is information that is on our website. If you go to
the Consumer and Governmental Affairs page, on the left‑hand side, at
the bottom left‑hand side you\'ll see the most recent reports that we
have released. We will continue to do that. This Committee obviously can
have that information.

In addition, part of our outreach efforts, we have some ‑‑ we have a
division or a branch called the \"Consumer Publications Branch\", and
they are tasked with putting out alerts, putting out fact sheets. And
one of the things they do, what they do so well is that when we see an
issue brewing in telecommunications somewhere, we make sure we get those
alerts out through our CGB news outlets, through our website, and
through the press, that this is an issue that consumers should be aware
of.

I know, thanks to Shirley, I have gone on her show several times to talk
about some of these trends so that we cannot just take the reactive
role, we also take the proactive role to make sure we reach out to
consumers, as well. So that information is available, and we will make
sure that you all have that. We can put that in your packets the next
time, or also you can go on the website and get it as soon as you get
back.

CHAIR ROOKER: Okay. Susan Palmer.

MS. MAZRUI: Susan Palmer from Cingular Wireless. I was just wondering if
we could have someone from the Publication Bureau come to one of our
meetings, because I think it\'s wonderful that they take proactive means
in terms of educating the public. A lot of the information is extremely
helpful. Unfortunately, it\'s not in accessible formats always, and I
think that there\'s perhaps a lack of understanding of the importance
that, you know, in terms of information, it\'s probably comparable to
having stairs to the building and saying you can bring up a ramp because
Brian Millin can put them in accessible formats, so there\'s a means.
But it really is somewhat offensive, and it\'s probably turning people
away unnecessarily, when really it\'s a really good job that they\'re
doing in terms of information. So I\'m hoping that perhaps that can come
to some follow‑up meeting.

MR. SNOWDEN: I will definitely ask members of our outreach staff to come
and speak to this group. However, I don\'t want to wait that long. If
there\'s something that we\'re not doing that we should be doing, I want
to know today so we can solve that particular issue.

We do have a 504 Requirement which we are very proud that we take
seriously, and that is to ensure that it\'s accessible. We just recently
released our 504 Handbook for our Commission Staff. This is an internal
document but we\'ve made it public, so that other agencies will also
follow our lead and do the exact same thing.

If it\'s on our web, it should be accessible. If it\'s not, I want to
know about it, and we\'ll make that change immediately. I know if there
is a request for something that is made, for example, may not be already
made accessible, Brian Millin and his wonderful skills will make it and
get it out to that consumer. I think what I\'m hearing from you is that
we need to make sure we do that on the front end versus the back end,
and I will ‑‑ if there\'s a bigger issue, please don\'t hesitate to let
me know.

CHAIR ROOKER: Susan, do you have a follow‑up? Okay. All right. Do we
have any other questions for Dane? Yes, David.

MR. SNOWDEN: I haven\'t been on your show, David, but members of my
staff have.

MR. HOROWITZ: Oh, yeah. We use people from the Commission all the time,
because it\'s the only way really to explain this stuff, is to have a
Commissioner involved, and I\'m delighted to be able to do it. But one
of the things I want to ask you about is some of the things that have
been presented are really very positive going straightforward.

I work a lot with senior citizens, and what I find the biggest problem
with senior citizens is communicating to them in a way that they can
understand it. And I\'m not talking about simplicity, I\'m talking about
explanation. And when you get into television and trying to program
television for senior citizens, you\'re really sort of kicking a wall
because when it was announced several years ago that the FCC was going
to be able to get into this area, there were a dearth of people going
out there trying to start senior programs. The most successful one, I
think, the most successful senior television that\'s on is the stuff
that the AARP does, because it\'s very informational. They\'re really
not selling anything except information to an enormous audience. But
then these other people who were getting in were some large television
stations, small televisions, local television stations, whatever, who
were getting into programs that were strictly advertising for senior
citizens. And the quality was awful. The oversight in terms of what was
being advertised for them to buy was ‑‑ there was no oversight. It was
just a bunch of people who were coming in and paying for time to do it.
And with a challenge like that, how do you get together a group of
people that are going to really go out and investigate what is needed?
And how are you going to get the money to be able to put a station on
the air that\'s going to be able to deliver the plethora of stuff that
people need to know about?

I find that seniors are so at a loss in terms of, first of all, reading
their telephone bills every month. You know, we must get I\'d say three
to five hundred inquiries a month about what does this mean on my
telephone bill? And, obviously, we try to answer that on our Internet
site, on the Fight Back site, but it gets to the point where it\'s just
overwhelming because of all the unbundling that\'s been done in this
area. So when I look at something simplistic like let\'s get something
for the seniors on television, I say well, first of all, how are you
going to communicate with them? I mean, I know you can have different
groups, community groups and also federal groups, and you could use
other groups that are out there. The AARP is notably the largest of all
of them, but it still doesn\'t seem to work. It doesn\'t seem to work,
and the complaints get heavier, and heavier, and heavier, particularly
in the telecom area.

MR. SNOWDEN: I think this is a perfect body to tackle that issue, and
that\'s exactly why we have everyone here. And as I look around the
room, we have NAB, and we have AARP, and we have you raising the issue.
I suggest you all get together and try to help us solve that particular
issue.

Now I should caution you that we don\'t regulate content, and we cannot
regulate content. There are some Constitutional issues with that, and so
we\'re not going to get into that. But I think this is a great issue
that should be tackled by this body.

We recognize clearly when we talk with members who are members of the
AARP or other individuals, no matter if it\'s a young person or not, or
senior, we recognize that they have challenges reading their telephone
bills. We get over a million calls to our Consumer Center each year
asking questions such as I don\'t understand this on my telephone bill.
And it\'s important that we begin to explain that. That\'s why our
Publications Branch has wonderful information about how to read your
telephone bill. We also have it on our website, as well.

We are taking those steps. If there\'s more that can be done, we want to
know about it. But again, we need some ideas. We, of course, are
constrained by resources, but that doesn\'t mean that this body can\'t
come up with somewhat different ideas that maybe collectively with
various organizations we can roll out a strategy and work together.

MR. HOROWITZ: Well, I think it\'s very important. This is the first
group that I\'ve ever been involved with that represents government,
business and the consumer area where you can sit down and discuss
things, because in the past, I always felt that the consumer was
considered ‑‑ the consumer groups and the advocates were continued to be
the enemy, and business never wanted to really talk to them, which is
untrue. And you never get business, government and the consumer groups
together. This, to me, is a real breakthrough to have a group like this
because you can be able to express an opinion, and also get feedback
from the companies.

But just on that one issue, that one issue of the telephone bills, it\'s
been around since before the Telco Act. It\'s been around forever in
terms of people wondering where is our money going. And some of the
things that are being done on local and states now, as far as their
local organizations are concerned, state organizations, is requiring to
print certain things on the back in four point type. You can\'t
differentiate between the taxes and what they\'re for because the
abbreviations are there.

CHAIR ROOKER: David, I think we should probably safe this ‑‑

MR. HOROWITZ: No, I just want to conclude this. I just want to conclude
this if I could, Shirley, because it\'s important. And what I\'m saying,
the issue has been around. When President Clinton got into office, he
promised a lot of things, and one of the things he said he was going to
do is to make sure that everything that people get out of the government
is written in simple English. Well, that never happened. But one of the
areas that was singled out was in big business, you know, the complaints
about not being able to read your telephone bills, aside from not being
able to read the text and understand the laws that are passed.

Now I want to get into that and the freedom that we\'re entitled to in
this country. But I think if you\'re going to take on an issue, it has
to be taken on also with this Committee and with members of Congress who
are capable of being able to write up some bill or something, not to
regulate the fact that you\'re in there and you have to say certain
things but to have guidelines.

There was supposed to be a telephone or Telephony Bill of Rights that
came out, and all it basically did was to serve the interests of the
RBOCs and some of the other telcos out there. It never really served the
public\'s interest, so where do you go with that, if I come to you and I
ask you that question, where do we go?

MR. SNOWDEN: Well, I think you go to this Committee.

CHAIR ROOKER: That\'s why I was going to say, I think some of the issues
that you\'re raising are things that we\'d be more appropriately
discussing this afternoon when we get into our goals and objectives for
our working group, so anyway, thank you.

MR. HOROWITZ: Okay. Good.

CHAIR ROOKER: Dane, thank you ‑‑

MR. SNOWDEN: Let me actually make one more comment.

CHAIR ROOKER: Sure.

MR. SNOWDEN: I think, and David actually brought this up about the
make‑up of this body is very rare, I think, as you said, that we would
have industry, we would consumer groups, we would have various
stakeholders at the table at one time. That was not by mistake.

At one point last year, I was asked ‑‑ I mean, I was doing a question
and answer session for the former Committee that was here, why do we
have industry on this group? And my response was what the Chairman said
to me, I want industry on there. I want every single type of stakeholder
we possibly can have on this Committee, because this is how things can
get done. We don\'t want anyone to work in a vacuum, and that is why we
see the various myriad of stakeholders on this particular body, because
you all know what the issues are from your point of view.

As you raise issues about reading your telephone bill, we have carriers
in this room who can address what they are doing, or what they may not
be able to do right here, so we can solve this issue. So I think this
Committee will be very good to the Commission and to itself by having
that healthy debate, and keeping the door open for all discussions to
happen on both sides.

CHAIR ROOKER: Dane, thank you so much for your time. We really
appreciate it. We have to talk about logistics and all of that sort of
thing, and I\' going to turn the microphone over to Scott Marshall.

MR. MARSHALL: Thank you, Shirley. Good morning. Hello to the returning
members, and hello to new members, and I look forward to meeting you all
personally. I sort of feel like I know you already since I led the team
that looked at the hundred applications for membership on this
Committee, so we certainly have become acquainted, at least on paper.
And sometimes via e‑mail or over the phone. I look forward to really
putting a person with that content.

I hope I\'m not too late with this information for some of you. We just
got carried away with events this morning, but a few housekeeping
matters. Rest rooms are just outside the door to my right, the doors
that you came in, down a short corridor, and immediately to your left on
the left. It sounds more complicated than it really is, but they\'re not
far away at all. Similarly, telephones are out in this main corridor
right outside the Commission Hearing Room, should you need those.

We have a full agenda today. I\'m really excited about the fact that we
will be able to hear from Margaret Egler this morning on potential
issues that you may want to consider getting into as a Committee. And
we\'ll be taking that topic up in the afternoon, so I just urge you to
start thinking about that in terms of what issues we should be
addressing. We don\'t have to address them all at this one meeting, but
it would be great at the end of the day if we were able to establish a
working group that would ‑‑ or two, or three that would be able to start
the process of getting all the stakeholders, as Dane has said, sitting
down and discussing these issues so that we can bring recommendations
back to this Full Committee, which in turn then is empowered to give
recommendations to the Commission. But Shirley and I will be talking
more about that shortly, and about our whole operating guidelines for
the Committee as we go forward from here. Shirley.

CHAIR ROOKER: Okay. It\'s the minute you waited for. It\'s break time.
We\'re giving you a break of three extra minutes, if you would be back
at quarter of 11, please. We will start promptly at quarter of 11,
won\'t we? Thank you.

(Whereupon, the proceeding in the above‑entitled matter went off the
record at 10:26:54 a.m. and went back on the record at 10:53:11 a.m.)

CHAIR ROOKER: Scott has just reminded me that I haven\'t done my
\"I\'ll‑get‑the hook\" speech yet to you all. I\'ll get the hook, right?
Well, I think in view of the dialogue and the conversations that we\'ve
had this morning, I think this is going to be a wonderful group. We\'ve
got lots of ideas and interests and things that we\'re going to be
working on, and it\'s kind of fun. But like any group, we have to look
at what guides us, our guidelines, our protocols, our operating
procedures, and some of our goals, so Scott and I are going to take a
few minutes and talk about those. And I think you have ‑‑ is it in their
packet?

In your packet is a sheet called the \"Goals and Objectives of the
Consumer Advisory Committee\". If you want to just take a look at them,
and we\'ll just kind of go through them, and give you some information
on kind of what we\'re planning on doing over the next two years,
besides having fun and eating too many muffins for breakfast. If you
found it, it\'s called \"The Goals and Objectives.\"

We\'re known as \"The Committee\". Doesn\'t that make you feel good,
\"The Committee.\" You saw that, the \"X‑Files.\" We get around.

These are some of the things that we\'re looking to accomplish.
Submission of recommendations to the Commission in connection with at
least three of the open FCC proceedings. And this is very ambitious,
because this is a lot of work if we\'re going to accomplish these. We
worked very hard last year. I\'m not sure that we met all of these
goals. Did we, Scott? Just about. We came close.

We\'ve changed things a little bit since last year. We started out with
the idea of having sub‑committees, and we found that that was a rather
rigid way to proceed, so we basically ended up the year deciding that
the ‑‑ or the two years, deciding that one of the best ways for us to
work would be with working groups on issues that you all decide, you
know. And certainly, this morning we\'ve heard a lot of things that are
probably going to be working groups that you will address. And we\'re
not limited in the number of working groups, or the issues. We\'re only
limited in the fact that we need to address the issues that are, in
fact, under the purview of the FCC.

We will try to submit at least one Committee recommendation regarding
the Commission\'s processes or procedures. And, for example, one of the
things that we did last year was we had quite a bit of information on
the complaint process, the consumer complaint process. We had a
presentation from the complaint handling office, and we came up with
some suggestions on how it could be better, how it could be more
accessible. And I think the ‑‑ we actually had a working group on that.
Who chaired the working group? Is anyone here who worked on it? Claude
did it. Yeah, yeah. So Claude worked on the complaint process to make
sure that it was accessible, that what they were doing met the needs of
consumers of a very diverse group of consumers. And I think we came up
with something that was useful and recommended it to the Commission.

At least one recommendation to the Committee regarding the Commission\'s
Consumer Outreach activities. Now I think certainly Susan\'s suggestion
about the accessibility of publications, and having the publications
group, we\'ve not done that, to have that outreach group speak to us, I
don\'t believe. Have we, Scott? No, we have not. And so ‑‑ not
officially, so that will be something that we can consider to look at.
And I\'m only making that as a suggestion. Believe me, this is a wide
open process here.

Also, at least one recommendation from the Committee regarding new
issues with the Committee, which we believe should be addressed by the
FCC. Now you\'re going to hear some of the issues that are pending in
our next presentation from Margaret Egler, some of the things that are
before the FCC, and that may be part of it, but also to looking at
trends, and what are some of the things that we see coming up, some of
the issues of accessibility, for example. So at any rate, there\'s a lot
of room for us to do some interesting and constructive things.

At least one meeting with the Chairman and other FCC Commissioners,
Senior Staff and so on. Last year, and the Chairman apologizes for being
unable to be here this morning. He\'s been extremely faithful in coming
to our meetings, and one of our meetings he spent I think at least a
half an hour talking and taking questions from the Committee, which was
a very productive thing.

We also ‑‑ at most of our meetings, we will have Commissioners here who
will give you a chance to address them, to ask them questions and so on.
Commissioner Abernathy this morning I think was on a tight schedule, and
didn\'t have time to take questions, but normally we do have a Q & A
process that we can give you access to them, as well. So I think you
will find that there\'s going to be a lot of people from the FCC, the
Commissioners as well as some of their key, key staff people, like
Martha MacBride being here this morning. She\'s certainly one of the
leaders in the FCC, very, very great supporter of th is Committee.

In addition, at the end of the year we will submit an annual report. We
will. We will. We\'re going to do work to make sure we do this. And so
consequently, those are some of the things that we\'re going to be
looking at accomplishing as we go through the next two years, and
that\'s a lot.

Now our first meeting after this one, the next meeting is in July, which
means we\'ve only got a two month window to getting ourselves into gear
and getting going. And part of that has to do with the process in terms
of getting the members selected to this Committee, so we\'ve got a
rather tight window there, but we do have a good bit of time between
July and November. But I think certainly, our goal should be in July to
have some recommendations, or at least some ideas of things that we want
to recommend after our July meeting, so we will hope to accomplish that.

Now do you have any questions for me in terms of what we\'re trying to
accomplish? Yes, Susan.

MS. MAZRUI: One of the things that\'s been very helpful when we\'re
working with our Advisory Committee is to have a list of action items,
and then follow‑up, and to keep a chart of that ongoing. And that way we
can follow ‑‑ you know, the amazing thing is you get a lot more done
than you think.

CHAIR ROOKER: Yes.

MS. MAZRUI: But it also helps us to revisit items that may have slipped
in the urgency of other issues. And I was wondering if we could have
that for this meeting, as well, so that we have action items, and then
follow‑ups, and it\'s just kept as a master plan. At the end of the
year, it really helps with the report, as well.

CHAIR ROOKER: Okay. I think that\'s a great idea. We actually have
information on the FCC\'s website too, about what we\'ve done over the
last two years, so maybe we could even get that put out in printed form
for those of you who didn\'t see it. But Scott did send you information
on what we\'ve done, so now let\'s look at what we need to do by keeping
‑‑ and I think that\'s a great suggestion, to give us a checklist, and
we can see our accomplishments of what we\'re doing, so we can start
developing that as we go through the day. Does that make sense? Okay.

Do I have any other comments or ‑‑ yes, Larry.

MR. GOLDBERG: I had a question as to how, as the next meeting starts
coming down our way in July, the agenda is shaped for each individual
meeting? It was sort of a mystery to me in the last round, sometimes
there\'d be presentations on various issues, and sometimes there was a
notion that more subcommittee meetings were needed. I\'m not exactly
sure how that agenda does get set.

CHAIR ROOKER: You mean in terms of the agenda items?

MR. GOLDBERG: Yes.

CHAIR ROOKER: Well, the first agenda item that we\'ve done here, I have
to say that we mainly did that on our own, because we were trying to
give everybody ‑‑ bring everybody who hadn\'t been on the Committee
before up to speed with everyone else, in terms of an overview of the
FCC. But what we did last year was we had telephone meetings, and look,
we welcome input on agenda items, but we had telephone meetings with the
subcommittee chairs, and from there developed some of the items. Other
people gave us input, but that\'s what this group is about, is input
from all of you. So if you will let us know what you want on the agenda,
and if it\'s possible, we\'ll do it.

Many of the things that we had on our agendas last two years came from
suggestions that came from the group, and we would decide on something
today that we wanted to do in July, and follow‑through on that, as long
as it was feasible. And, of course, keeping in mind as long as it comes
under the purview of the FCC, and that\'s why we have some of the people
coming today, so that we understand what we can and can\'t do in terms
of this Committee. So any other questions?

MR. MARSHALL: Larry, just one more comment on the agenda. The agenda
starts to sort of fold together about six weeks out from a meeting, so
at any point, you know, prior to that time, I would just encourage
anyone to e‑mail Shirley or myself with those ideas. Shirley and I are
in constant communication, probably she wishes it were less, but that
certainly is the way that the agenda, as Shirley has indicated, has been
put together in the past, and I imagine we\'ll continue that practice
this go‑around.

CHAIR ROOKER: Okay. Any other questions on goals and objectives? Okay.
If not ‑‑ okay, just a minute. David.

MR. POEHLMAN: This is David Poehlman of the American Council for the
Blind. I\'m sorry. My question is, you know, since you\'re talking about
the agenda, as part of the evolution of the agenda, would it be possible
to get a draft of the agenda early enough for people to say, you know,
I\'d like to add this or add that, instead of thinking about adding
things in a vacuum or whatever? Because I know that you guys take a
tremendous pile of suggestions and try to weave them down into something
that\'s, you know, that\'s applicable for the meetings, but that might
be helpful as part of the process, if we could do that.

CHAIR ROOKER: I believe we did. Didn\'t we before send out tentative
agendas? I think ‑‑

MR. MARSHALL: We sent out a preliminary agenda with the advanced
materials packet. And we can make changes from that for the final
agenda. But a preliminary agenda does go out with the advance materials,
and certainly, you know, comments on that are welcome.

CHAIR ROOKER: I think we do have some ‑‑ do we have some restriction,
Scott, in terms of us having to do a public notice. Does that include
the agenda?

MR. MARSHALL: I\'m sorry?

CHAIR ROOKER: Does the public ‑‑ he was talking when I was talking. Can
you imagine anybody doing that? What was the question? Do we have
restrictions on changes to the agenda after it\'s gone into ‑‑ do we
give public notice on the agenda?

MR. MARSHALL: We do. That\'s true, and we can\'t sort of go too far
afield from our agenda that we publish in the Federal Register, which
has to be published 15 days prior to our public meeting. So there\'s a
little bit of a restriction there.

Paula Silberthau, who\'s from our office, who\'s General Counsel, who
keeps me honest on how to run a Federal Advisory Committee, will be here
this afternoon, but that\'s a fairly flexible requirement. But it is a
notice requirement. We can\'t, you know, put a totally new item on the
agenda after we\'ve published in the Federal Register.

CHAIR ROOKER: So keeping that in mind when you\'re thinking about it.
Okay. Now I\'m going to turn it over to you.

MR. MARSHALL: Okay. On protocols, all right. Just a couple of quick
things I forgot to mention earlier, and then I\'ll talk a little bit
about the protocols document that was distributed in your advance
materials.

This session, may I remind you, is being televised on the Internet,
which means Mark\'s telecom students in Oklahoma are going to have an
assignment he tells me in July to watch us all, but wanted you to be
aware of that so in case you want to wave to your mother or something,
you be discreet about it.

About your bios, I\'ve been receiving your corrections on those, and
we\'re happy to make those corrections. If you have any other additions
or revisions, if you could get them to me in about a week or so, that
would be great. Then we\'ll get another set of those bios out to you in
corrected form.

We\'re also ‑‑ now turning to the protocols document. One of the issues
that came up during the prior Committee, and I\'m sure you can
understand that it\'s an important issue, is the matter of attendance.
We have such limited time together, that your attendance at each meeting
is vital. And realizing, of course, that we all have busy schedules and
what have you, if you\'re not able to attend, please do send an
alternate. You were asked during the application process to give us an
alternate to represent you in such situations.

I am preparing that list. If we get it done by this afternoon, I\'ll
circulate it before we leave today. Otherwise, I\'ll send it to you via
the e‑mail so that we can update that information, and in those
situations where we don\'t have an alternate, that you could give us
that information. Yes, sir. Yes, Mr. Duke.

MR. DUKE: I was under the impression just from the preliminary material
that the alternates were handled on a per meeting basis.

MR. MARSHALL: They can be.

MR. DUKE: Okay. I did not send one, because I ‑‑

MR. MARSHALL: It\'s not carved in stone, but we have had an alternates
list in the past, so that the hope is that there would be some
continuity from meeting to meeting, that the same alternate would be
representing you, and that you would have communicated with that person
about what we\'re doing and all that sort of stuff.

MR. DUKE: So if we didn\'t send you an alternate, we need to do that.

MR. MARSHALL: Yes.

MR. DUKE: Okay.

MR. MARSHALL: Yes, we\'ll appreciate that.

CHAIR ROOKER: Scott, there\'s a question.

MR. MARSHALL: Question, sure.

CHAIR ROOKER: Yes, Rich has a question.

MR. MARSHALL: You have three questions, Mr. Ellis? Okay.

MR. ELLIS: I\'ll reserve my two later questions for later in the day.

MR. MARSHALL: Okay.

MR. ELLIS: But as someone who was on the last Committee, I want to play
schoolmarm and kind of echo what you\'re saying about attendance at the
meetings. It also means staying from the start of the meeting to the end
of a meeting.

MR. MARSHALL: Thank you. That was going to be my next subject, so go
right ahead, Rich. Go ahead and say it all.

MR. ELLIS: It was very frustrating the last meeting that as the meeting
went on the numbers went down and down, so if we had an important item
to discuss, you made sure it got discussed the first thing in the
morning, because you might not have a quorum by the end of the day. And
it\'s very helpful to have everybody there for the entire day. I put
that plug in, so if you\'re going to come, come for the entire day.

MR. MARSHALL: And Mr. Ellis chaired a working group that contributed to
these protocols last Committee, and he\'s right. If at all possible, we
would like you to stay the entire day, because we do do programming late
in the afternoon. We sometimes even have speakers late in the afternoon,
and are making policy‑related decisions at that point in time. So please
do keep that in mind, and if all of this becomes a problem for you,
let\'s discuss it because we really want this to be a successful
Committee, and we want you to be a successful contributing part of it.
So if a problem does arise in any of these areas, please talk to us.

CHAIR ROOKER: We have a couple of questions.

MR. MARSHALL: Okay. Sure. Go ahead.

CHAIR ROOKER: Okay. Don.

MR. SNOOP: A question on the timing of the actual meetings themselves.

MR. MARSHALL: Yes.

MR. SNOOP: Friday, for those of us that have to drive home on Friday
night, leaving here at 4:30, 5:00 is ‑‑ any days besides Friday good
days for meetings?

MR. MARSHALL: Let me tell you the rationale. It\'s a difficult situation
for a lot of folks. The reason why we generally have these meetings on
Fridays or Mondays is in order to give the people from out‑of‑town the
opportunity to have a Saturday night stay‑over so they could get the
cheaper airline ticket.

MR. SNOOP: That makes sense.

MR. MARSHALL: That\'s one of the major reasons for this. The meeting in
November will be on Thursday, unfortunately. And part of the problem
also, is this space, this Commission Meeting Room, gets booked almost a
year in advance. And it is sometimes difficult, especially if we change
dates, to really lock in another date and have it available to us all
day. So I appreciate ‑‑

MR. SNOOP: Thank you. You answered my question.

MR. MARSHALL: I appreciate your problem, but I\'m not sure I could help
you much with the traffic. Vernon, go ahead.

MR. JAMES: Thank you, Scott.

MR. MARSHALL: Sure. Hi. How are you? It\'s good to see you again.

MR. JAMES: Good to see you too. Just want to reiterate and emphasize
Richard\'s statement about leaving early. It was very frustrating to be
a part of a group that was working on issues, and during the afternoon
have those members walk out. Then they would make comments on their
return meeting.

CHAIR ROOKER: We\'re going to lock the doors this time, Vernon. I think
we\'ll lock the doors. They won\'t open until 4:30. Maybe bathroom break
but that will be escorted, so ‑‑ I think Debra had her hand up.

MR. MARSHALL: Go ahead, Debra.

MS. BERLYN: A very quick question.

MR. MARSHALL: Sure.

MS. BERLYN: It may have been in the materials. I apologize if it already
was, but do we have dates of the meetings?

MR. MARSHALL: We do, yes. July 11th, and November 20th.

MS. BERLYN: Thank you.

CHAIR ROOKER: Okay. Jim.

MR. MARSHALL: Jim, go ahead. Hi, Jim.

MR. CONRAN: Hi, Scott. Thank you. A few of us live on the West Coast and
have a seven hour flight ahead of us going home on a Friday night, and
there\'s a limited amount of flights to the city that I live in, and so
as I sent you a message, I can\'t stay for any meeting later than 4:15
or I\'m stuck here another night. And as much as I like Washington, I\'m
here enough that I can\'t plan on doing that. And I know David probably
has the same dilemma, and I think there\'s somebody from the State of
Washington, so my preference would be to have a working meeting all the
way through lunch and try to get out at 4, which might help the people
who have to drive home on a Friday night. But I have to leave at a
certain time, or else I can\'t get home, and so I just want to be up
front about that.

CHAIR ROOKER: Susan, you have a comment?

MS. MAZRUI: There\'s some accessibility issues with working through
lunch, so I think that would be inadvisable, but perhaps an earlier
start would be another alternative.

CHAIR ROOKER: Well, how do you feel about that? We could start at 8. Do
it from 8 until 4?

MR. MARSHALL: I think we can do that, but I\'d have to check. There are
issues about how early people are here in the building, and when we can
get in, and all that, so I can\'t commit to 8:00, but I\'ll look into
it.

CHAIR ROOKER: Larry.

MR. GOLDBERG: I have the same kind of travel problem. Since I can only
do this as a same day trip, it\'s I don\'t think really possible for me
to get here at 8 in the morning, when I\'m flying in that morning. But
it\'s, you know, half the people will have that problem, and half will
have a different problem.

CHAIR ROOKER: Well, if the issue is people staying until 4, we do have
public comments that start around 4 or 4:30. And I respect and
understand that this is people giving their time to do it. Let us
address this and see what kind of a solution we can come up with.

MR. MARSHALL: And if you have any other suggestions please, you know,
because we are aware that it is a difficult issue for some people, so if
you have any suggestions about how we might be able to address this, let
us know. And we have had actually some working lunches, as well, but we
have not generally done that as matter of course because you all don\'t
have very much time to talk to each other at these meetings.

Ideally, you know, it would be wonderful if we could have even a two‑day
meeting, so we\'d have more face time together to be able to get some of
this work done on a face‑to‑face basis rather than through e‑mail and
all the rest, but that\'s not possible.

CHAIR ROOKER: I think one more. One more.

MR. MARSHALL: Okay. Go ahead.

CHAIR ROOKER: Brenda.

MR. MARSHALL: Sure. Hi, Brenda.

MS. KELLY‑FREY: Hi, Scott. Not that the input from the FCC is less
important, but I\'m wondering have you considered putting the
information from the working groups in the morning, and flip‑flopping
the whole agenda, morning to afternoon, afternoon to morning?

CHAIR ROOKER: Well, we don\'t necessarily have the FCC here speaking to
us every time, and usually it\'s a brief time. And usually if we\'re
having the Commissioners in, they are available more in the morning, so
that\'s kind of a time constraint. But generally, you don\'t see the day
packed with people from the FCC, because we have all other kinds of
things that we address. But we will sit down and talk about this, and
figure out what we can ‑‑ how we can resolve some of your concerns. Go
ahead, Scott.

MR. MARSHALL: Yeah, that is an interesting idea though. Lastly, and I
know Margaret is here, and I\'m looking forward to that presentation
because Margaret has had a wealth of experience here at the Commission,
and knows these issues. She knows more than I shall ever forget about
all this stuff, so I want to get her on here quite quickly.

I was asked a moment ago about minutes. And yes, we do take minutes of
this meeting. They\'re action‑oriented minutes, not a verbatim who said
what to whom kind of summary. This is a written transcript that\'s
prepared, and that will be on the website, and we will send you the
minutes after each meeting. I usually don\'t get the transcript for a
good two or three weeks after each meeting, and then I need some time to
prepare the minutes from them. But yes, we do do the minutes, and a
transcript is available.

I think in the interest of time and in the interest of hearing from
Margaret, I\'ll turn it back to you, unless anybody have a final
question? Or we could talk more about this in the afternoon.

CHAIR ROOKER: Yeah, we\'ll have some time.

MR. MARSHALL: Yeah.

CHAIR ROOKER: In order for us to be an effective Committee, it\'s very
important that we understand the issues that are pending before the FCC.
And I can tell you from past experience, there\'s no one better to do
that function than Margaret Egler, who is the Deputy Bureau Chief for
Policy in the Consumer and Governmental Affairs Bureau. She\'s an
attorney with extensive experience in the FCC, and the cable industry.
And let\'s welcome Margaret Egler.

MS. EGLER: Thank you very much. That was very nice, Shirley. It\'s nice
to see you back. It\'s nice to see a lot of you back, a lot of the new
faces, I\'ve actually seen in the past. I see a couple of people I had
phone calls to, so hopefully you\'ll get a call from me soon.

One of the things we wanted to talk about today is what\'s in front of
the FCC, that\'s pending now that affects consumers. And I think you can
easily say that everything that\'s in front of the FCC affects consumers
in one way or an other. But there\'s a specific group of proceedings
that we have put out, and I just want to talk a little bit about them.
And then I\'ll talk more specifically about the ones that have
originated in our Bureau, and sort of what\'s going on with them.

We have a system for public filing called the \"Electronic Comment
Filing System\", or ECFS, and that\'s been a great system. It\'s been a
real useful thing for people here in the Commission, and people outside
the Commission. You can now pretty much read any comment anyone else
files, and you don\'t have to come and get it copied. And it opens it up
to everyone outside of Washington, basically. It\'s available over the
Internet. And Bill Cline, who is the Director of our Reference
Information Center, who is one of the people responsible for that. It\'s
fairly complicated though, the actual system, because you have to know
the docket number, and you have to sort of know whose comment you\'re
looking for, or else you\'ll get every comment in one docket. And there
are some dockets, for example, the Universal Service Docket, which has
thousands and thousands of comments because so much has happened.
That\'s also true for the TRS docket, you just have hundreds and
hundreds of comments, I think it\'s over a thousand now. We\'re actually
just working on it now, because there are just so many proceedings. So
we\'re wondering how can we make this easier for consumers, if they
wanted to file, because as we do the consumer rulemakings, we\'re trying
to figure out a way to make it easier to sort of get comments. You
don\'t have to hire an attorney. You don\'t have to come to Washington.
And hopefully, you don\'t even have to mail something to us.

So what they came up with was something called ECFS Express, and Steve
Gorey, who runs the Operation Support System, Office of Support Systems,
he\'s going to be here later to give you a real technical overview of
how that works. But basically, it\'s on the front page of our website.
You just click on it, and there\'s a list of proceedings there that we
think are ones that, you know, consumers, not necessarily the industry,
not necessarily advocate, you know, groups or trade associations are the
most interested in, but things that we\'d like to hear from consumers
on. And so we put that up, and these are the proceedings that are
actually there now.

A lot of these, the actual comment period has closed, which means that
there\'s a notice of proposed rulemaking, or a further notice that is
out, but for ‑‑ and the time period, the 30 or 45 day, or 75 day clock
has run, but we still accept comments, late filed comments. Generally,
we do try to get a full record, so I\'m just going to go through them
real quickly.

The first one, which is one that everybody knows about is receiving
broadband over the traditional telephone network. This is what we refer
to as the wireline broadband proceeding that\'s currently being worked
on and active. There\'s broadcast ownership, and that\'s the
consolidation of the sort of six different dockets that have to do with
radio, TV, newspaper, network, trusts, ownership‑to‑ownership limits.
That\'s also on there. Digital television copyright protection, whether
we, the FCC, should mandate standards. E‑911 Service, which is whether
the rules regarding access to emergency services should be revised.
Obviously, an important docket. High speed Internet broadband by your
cable company which is, of course, the other big broadband proceeding.
Last February and March we came out with two notices, one was on cable,
one was on wireline. This is the cable one.

Plug‑and‑play, which is the ability of consumers to plug cable TV into
digital TV sets without a set‑top box. That\'s out for ‑‑ that\'s an
open docket right now. Rural wireless services, and that\'s the
effectiveness of the delivery of service to rural areas. There are
issues raised there. There\'s the Spectrum Policy Task Force report, and
that\'s a report, but that\'s also available for comment. How to
increase the public benefits from use of the spectrum. As more and more
people use it, it\'s our job here at the FCC to make sure correctly
serving the public interest.

The Uniform Complaint Process, and that was something that came out of
our Bureau. And the question was whether or not we should enhance our
complaint process, and include non‑ carriers. Currently, our complaint
process is limited to serving complaints and receiving complaints, or
receiving responses from carriers, so we only serve carriers where we
receive responses, and the consumer who complained gets that response,
as well.

In the slamming context, it\'s a little different because we have to do
orders on those. But that\'s another thing that\'s available for
comment. Your predecessor organization, CDTAC, filed comments in that
proceeding, so those are the ones that are out there now, so we
encourage any of you, or anyone you know who\'s interested, to let us
know by filing comments. It\'s very easy. You click on whatever
proceeding. You don\'t need to know the docket number, and we tried to
make it as plain English as we get, as far as what this is actually
about. You just put in your name, you know, who\'s it from, what your
comment is. It goes ‑‑ it is a public record, and that\'s like
everything that\'s filed with FCC, unless you ask for confidentiality.
It\'s probably going to be ‑‑ it\'s going to be public, so we have that
notice on there so people don\'t think for some reason, you know, no one
else is going to read it. Once we get it, it\'s then on the ECFS System,
and everybody gets to read it, which is, of course, the whole point.

But I want to talk today about the ones, the sort of the big ‑‑ a couple
of the bigger proceedings that are going on and are active currently in
the Consumer and Governmental Affairs Bureau. The first one is slamming.
I think we\'ve been getting a lot of press lately. We\'ve been doing a
lot of enforcement for several years on slamming. Most recently, there
is the ‑‑ our Enforcement Bureau and the Commission put a 1.2 fine
against WebNet for ‑‑ \$1.2 million for slamming violations. The
significance of this particular forfeiture is that it was something that
we did with 14 states, so I just want to talk a little bit about the
slamming process, how it\'s changed over the last couple of years.

In November of 2000, rules went into effect that required us, the FCC,
when we get a slamming complaint, not just to accept the complaint and
serve it on the carrier like we do every complaint we get against a
carrier, and receive a response from the carrier, but also to require
that the carrier provide information, specific information of whether or
not they had the requisite authorization to make a carrier change. And
there\'s a whole list of things that they have to sort of say or do that
verifies that authorization. So we have verification rules. It can
either be in the form of a third‑party verification tape, which probably
you\'re familiar with if you\'ve changed your phone service recently, or
it has to be a letter of agency, a letter of authorization. We call it
LOA, and that has to have certain pieces of information on it, name,
address, the number you want changed, you know, what specific services
you want to change, an acknowledgement that this could cost you money,
that they may charge you whatever to make the actual physical change.
Those pieces of information. And then the carrier has to send that in to
us, and then we have to do an order on these, and these are the
individual slamming orders.

And we\'ve done hundreds and hundreds of these in the last two years. In
particular the last year, we\'ve done close to a thousand. And the great
thing about this is that these rules require that if we find a carrier
liable of slamming, that they have to credit or refund money to the
consumer. That wasn\'t happening in the past. Often the carriers would
sort of, you know, do it just as a goodwill gesture or just to sort of
clear up something, but there was no requirement under the rules that
they give money back to the consumer.

The big forfeiture orders, like for example the WebNet one I just
mentioned for \$1.2 million, that\'s a fine. When that gets paid, it
gets paid to the U.S. Government, so the slamming problem was so
significant that we put in effect these rules, and they have been very
successful.

We\'ve gotten 36 states to also work with us on these rules, and one of
the interesting part of the rules is that if the states want to, they
can opt‑in and administer the rules. And 36 states have opted‑in to
administer the rules, along with the District of Columbia and Puerto
Rico. So it\'s been a great across‑the‑board enforcement because
slamming can happen, obviously with your long distance service, which is
what we\'re all familiar with. But also now with more competition, with
local service, and with the sort of unknown quantity known as interLATA
toll, or local toll, which is something that people never are really
sure what it is. And often times, they never really sure who their
carrier is. And they\'re really not sure who their carrier is once they
get slammed. So that\'s been the enforcement aspect of slamming.

We just released an order on reconsideration that was published Friday
in the Federal Register, so the time begins to run for certain things.
And in that order on reconsideration, we clarified some things in these
rules that I\'m talking about, but we also asked for comment. This will
be put up on ECFS Express hopefully in the next day or two. We asked for
public comment on how should we change the verification requirements.

There are certain things that we get these tapes back from the
companies, and they\'re not dated, so we don\'t know what the date is.
We\'re also not sure what ‑‑ if the customer understands when the
carrier says do you want to change your intraLATA toll, what does that
mean? If there should be some definition, if the carrier should have to
explain it, so the point of this further notice is to continue to fine
tune the verification rules, to make sure that people understand what
they\'re doing when they change, or often what happens, you\'re making
the phone call, asking to change your service, but this is likely
you\'re getting a phone call. A carrier\'s got a great deal for you.
They\'re going to tell you all about it, but then they have to make sure
that you understand what you\'re doing, and that\'s the point of asking
these questions, preserving these tapes, and sending them to us when it
turns out that you didn\'t actually want that to happen. So that\'s what
going on with slamming.

The second big item we\'re working on is the Telephone Consumer
Protection Act item, and that\'s telemarketing. You probably have heard
a good bit about this. We opened up our proceeding last September.
Basically, the way that it works, the TCPA as we call, it Telephone
Consumer Protection Act, was passed in 1991, and gave this Commission
overreaching authority to regulate marketing, solicitations that go on
using the telephone or fax machine, so in 1992 we created rules. And
those are the rules that you know as the time of day rules, you know,
they can only call between 8 and 9. They can\'t leave pre‑recorded
messages unless under certain situations. There\'s prohibitions on
automatic dialers and that sort of thing.

We also have the prohibition on faxes. You can\'t send unsolicited faxes
to people without express consent. We amended, did a reconsideration of
those rules in 1995, and then as the, you know, the last couple of years
we\'ve seen that it seems the technology may be overtaking some of these
rules, and we decided we\'d open up a rulemaking. We\'ve been doing a
lot of enforcement, particularly on the fax side, and we\'ve done
millions of dollars of forfeiture orders. So the other thing that the
TCPA gives us, is the opportunity, if the FCC chooses, to do a national
\"Do Not Call List\".

In 1992, the Commission declined to do that, and so but that\'s still in
the statute, and still was and is a possibility. We put out our notice
of proposed rulemaking in September. The FTC, which also has authority
over telemarketers in terms of, you know, how it\'s fraud and deceitful
advertising, marketing, that sort of thing. They also have always had a
telemarketing sales rule, which is similar to our\'s in some situations
and they came out with proposed rules, and then final rules announcing a
national \"Do Not Call List\", which they hope ‑‑ which will go into
effect on October 1st.

So what has then happened, our proceeding remains open, and then as you
probably know, what happened is Congress passed a \"Do Not Call
Implementation Act\", which requires us to finish our proceeding within
180 days of that Act, which turned out to be September 7th. But it also
instructs the FCC to maximize consistency with the FTC rules, and it
requires us to file a report 45 days after we finish our proceeding, and
then annual reports. And the reports are supposed to talk about how the
enforcement is going, and how consistent are the rules. And to the
extent they\'re not consistent, how are you going to make them
consistent? And so we put out a further notice in this proceeding in
March, basically asking people for comment. And that comment period
closes on May 5th and May 19th.

The significance of our actions are really the fact that we have
jurisdiction over all telemarketing, whether intrastate or interstate,
and all industries that are doing it. The FTC\'s jurisdiction is
limited, first to interstate only, and also they have exceptions in
their jurisdiction where they don\'t regulate common carriers, or
airlines, or banks, mortgage companies. And when you think about it,
that\'s because there are expert agencies regulating a lot of these
industries anyway. For example, we regulate ‑‑ but we also regulate
everybody else in this particular statute. And that\'s why the TCPA is
sort of different for us, because our usual regulatees are the media
companies, and the phone companies, and it\'s not usually everybody. But
in this particular situation, we have everybody.

So in order for the FTC\'s, for this national \"Do Not Call List\" to
work consistently across the board, we\'re taking a very hard look at do
we need to do a national \"Do Not Call List\", what do we need to do?
How consistent are we going to make it?

The other interesting thing about the TCPA is that it gives the states a
big, big role. It basically, you know, says the states can have rules
that are consistent with our\'s, but also more restrictive to the extent
that the call is affecting ‑‑ you know, it\'s a call made to someone in
their state, so it gives the states a very, very big role. And it also
gives individual consumers a big role in the sense that you can bring
private rights of actions for \$500 in state court for violations, if
you get an unsolicited ‑‑ a call outside the times specified in the
rules, or pre‑recorded messages, or unsolicited fax.

IN fact, a law firm in town just successfully got I think over a million
dollar judgment for unsolicited faxes, and that\'s just times 500. It
was Covington & Burling actually, I think. So that happens, and so the
TCPA is an interesting statute. It\'s far‑reaching. We\'ve been working
with it for quite a while from the state of our proceedings, so it\'s
updated. We have the new act from Congress, so we\'re working very, very
hard on getting this thing done, and we\'re looking forward to getting
more information.

Now just so you know just how the power of these sort of proceedings, we
‑‑ usually, you know, most rulemakings, we\'ll get a couple of hundred
comments if it\'s a big proceeding, in the small proceedings we may get
25. In the TCPA so far we\'ve gotten 6,200 and a lot of those are from
individual consumers. And that was one of the big reasons we wanted to
put ECFS Express up there, was so that people could just write in and
say, you know ‑ ‑ and some of the comments, you can see them. I mean,
just go on and take a look at it, but some of the comments are just
pretty much, you know, you have to stop these people from calling me.

I also ‑‑ it\'s also, if you ever want to get the message out in terms
of enforcement ‑‑ is David Horowitz here? He ‑‑ David ‑‑ I was fortunate
to be on his show a couple of times answering questions from consumers,
and he put me on his website as someone to contact. And just recently I
got a pack of 120 unsolicited faxes from a school in Arkansas saying
David Horowitz said to send these to you. So we sent them to the
Enforcement Bureau, and they\'re going to get looked at, which is the
appropriate thing to do. And so when you, you know, you get that type of
thing, if you have any violation of our rules, faxes or calls, people
can file complaints. And, you know, we do enforcement. I mean, that\'s
how it works, but that\'s the kind of information we want to get people
to know, that that information is out there, and they can file the
complaints with us.

But just as important, and this is the newer push, is where to get
people to help us write the rules, and tell us, you know, what\'s the
situation. Because we find that, you know, the people in the industry
will have their advocates and, you know, there\'s some, like I said,
advocacy groups and, you know, a specific perspective, and they want
certain things to happen, and they\'re in here. And they have the
frequent visitor passes and stuff but, you know, we don\'t hear a lot
from people who aren\'t in those situations, and that\'s why, you know,
the Internet being what it is, we want to hear as much as possible,
because this will all be noted when we actually write up the final
report and order. So that\'s all being worked on, and we really want to
encourage you because this docket is open, and especially because the
comment period has not closed for the most recent further notice, the
Implementation Act further notice, the requirement that we maximize
consistency. To consider it, just log it on yourself and tell us, you
know, what you think, or tell anyone else, or if this group wants to say
anything, obviously as a group, we\'d be happy to hear it.

The final item that\'s in front of our Bureau that we\'re working on is
a docket that will probably always be open, and that\'s the
Telecommunications Relay Service docket. That\'s TRS, and that\'s
Section 225. And there\'s a requirement under 225 that we continue to
sort of look at technology and make sure that the technology is
available, and it\'s constantly updated.

The goal ultimately is to close dockets. I mean, we do a rulemaking, we
finish. In fact, the most TCPA Further Notice, we closed the old TCPA
docket because it was finished. The orders were done, the recons were
done, everything was sort of over, and so you do close dockets. Our
Reference Information Center is usually very happy when we close dockets
because we take away hundreds and hundreds of pieces of paper, but the
TRS docket is probably something that will never be closed because we
have the statutory requirement to continually update, and to make more
functionally equivalent things available to people with hearing and
speech disabilities. So we currently are actively working on an item.

We had a rulemaking that went out, I believe it was in 2000. It\'s what
people refer to as the Improved TRS Item, and that introduced a number
of mandatory minimum standards. It also had a notice that asked for a
lot more, and should we do a lot more. I think this group would know ‑‑
the people who were on the previous Committee would know that in the
Disability Rights Office, we\'ve been able to staff up with a good
number of attorneys, and we\'ve been able to really focus some time on
TRS, so we are actively working on that particular rulemaking, and
we\'re hoping that things will be happening on that.

So that\'s ongoing. What people know, and some people have done this, to
the extent that you don\'t know, one of the things we have encouraged in
the past on the TRS side, is for people to file petitions when there are
certain types of technologies that we should consider, as to whether or
not they should be TRS, or whether they should not be TRS. So that\'s
the kind of thing that, you know, if you know about that, or if you have
an interest in it, to let us know, because we put those things out for
notice, and then we get a sense from the different communities what\'s
happening. Especially if it\'s something that ‑‑ if it\'s mandatory, we
make it a mandatory TRS requirement, then it\'s something the states
have to do, as well, so it\'s always something we like to hear from the
states on. So we\'d like ‑‑ you know, and also sometimes the states are
the people that come up with the best ideas. Some of the states\'
mandatory standards, you know, exceed our\'s, which is okay, as long as
they\'re not conflicting.

So that\'s the type of thing that we also could use some input on, to
the extent that this Committee is interested in, or you in particular
are interested in, or your group is, because we need that type of
information. We need to hear from the experts. We\'re not always the
experts in some of these situations, so we could use some help. And one
of the ways to do it is not just through ECFS, but also more formal
petitions, or just coming in and asking for a meeting with us, and we
can guide you on what you need to file, if you want to file something in
a docket.

So those are the three big things that our staff up in the Consumer and
Governmental Affairs Bureau are currently working on very diligently.
And I guess I can take questions. Okay. So did anyone have any
questions?

CHAIR ROOKER: Okay. Let me ‑‑ I\'ll play traffic cop here. All right. I
saw Larry\'s hand first, which may not have been correct. I was looking
in his direction, but Larry, you get it.

MR. GOLDBERG: Sure. Hi, Margaret.

MS. EGLER: Hello.

MR. GOLDBERG: One of the questions on the ECFS which I find very, very
useful, remembering the days when I wanted to read anything I\'d have to
come down here and look at the paper, is that your information that you
send out is being put out in at least three formats every time.

MS. EGLER: Right.

MR. GOLDBERG: Word, PDF and Text, but people who submit are not.

MS. EGLER: Right.

MR. GOLDBERG: And I\'m wondering if you\'re considering requirements for
filing so that you can be assured that if, in particular, a blind person
wants to read someone else\'s comments, that they won\'t be in an
inaccessible format.

MS. EGLER: Yeah, I mean, we can definitely take that back. I don\'t know
how we could, just off the top of my head, require someone to file. I
mean, I think then you sort of raise barriers. I guess the real question
is would we consider taking the filings and transforming them once
they\'re filed.

MR. GOLDBERG: Well, sometimes you can, but sometimes you can\'t.

MS. EGLER: Yeah.

MR. GOLDBERG: I see documents filed by law firms that clearly have an
electronic version that they then print out and scan, and turn into an
inaccessible PDF, when it started as an accessible one. They just
didn\'t want it out there in a transformational format.

MS. EGLER: Right.

MR. GOLDBERG: I do know that various federal agencies have requirements
to submit documents in certain ways. If you want to submit a grant
application to the National Science Foundation these days, you are
required to do it in exactly a particular way, so I think you might be
able to ask for a Word or some other format.

MS. EGLER: Right. I can take it back. The goal is to get as much
information in as possible, so I think ‑‑ I mean, if you\'re talking
about grants then that\'s something that you\'re getting a direct
benefit from. Whereas, if somebody just wants to file a comment that\'s
four or five sentences long, what kind of burdens we can put on that
individual person, especially if it\'s not a lot.

MR. GOLDBERG: Well, you can put it on law firms instead of consumers.

MS. EGLER: Well, yeah, there you go. That would pass scrutiny. Right?

CHAIR ROOKER: Okay. Now we have a number of people who put their hands
up. Does someone else have a follow‑up on what Larry just said? I think
Susan Palmer over in this corner has a comment on what Larry just said,
and then we\'ll go around the room. Okay?

MS. MAZRUI: I agree that you don\'t want to limit participation by
consumer and other groups. I do think minimally guidelines could be
established, because I suspect that there are organizations and
companies that would be more than happy to provide things in a format
that\'s accessible if they really understood, and so it really requires
the FCC to take a leadership role, and help define what that might be.

I also believe that some of the comments that are being filed through
the Complaint Offices are not put in accessible formats, but they are
actually scanned. And I could be wrong, that could be old data, but that
had been my experience before. But I think certainly the FCC could
develop guidelines for filing. I\'m sure they\'re not taking something
and, you know, in some obscure electronic format that nobody can open at
this point, I would think, so they could take a leadership role. And I
think there\'s been so much work to make things accessible that this
would be a natural next step for the organization.

CHAIR ROOKER: Okay. Now do we have other comments on this issue? All
right. Claude has a comment on this issue.

MR. STOUT: I wanted first to commend ‑‑ to applaud the FCC for keeping
up with the TRS issue. And as you see, over time there are changes from
the traditional TTY and the Relay Service, and now we have various
options. There\'s TRS opportunities on the computer. You can use the
Internet Relay, or you can use a video relay service, so it\'s very
empowering to us as consumers. And you provide us with more choices on
different opportunities with the Relay Service, and that\'s a big
benefit to us, so I want to applaud the FCC with that. And as well, I
want to encourage you and your staff to continue to speed up the CapTel
issue.

We have lots of hard‑of‑hearing people throughout the United States who
benefit with this CapTel Service. CapTel is ‑‑ benefits hard‑of‑hearing
people who don\'t really benefit so much from a Relay Service or a video
relay service, so I want to make that comment to have it placed in the
record.

CHAIR ROOKER: Thank you, Claude. Do we have other comments on this
issue? David, yes.

MR. POEHLMAN: Hello. This is David Poehlman with the American Council of
the Blind. Google has a thing, Margaret, where you can click on ‑‑
it\'ll say PDF or Text, PDF To Text, or something like that. For each
document that they find that\'s PDF, you can actually click on the Text
link for it, and it will automatically translate that PDF into Text, if
it\'s translatable into text, so that might be another alternative, you
know, in addition to requesting that people file in, you know, XYZ
formats, you know, as part of your filing guidelines. That could be
helpful, that way it would lessen the work on your staff and, you know,
maybe help streamline things for others.

CHAIR ROOKER: Okay. Thank you, David. All right. Now I believe we have
other questions. I know, Jim, you had your hand up.

MR. CONRAN: Thank you, Shirley. I just wanted to make actually a
compliment to the process. I think the FCC\'s on‑line process is
certainly by far the best of any federal government agency, and it\'s
nice to be able to make brief comments on issues that are important. And
unlike other agencies, not worry about getting back tree size filings
from all the other parties. I know on some FERC issues that I filed on,
just a simple comment, the rest of my life is inundated with mail that I
really don\'t care to get. I don\'t even read it. I throw it away. And
so I think the process that the FCC uses is very efficient, and it works
well for people who just have a thought that they think should be part
of the record. It\'s something that people should take into content, so
I just wanted to compliment the process that the FCC is using, and I
have recommended it to FERC, that it would be a model that they would be
wise to use if they really did want to get consumer input. Thank you.

CHAIR ROOKER: Okay.

MS. EGLER: Let me just ‑‑ I just want to give a plug again. Bill Cline,
who runs our Reference Information Center, has spent so much time on
this, and I just want to get his name out there, because when you do the
Reference Information Center, you don\'t get a lot of glory, and it can
be somewhat painful at times. But he really masterminded this, and I
think it\'s worked out well. Thanks.

CHAIR ROOKER: Okay. David, I think you were ‑‑ you have a ‑‑

MR. HOROWITZ: What I\'m interested in is new telemarketing law. Why the
exclusions, Margaret, were not really published along with the stories.
In other words, the exclusions that were published were done in such a
general way that no one can understand them. Like, for instance, they
said well, charities are going to be excluded. And then they said
insurance is excluded, and they went this whole list of exclusions.

Well, if you exclude charities from the telemarketers, you know,
telemarketers I think probably about maybe 10 percent or 15 percent of
the calls are for some unknown charity. And I could say very easily this
charity is, you know, a tax‑exempt charity, or it\'s a charity from an
organization that will give you a tax deduction on it, but that was
never really explained. So when we did a segment with folks on the other
agency discussing this, they didn\'t really have the list in tact, and
we got inundated with e‑mail stuff saying what are the exclusions for?
And my feeling is, if you\'re doing any kind of a regulation that has
exclusions, they should be explained bit by bit so people understand it.

Now I don\'t know what\'s going to happen with your side of the
telemarketing issue, but I think it would be important for anything that
you do from the FCC on this issue, that those exclusions really be
explained, because some of those exclusions make no sense. Insurance, do
you know why they would exclude insurance? I know why they\'re saying
they\'re excluding insurance.

MS. EGLER: The FTC? I\'m assuming they don\'t have jurisdiction.

MR. HOROWITZ: Yeah.

MS. EGLER: Let me respond to ‑‑ first of all, it\'s two different
questions. One is, what are the exclusions? The other is, the
charitable, non‑profit. We are prohibited by statute from including
non‑profits, so that\'s written into the Act, so our rules will not
include non‑profits. That\'s up to Congress, they made that decision, so
that\'s ‑‑ you can talk to them.

But as far as the exclusions, and I think this is one of the reasons
Congress passed the bill they did, was that there are a number of
exclusions because the FTC just doesn\'t have jurisdiction over certain
industries. If we acted, every industry would be covered because we have
jurisdiction over industry that uses the telephone and fax machine in
the market.

MR. HOROWITZ: But they even excluded medical. And do you know how many
calls people are getting now to buy everything from sexual drugs to God
knows what, which are considered medical, so these people can still make
those calls.

MS. EGLER: Right. Well, again the list is not in effect yet. I mean, the
list is not going to go into effect, the FTC\'s list will not go into
effect until October 1st. Yeah, it\'s actually going into effect October
1st. I think you can start signing up and then they can start
downloading the list to telemarketers in September. I think that\'s sort
of where they\'re going, so I don\'t ‑‑ I\'m not sure about what the
medical exclusion is.

All I can tell you is that if we go forward, there won\'t be any
exclusions for industries. There will be an exclusion for non‑profits
under the statutes.

MR. HOROWITZ: Why is there an exclusion for the non‑ profits, because on
the telephone ‑‑

MS. EGLER: Talk to Congress.

MR. HOROWITZ: ‑‑ they\'ll say we\'re a non‑profit. And you\'re going to
say to me send me your charter so I can see that you\'re a non‑profit.
They\'re going to ask for a credit card number, and they\'re going to
charge, if you want to give this. You will give a donation. You give a
credit card number and it could be a non‑profit or not. People have to
be able to check that out, or the company itself, or the charity itself
should be able to supply something.

In some cities, you\'re not allowed to solicit for any charities unless
you get a certification from the city. They do that in Los Angeles,
which kind of works because you can say do you have a certificate?
What\'s the certificate number in those cities, but nationally it\'s
almost impossible to find out with all these charities, unless you go to
the Better Business Bureau and you look at their charitable ratings, and
who is and who isn\'t, and what they do.

CHAIR ROOKER: But that doesn\'t give you a whole list, David.

MR. HOROWITZ: No, it\'s just the ones that they have checked out.

CHAIR ROOKER: Right. Exactly. I want to ask a follow‑up question to
that, if I may. And that is, there are the so‑called callers from the
fire department, and the police department, and all these. And, in fact,
these are commercial organizations that give a very small percentage of
what they get from consumers to the stated organization, the Police and
Fireman\'s Fund, and this sort of thing. And those calls, are they
exempt?

MS. EGLER: Well, let me just get back to the ‑‑ the first point is that
we work for Congress. Congress said non‑ profits are exempt.

CHAIR ROOKER: Right.

MS. EGLER: Non‑profits are going to be exempt, so the question of
whether or not the people marketing for them ‑‑ I mean, obviously
that\'s something, the FTC has said something on, we will say something
on. I can\'t tell you at this point what that\'s going to be. You do
know that the Supreme Court just looked at this issue, and I guess
there\'s a case in Chicago, I think it\'s Illinois, that they brought
the exact sort of same ‑‑ this company was telemarketing for Viet Nam
Veterans or Veterans of Foreign Wars, and they were taking 95 percent of
the dollar, and so the question, you know, is that too much. And the
questioning from the Bench ‑ again, there\'s no opinion out yet ‑ and
that will give us all some guidance from the U.S. Supreme Court ‑
didn\'t seem to think that that was necessarily the worst thing in the
world, that maybe there are reasons you do this sort of thing. Maybe
this gets the name out for the particular organization, and 95 percent
isn\'t too much, so I don\'t know. It\'s an open issue. However, we take
very seriously the requirement from Congress that non‑profits are
exempt, and so that will be guiding us as we go forward.

CHAIR ROOKER: All right. Joy.

MS. RAGSDALE: I\'m Joy Ragsdale representing NASUCA. A different
question, but in regards to slamming. Many of our offices, in fact, all
of our offices are statutorily authorized to handle consumer complaints.
Some offices have a Consumer Complaint Division and some do not, so when
your slamming rules came out, it was not clear whether a People\'s
Counsel\'s Office investigation of a consumer slamming complaint would
trigger the payment process that the carriers have to refund the money.
So what is the appropriate vehicle to seek a rule clarification on how
the consumer offices fit within the slamming rules?

MS. EGLER: Well, you can always file a Petition for Declaratory Ruling,
and that\'s actually in the slamming docket, if you want to find out. It
might be more though easily explained ‑‑ are you from a particular state
or no?

MS. RAGSDALE: Well, NASUCA is an international office, but I\'m with the
D.C.\'s People\'s Counsel, and we do have a consumer division. We handle
a great deal of consumer complaints, so it\'s ‑‑ trying to work in a
cohesive fashion with the Public Service Commission of D.C., who has
volunteered to handle complaints, and we often find ourselves handling
the same complaint. The consumer doesn\'t get action from one agency,
they\'ll call the other.

MS. EGLER: Right.

MS. RAGSDALE: And we just need to understand if our investigative
authority will trigger the rules under the ‑‑

MS. EGLER: Well, the way it works ‑‑ I mean, we don\'t tell the states,
and D.C. would be a state in this context, what agency does it. They
just have to sort of opt‑in and they administer the rules. And
administering the rules means they\'ve been using, you know, the Section
258 Rule, Section 258 of our Act. And then the procedure is file a
complaint, get the response to the order, the determination. And then
the remedy is specific in the rules in terms of whether it\'s a credit
or 150 percent of the amount paid. Those are the two remedies, so if
you\'re doing that, you\'re doing them under our rules, so whoever
opted‑in gets to do that.

If for some reason D.C. and a lot of the states have their own statutes,
and it\'s calls within their state, an intrastate call, they may have
other authority to impose fines or forfeitures that don\'t derive from
our Section 258, but derive from their own statutes. And as long as
it\'s intrastate, they can go forward and do that.

In terms of who\'s handling the complaints and who gets to administer
the rules, it\'s really your choice. So maybe what you should do is why
don\'t you give me a call and we can just sort of talk about it with
both groups in D.C. and probably work it out easily.

MS. RAGSDALE: Also, my other question, the D.C. Circuit has just issued
a ruling in the AT&T.

MS. EGLER: Yes.

MS. RAGSDALE: Now how does that affect your third‑ party verification
process?

MS. EGLER: Okay. Let me explain. The case she\'s talking about is an
AT&T case. And basically, what happened was we did a forfeiture, the FCC
did a forfeiture against AT&T for nine counts of slamming, and they
appealed two of them. And this is what the third‑party verification
tapes ‑‑ this is also, by the way, prior to the individual slamming
liability rules coming into effect. But the process in terms of what was
‑‑ what the companies had to do was pretty much the same, so the company
was making telemarketing calls telling people ‑‑ asking do you want to
change your service. We\'ve got great service, et cetera, et cetera.
Okay. We\'re going to start ‑‑ we\'re going to basically now ask you
these questions. So they ask the questions, you know, what is your name,
you know, do authorization, what\'s your address, what\'s the phone
number, what service do you want? I mean, there\'s a little laundry list
of about nine questions you\'re supposed to ask, so in these two counts
they actually asked all the right questions and they had answers, so
AT&T switched the person, the line to AT&T, thinking they had valid
authorization.

Well, we got complaints from these two people saying we didn\'t ‑‑ you
know, either that\'s not us on the tape, or I didn\'t give that
authorization, or that\'s not me. And so the ‑‑ there\'s a Petition for
Reconsideration AT&T filed. We supported the order, the original
enforcement order. They filed an appeal, and the D.C. Circuit said that
we, the FCC, cannot require actual, what they\'re calling actual
authorization, which means the way we\'re sort of reading it, is that if
AT&T calls up somebody on the other end of the line and they say I\'m
Margaret Egler, they answer all the questions correctly, then AT&T
changes my long distance, but it wasn\'t me, we can\'t require AT&T to
know something in the court\'s phrase, \"the impossible.\" How could
AT&T know it\'s me on the other end of the line if there\'s someone
answering the phone?

Our subscriber rules, or the definition of subscriber in our slamming
rules is someone who is an adult in the household authorized to make the
change, so the question is who\'s got the burden to prove they\'re
authorized. And what the court said is that if the person on the other
end of the line says they\'re authorized, then AT&T or any of the
carriers who follows all the verification rules verifying the
authorization, asking all the right questions, you know, has the
evidence they need to support the carrier change.

The court said that two ‑‑ and it goes back to our specific statutory
authority under Section 258 which is, you know, we can have a
verification process and enforce a verification process, as long as the
carriers are complying with the verification process, that\'s enough. So
that\'s what they said, so where does that leave us? I mean, it leaves
us in a situation ‑‑ and we don\'t get a lot of these complaints, so
where ‑‑ I mean, we do these, like I said, the individual orders and
these individual liability we\'ve done hundreds. And I can only think of
a couple where this scenario actually came up, where you have someone
who is ‑‑ they have a tape and it\'s got all the right answers, and all
the right questions, but the complainant says, you know, that\'s not me
on that tape. And so the situation for that is then the consumer is left
with well, someone in your household did this, and you\'ve got to ‑‑ you
know, you\'re not going to be able to ‑‑ we cannot say that that is a
slam now, given what the D.C. Circuit said.

MS. RAGSDALE: So I placed a call with your General Counsel\'s Office, is
there any appeal, or any further action?

MS. EGLER: The mandate for this particular order ‑‑ I mean, what I\'ve
basically just said to you is what the opinion said. The actual mandate,
which is when it becomes effective, it hasn\'t issued yet, and we don\'t
determine whether or not we\'re going to appeal until we see the
mandate, and then we have time after that, so the people upstairs are
looking at it.

CHAIR ROOKER: Brenda.

MS. KELLY‑FREY: I\'m Brenda Kelly‑Frey. I\'m with the State of Maryland,
Maryland Relay. Hi, it\'s good to see you again. I have two points. One
is, I would like to ditto what Claude just said, and ask the FCC to
consider CapTel as an enhanced VCO feature for relay and allow payment
for that, and allow that to be a mandatory ‑‑

MS. EGLER: Can I just interrupt you for a second, just so everyone knows
what\'s going on.

MS. KELLY‑FREY: Yes.

MS. EGLER: There\'s a petition in front of us, this is what Brenda and
Claude are referring to, that there\'s a service called ‑‑ by Ultratec
called \"Captioned Telephone\" or \"CapTel\". Basically, it allows
someone who has hearing loss but not complete hearing loss, to use the
telephone and also to read, and to communicate in a much sort of quicker
way than a TTY would necessarily do it. And now we\'re getting too much
into the technicalities, but this petition was filed. We\'ve got
comments on it, and we\'re currently, you know, working on it right now,
so it\'s being actively considered, and you guys are going to have to
file something on the record because you sort of made this presentation.
But basically, this is the kind of thing I was talking about, where we
ask people to send in, you know ‑‑ TRS has been for several years now,
as far as the FCC is concerned, more than just, you know, a TTY. And I
think we\'ve seen that with IP Relay and VRS. And CapTel is just sort of
another step in, you know, how do we make it work? How do we implement
the requirement of 225 to enable speech and hearing disabled people to
fully enjoy the benefits of the telephone network. So that\'s what
they\'re talking about.

MS. KELLY‑FREY: Right. I\'m sorry for those of you that didn\'t
understand what we were talking about. But CapTel is a full duplex‑type
telephone which is more functionally equivalent to what you and I as
hearing people use on a daily basis, so thus the reason for the request.

The second question I have for you is the electronic filing system that
you have, that I\'ve heard is absolutely wonderful. When people file a
comment that way, do they receive some kind of acknowledgement that
you\'ve received it? And then, do they get a letter back or anything?

MS. EGLER: No.

MS. RAGSDALE: No. So if they file it that, it\'s assumed that they get
an acknowledgement and that\'s it. They don\'t ‑‑

MS. EGLER: Right. We don\'t harass you with letters like this other
agency, apparently. We basically ‑‑ we\'ll send you an e‑mail
confirming, just so you know you don\'t have to send it again, and
that\'s pretty much it. We don\'t keep a spam list or anything to go
after people. We just accept it.

MS. RAGSDALE: Okay. Thank you.

CHAIR ROOKER: Well, Margaret, thank you so much. As usual, you\'ve been
excellent.

MS. EGLER: Thank you.

CHAIR ROOKER: We would like to invite the members of the Committee. We
do have MCI and Annette, thank you very much. For those who are our
public members who are attending as part of the public, there are
cafeterias, and I think I\'ll let ‑‑ Courtyard Level Cafeteria one level
up from here. I\'m sorry that we can\'t include you, but we just can\'t
ever figure out how many public members are going to be here, but there
is a cafeteria on the second level, the Courtyard level that you can
use.

We\'re planning to be back here at 1:15, and I ask you let\'s please
make it prompt. My one concern, and may I just have your attention,
please, before we adjourn. Since we have some members, Jim and Dave,
both you need to leave at 4. You can be here until 4. Okay. It\'s going
to be our challenge to see that we move through this afternoon\'s
program efficiently so that we can get to the part of setting up the
working groups. And I\'m a little concerned that we don\'t run over
time, so do you think that works? Okay. 4:00. Okay. We\'ll eliminate the
break or take a very short break if we have to in the afternoon, because
I really want to get these working groups established, and I really want
your input.

Okay. Let\'s go have lunch. I\'m sorry that I didn\'t get to you,
Rebecca. May I have your question? Could I have your attention, please.
I have one question waiting from the panel.

MS. LADEW: I have to go at 4:00, also.

CHAIR ROOKER: Okay. All right. Okay. Thank you. If any of you have to
leave, I may let the door be unlocked, but if any of you have to leave,
and you have suggestions for working groups, please give them to Scott
or me during lunch so that we can make sure that those suggestions are
input into the discussion this afternoon. Okay. All right. Thank you,
and we\'ll adjourn until 1:15 promptly.

(Whereupon, the proceeding in the above‑entitled matter went off the
record at 12:04:57 p.m. and went back on the record at 1:18:19 p.m.)

CHAIR ROOKER: Okay. Let us come back to the business at hand. Continuing
our educational process, our next speaker is Paula Silberthau. She\'s
responsible for administering federal advisory committees within the
FCC. In other words, she\'s going to see that we\'re doing things
properly. She\'s going to see that the Is are dotted and the Ts are
crossed. She\'s not going to let you get out of line. She is the
Attorney Advisor in the Office of the General Counsel. Please welcome
Paula.

MS. SILBERTHAU: Good afternoon. I\'m not really a policeman. That made
me sound a little bit ‑‑ but I\'ll give you a little bit of the
framework of the Federal Advisory Committee Act, which sets the
parameters under which your FACA and other groups like you would
operate.

Keep in mind that the guiding principles under the Act are openness in
government, diversity in membership, and public accountability. And if
you keep those three things in mind, openness, diversity, public
accountability, some of the rules that the statute sets out make a lot
of sense.

The first requirement is that the meetings must be open to everybody,
and can be held only after timely notice. Usually, that\'s in the
Federal Register. And frequently because not everyone reads the Federal
Register, there are other public notices the FCC will put out in the
Internet, in media, in various types of press releases.

One thing that is worth keeping in mind as you proceed though is that
meetings doesn\'t just mean a meeting like this one with everyone
present in the room. A meeting could be held by a teleconference on the
phone. It could be held by a video conference. It could be held through
chat rooms on the Internet. Obviously, not every time a couple of
members of the Committee get together, it won\'t always be a meeting.
But if you do schedule something for which there\'s a quorum, a majority
of the people, that could very well push you into a meeting situation,
so if you\'re thinking of doing something by any of these other means,
and you have questions about whether that is a meeting or not and,
therefore, needs public notice, please consult with Scott or with me.

The second requirement is that there just be minutes of meetings. People
who cannot attend the meeting because they can\'t make it, they\'re
busy, whatever, are entitled to be able to look up in some sort of
public record and just get a sense of what your group has done. The
minutes don\'t have to reflect everything that happens, but they should
be detailed enough to show what people are ‑‑ what members are present
at the meeting, and generally what matters have been discussed. The
Chairperson has to certify to the accuracy of the minutes.

Closure of meetings is a real exception. If any of you feel in advance
of a meeting that you anticipate something that\'s going to be discussed
that, for example, might be a trade secret, would affect national
security, that type of thing, would involve classified material ‑
that\'s unlikely, but it\'s possible ‑ then you should check with Scott
or whoever else at the agency is your liaison in advance and discuss the
possibility of closing that part of the meeting that would be getting
into that classified type of material.

It\'s not good enough to sort of get to that point in the meeting and
say oops, we\'re just going to sort of go to the back room. You can\'t
do that. It has to be done in advance, and it has to be okayed by the
agent\'s head, and it has to actually be part of the notice that\'s
published in the Federal Register, and in the other media.

Records are open, and FOIA requests can be made for the materials that
your group generates, so the records need to be available for public
inspection and copying. And the same exemptions that would be applicable
under the Freedom of Information Act would cover this too, and it tends
to be the same type of thing, trade secrets, things that are classified
or that involve national security.

One thing that\'s important going forward is the distinction between the
full group, the full advisory group and working groups, because usually
people do organize themselves into sort of practical working groups so
that you can actually get a lot of work done, and then bring it to the
full committee. If you are a working group as opposed to a full FACA
group, then you don\'t have to ‑‑ then the FACA requirements of openness
and the recordkeeping, and all of the things I just mentioned don\'t
apply to the working groups.

So to determine whether you\'re a working group as opposed to a full
committee, typically in court cases, people look at what the working
group is doing. If it\'s just getting information, performing studies,
drafting reports or discussing preliminary findings that you want to
make to the full group, then you would be acting as a working group. You
wouldn\'t have to announce your meetings in advance. You wouldn\'t have
to take minutes, that sort of thing.

Here are some of the things that a working group could do that would
convert it into a full FACA group. You can\'t function as the actual
parent committee. You can\'t speak on behalf of the committee because
it\'s just a working group. You can\'t make direct recommendations, say
to the FCC. Recommendations have to come from the group as a whole, not
just from the working group. You can\'t make decisions that would be
binding on the full committee, so if you do any of those things, you\'re
essentially ‑‑ the working group starts acting like the full committee,
then it gets nabbed with having the responsibilities that are binding on
the full committee. Again, if you have any questions about that, you
know, see your Designated Federal Officer to keep you on the straight
track there.

I think it\'s just worth pointing out why these requirements matter. The
goal at the end of the day for groups, and I don\'t know all the details
about your group, but it\'s often to make advisory recommendations for
rulemakings and for other improvements to the FCC. If there have been
breaches of the requirements of open meeting, recordkeeping, this
working group thing I was just mentioning, then ‑‑ and someone were to
raise a protest, then the agency\'s hands would be somewhat tied in
being able to rely upon the recommendations of the group, because they
would have done things that didn\'t comply with the openness
requirements of the law. So, you know, at the end of the day, you want
your work to be productive, and that\'s why it\'s just good to stay on
the safe side of these issues.

The only other thing I\'d mention is our ex parte rules. At the FCC,
anyone who speaks, communicates with either the staff or the
decision‑makers on something that goes to the substance of a rulemaking,
needs to put that into writing. And this is just a reminder that this
applies to informal contacts between any of you and any FCC staff when
going to the merits of a proceeding. It\'s not that you can\'t
communicate your ideas. It\'s that if you do so, then you need to comply
with the ex parte rules, which basically means within 24 hours, if you
make a recommendation, you have to write down the gist of what you said,
label the rulemaking and file that with the Secretary\'s Office, just so
that there\'s a public record for you folks, just like everyone else, as
to what the communication was. And that\'s really about it.

MS. MAZRUI: When filing the ex parte, is it from the committee, or is it
from the individual that made the comment on the committee?

MS. SILBERTHAU: Either one. If it\'s by you individually, in your
individual capacity, then you\'d sign it, you know, so and so, you know,
just with your own name. If it were on behalf of the full committee,
which is usually a more formal communication in any event, there just
has to be something put in the record, you know, on such and such a day
we filed, you know, a report about whatever the topic was. See attached,
and then that would become part of the formal record of the rulemaking
proceeding.

CHAIR ROOKER: Any other questions for Paula? Okay. She\'ll keep watch
over us, and keep us on the straight and narrow.

MS. SILBERTHAU: Okay.

CHAIR ROOKER: Thank you, Paula, very much. Is Steven Gorey here? Okay.
Great. Let me just introduce you. We\'re going to see a live demo of the
CGB\'s web page. Steve is the Assistant Bureau Chief of CGB in the
Systems Support Office, and thank you. Welcome.

MR. GOREY: Okay. Thank you very much. I appreciate the opportunity to
discuss the CGB website today, and our ongoing efforts to make it a more
useful and effective tool. During the next 30 minutes, we\'ll step
through the site, and I\'ll give you some insight into what we hope to
achieve in the future, as well as what we\'re doing right now.

To set the stage, I thought it would be useful to look back a few years,
and see how far the FCC has come as a Commission, and with the other
Bureaus in its website development activities. I don\'t know how many of
you ever visited the old site, or remember ‑‑

CHAIR ROOKER: We\'re kind of losing you, Steve.

MR. GOREY: Pardon me?

CHAIR ROOKER: We need to get you a little closer to the microphone.

MR. GOREY: Okay. I don\'t know how many of you remember the old website,
or even visited it. But if you do, you remember something that looks
like this. It\'s a page that\'s dominated by a picture of the Portals
Building, obviously, and there\'s other things arrayed around the edge.
In addition, if I could show you the old Bureau pages, you would see
that they were all completely different. And judging from the Internet
alone, you would have no sense that the FCC was an integrated entity.

So against this backdrop, we realized that we had to do something about
the FCC sites, and Bureau sites. And so in 2000, we contracted with a
company called \"Human Factors International\", and HFI conducted a
series of interviews with website visitors, and established that we have
two major user groups. One of the user groups was, and continues to be,
professional users, people like in law firms and associations and the
like that know exactly what they\'re after, and know exactly where to go
in the FCC to get it. They don\'t have to hunt around.

The other class of users are regular consumers who often have never been
to our site before, and have no idea of where to go to find what
they\'re looking for. So in short, the contractor confirmed a lot of our
own conclusions about the shortcomings of our sites, and also identified
many other issues that we needed to address to improve our site.

For example, the Portals Building is a very nice place to work. I can
ensure you of that, but it really doesn\'t do much to establish the
FCC\'s brand identity. Why would anybody throughout most of the U.S.
look at the building and connect it in any meaningful way with what the
FCC does? So in the new design, we decided we\'re going to get rid of
the Portals Building.

Also, at that time, consumers and other visitors complained a lot about
the fact that they had trouble finding what they were after, and that
was largely due to the fact that we had so many search tools that were
linked to individual pages. So as a result of that, in the intervening
two years, we found a powerful single ‑‑ a single powerful search engine
we called Inktomi. I mean, we\'ve got that available now so that any
time anybody comes to our site and searches for anything, it\'s Inktomi
that\'s doing the work behind the scenes.

And also, because of the lack of standard look and feel, some people
even said that they didn\'t know when they had left the FCC site. No
sense of when they were still within the domain of the FCC, which was a
major problem in and of itself. And so perhaps that\'s the biggest
single change we\'ve made, designing the now familiar blue and gold
template that we use today. So if we go to the new FCC home page, it
looks like that. And at the outset, you might think well, maybe I like
the Portals Building, but what we did here, we republished all 11,000
plus of our pages in this format. And so with that standard, and the
ability to find things, certain common things on every single page, it
seemed to help quite a bit.

Well, the evidence suggests that it really was well‑ received, because
in the Fall of 2001, the FCC placed third in Brown University\'s annual
study of state and federal websites, and then last year we jumped to
number one, so this is the number one federal and state website
according to Brown University.

In CGB, we like to think that some of the things that we\'ve done, and
I\'ll show you in a few minutes, helped with the number one ranking. And
we\'ve already received word from the Chairman, he expects us to retain
the number one ranking for this year. And you know what they say about
being number one, there\'s only one way to go.

All right. So now let\'s look at the CGB site. Okay. What you\'re
looking at right now is our interpretation of the standard format for
the FCC. And one of the things you\'ll notice right off the bat, is that
we\'ve taken the standard template and implemented it somewhat
differently. The center main section that is generally used for
headlines, we have relegated that real estate to something we think is a
bit more important, which is targeting stakeholder groups. And you can
see the main headlines on the right‑hand side, and then there\'s another
section we\'ll show you in a minute for media that contains the
connectivity for the rest of the headlines.

The other thing that I should draw your attention to is the fact that we
don\'t emphasize our organizational structure on our website. We feel
that if you\'re looking for something, you should be able to find it
without knowing who we are. And while you will be able to find out about
our organizational structure, you\'ll have to look a bit.

Okay. So getting back to the center portion of the page, at the very top
we have what we call the \"Blue Box\". And the Blue Box is a place where
we put things of particular interest or moment in terms of what the FCC
is involved with at any given time.

Until recently, we had ‑‑ with the prominence of the Iraq War, we had
our Calling Home Program featured in there, which tells about the
program for the servicemen and women who are overseas, and ways to save
money in their telecommunications needs. Right now we have wireless 911
feature, but that will change. That\'s probably the thing that you
should look to, or our visitors should look to when they first come
here, and want to see what we think is the ‑‑ some major issues that are
going on.

Dropping down below that, we have probably our single largest
stakeholder group represented in this next box. That\'s, of course,
consumers. And if you go to that page, what we\'ve done is grouped
things together under major headings, which you can get to via either an
icon if that\'s your preference, or through text links. And what that
allows us to do is to provide information in plain English language, we
hope, concerning any of those different major categories. And then all
of these things are associated with certain fact sheets the FCC
maintains, and this is part of the fact sheet directory that anyone can
access for any of these things.

The other thing that I really want to tell you about is a brand new page
called, \"The Consumer Advisory Committee Page\", and this is a brand
new page. It\'s a new design theme that you\'re going to see more of in
the future, but the content is somewhat sparse right now, but we think
that you\'ll help us fill it out over the coming months. And, in fact
we\'re really serious about that. I know that we\'d like you to give us
plenty of feedback on the site, and use it any way you want.

You will see that we have initially information on the mission of the
CAC, the Committee membership, the charter, press releases, et cetera.
And then you\'ll also be able to find the old CDTAC archive information
at the bottom. So again, it\'s somewhat sparsely populated right now,
but please give us your feedback.

Below that, and in recognition of our special responsibilities in the
area of disability rights, we have another page which groups together
again all of the disability issues that we have responsibility for, or
something to do with. We have disability headlines, TRS, Section 255,
and you can blow up all of these different sections and get quite a bit
of detailed information. But again, you don\'t have to hunt around. If
you\'re interested in Section 255 or closed captioned, all you\'ve got
to do is find your way to this site, and then you\'ll be able to
drill‑down and get to it with a minimum amount of trouble.

And while I\'m at it, I should probably mention that we take
accessibility and website design very seriously in the FCC as a whole,
and certainly in the CGB. We\'ve tried very hard to provide accessible
versions of all materials provided on our website, which means that if
you see PDF, nine times out of ten you\'re going to see HTML or Word, or
a Text version that is more accessible than PDF. PDF, obviously, is good
for downloading and printing. It\'s a nice tool for that, but there are
problems with it. Everybody acknowledges that there are problems with
regard to screen readers in some cases.

It\'s also worthwhile noting that there was a conscious effort to pick
the template colors for the FCC page. This blue and gold, with
accessibility in mind, so not that we\'re perfect, but we\'re making an
honest effort.

The next page I want to show you is the Tribal State and Local
Government\'s page. This is in recognition of the fact that we have
government‑to‑government relationships. If you go to this page, you\'ll
find information about the Local and State Government Advisory
Committee. And another page, which is relatively new, that we\'re really
proud of called \"The Tribal Initiatives Page\", and here we are
featuring our Tribal Initiatives activities, and talking about our
special responsibilities in meeting the needs of Native Americans, the
telecommunication needs of Native Americans. And here at the bottom of
the page, we\'re going to chronicle our activities on this map, which if
you click on it, you can find a map of the United States, and these
purple areas, some of them will tell you about events that we\'ve
attended, such as this one, the Chehalis Reservation meeting of last
year, July of \`02. That\'s another little device that we\'re starting
to use.

Okay. Going down still further, we have a page for industry, which it\'s
obviously another major stakeholder in the complex relationship between
consumers and industry, and other parties. What we\'ve done here again
is we\'ve tried to reduce to plain English language, the way in which
industry can deal with the informal complaint process.

Now you\'ll notice this disclaimer we have right at the top. And it
says, \"The information provided in connection with these frequently
asked questions does not purport to identify all of the FCC rules,
regulations or orders that may apply to a particular matter or
situation. Each entity regulated by the FCC has an affirmative
obligation to be informed and comply with the applicable rules,
regulations and orders of the FCC.\"

When we came up with that page, that disclaimer wasn\'t in there. But
when we showed it to our lawyers, they wanted to make sure that in our
attempt to reduce things to plain English language, that we didn\'t do
any damage to the process. And so in other words, we\'re telling
industry okay, we may be talking in plain English language, but in so
doing, if we mess anything up, you\'re still liable, kind of like what
the IRS used to do.

Okay. We also have a military site. This came into being in May of 2002
with the FCC\'s Calling Home campaign for military personnel and their
families. In the center piece of this site is the Calling Home guide,
which tells servicemen and women all the things that they can do to
reduce their telecommunications cost when they\'re overseas. Again, we
thought it was a real good idea to have such a page, and we\'re getting
quite a few hits on this page.

And then finally at the bottom of the pile is media. And as I mentioned
a while ago, that\'s where we put all the headlines that if you go to
the FCC home page, it\'s right smack in the middle. And so what we did
is essentially invested a lot of the space for other things, as I said
at the outset.

Okay. Now let me take you to a couple of other pages. I think I heard
some people talking about our rulemaking process throughout the day, and
I don\'t know if there was some reference made to ECFS Express. I just
wanted to show you kind of the rationale for this little system that
we\'ve come up with. And basically, that is the fact that the industrial
strength Electronic Comment Filing System is for the uninitiated, kind
of daunting. In other words, you\'ve got to know the docket number, and
you\'ve got to think ‑‑ there are proceedings that don\'t have clear
titles, at least to people who aren\'t lawyers. And so if you\'re
looking for something that you want to comment on, it\'s kind of a
problem. And so to answer this concern, we came up with a shorthand
system.

We don\'t have to know any docket numbers at all. And what we do is, we
provide the hot issues in shorthand, and then we, behind the scenes when
somebody selects one of those, and gives us a comment, we link it up
with the docket. So, for example, if I picked Uniform Complaint Process,
and I go to continue, then all I have to do is fill in these seven
fields, and I can make a comment. And it sends back a confirmation that
you\'ve successfully commented. And this, to us, goes a long way towards
answering a lot of the problems that we know people have had who, again,
are people that don\'t do this on a regular basis, in commenting on
proceedings at the FCC.

Another page I\'ll just draw your attention to is the Rural
Telecommunications page, and that also has a new design. And this has
information about programs to get connected and affordable phone service
that\'s available, programs that are available for people who live in
rural parts of the country. And a whole bunch of other information, but
you can see that if you go here, again we\'re trying to group as much
information for those people interested in this sort of subject matter
as we can.

And I should say, when we won first place last year, most of that which
I\'m showing you wasn\'t there, so there is a chance we could retain
that ranking, but we\'ll see. And ‑‑ oh, I know. The other thing I
wanted to show you, I think I also heard some talk about the phone bill
and how confusing they are. And we certainly get a lot of complaints and
inquiries about phone bills, and trying to figure out what people are
being charged, ripped‑off or what have you, so we came up with another
little device called the \"Virtual Phone Bill\", and it looks like this.
What you have is a phone bill that\'s for both wireless and wire line,
that let\'s you scroll down. And we have certain lines that people often
talk about with the little bubbles over them. And if you run the cursor
over the bubble, it\'ll explain and give you a definition of the charge
to the extent that we can provide it in this small space. And we\'ve
heard from people that they really like this, and get some use out of
this. And again, we\'ve done this for both wire line and wireless.

Okay. Looking to the future, here\'s what you can expect to see in the
future. We\'ve got a 52‑week plan started. The idea being that only
sites that change on a regular basis get visited. I don\'t think any of
us in the room here go back to sites that don\'t change ever. It
doesn\'t make sense. So what we\'re going to do is change something in
that blue box once a week. And not just change for change sake but, you
know, try to make it relevant to things that we\'re getting asked about
on the phone, or proceedings that are going on in the FCC, et cetera.

The other thing is, we\'re going to continue to experiment with
balancing text and graphics. You can see that we kind of have a lot of
graphics on here right now. We also make use of tags, so that screen
readers can deal with the graphics, but we have learned through
experience that if you bombard a visitor with too much text, it tends to
camouflage what they\'re looking for. And so we\'re trying to use
graphics to kind of lighten that effect up somewhat.

And the other thing that we\'re going to do more of in this era of
E‑Government is provide more opportunities for on‑ line self‑service. We
have a big project right now called \"The Consumer Information
Management System\", and we\'re re‑engineering all of our processes in
terms of the informal complaint and inquiry process, as well as
modernizing our technology. And one of the things that we know people
would like to be able to do is, if they have their complaint number,
they filed a complaint and they have their number, we know they\'d like
to be able to go on the web sometime and be able to enter that number
and get a status back, rather than calling somebody. It would benefit
them, and it would benefit us, because we\'d be spending less time on
the phone. So that\'s something else we\'ll be doing.

So anyway, this gives you an idea of what we\'ve done. I would welcome
your comments and suggestion now or later, and especially on the CAC
page.

CHAIR ROOKER: Does anyone have questions? David, you\'re next.

MR. POEHLMAN: Hi, this is Dave Poehlman with the American Council of the
Blind. And I\'m a technology consultant, and I do a lot of looking over
the shoulder of webmasters at what they\'ve produced, and what they\'re
producing. I hadn\'t prepared myself for this meeting by going through
the FCC pages, but I have visited them quite often over the past several
years, and I have noticed some changes. I just had a couple of things I
wanted to look at with you. Thank you, by the way, for sharing this with
us. This looks like a very exciting electronic interface for the FCC.
It\'s one you should be proud of.

Is there any other way to identify the blue box besides the color of the
box?

MR. GOREY: Well, in fact, I didn\'t mention this, but we have another
prototype version of this page that probably will appear a bit less
heavy to you with that splash of blue at the top. We\'re looking at it
right now. We\'re thinking about putting it up in the near future. What
do you suggest?

MR. POEHLMAN: Well, I was just ‑‑ I guess the color is saying to people
this is something you should look at.

MR. GOREY: Right.

MR. POEHLMAN: So, you know, what we usually try to strive for in a
situation like that is to put some kind of permanent title on that
section, like a header that says this week\'s important info, or this
week\'s info you should look at, or something like that. That would
identify the blue box. You don\'t even have to say it\'s blue.

MR. GOREY: Right.

MR. POEHLMAN: Just say, you know, this is something we think is
important enough, you know, to draw your attention.

MR. GOREY: Okay.

MR. POEHLMAN: So that\'s, you know ‑‑

MR. GOREY: Good comment.

MR. POEHLMAN: The blue is great. Now here\'s the other thing I have. You
talked about the Virtual Phone Bill. I got all excited until you said,
you know, when you move the cursor over and it changes, and I went wait
a minute. Okay. How can I do this with a keyboard, if I\'m tabbing
through it, or if I\'m ‑‑ you know, if I\'ve got it in my virtual
buffer, you know, how can I get the same information out of that virtual
phone bill that, you know, that a person who\'s using a mouse can get?

MR. GOREY: Okay. Yeah. What I meant to say is when you move the cursor
over certain line items in the phone bill, it comes up with a dialogue
box.

MR. POEHLMAN: But that\'s the mouse. Right?

MR. GOREY: Yes. Okay. And you were saying what?

MR. POEHLMAN: Right. So how can I get that information, since I don\'t
use a mouse.

MR. GOREY: Okay. I don\'t know. I\'m going to have to look at that.

MR. POEHLMAN: Okay.

MR. GOREY: I\'m going to have to figure that out.

MR. POEHLMAN: Actually, the way that some websites do it, is they allow
you to put in information that would make things more specific. Like you
could put in your zip code, for example, and your state and that kind of
thing, and it will actually give you a virtual phone bill, you know, for
your particular circumstances.

MR. GOREY: Right. Right. Okay.

MR. POEHLMAN: So, you know, you might be able to do it that way, because
I\'m not sure what those dialogue boxes contain but, you know, it might
be just as simple as doing something like that.

MR. GOREY: Okay.

MR. POEHLMAN: Simple but, you know ‑‑ and the other ‑‑ the final thing I
have for now is do you still use real ‑‑ this might be a little off the
way. Do you still use Real Media only for your ‑‑

MR. GOREY: As an FCC standard?

MR. POEHLMAN: Yeah. Right.

MR. GOREY: You know, I believe we do right now. Yes.

MR. POEHLMAN: Because it would be really great if we could have at least
one more, or an additional one, like Windows Media for the simple reason
that there are a lot of situations where Real Media just doesn\'t work.

MR. GOREY: Right. Right. Okay. I can take that up with the FCC webmaster
too, that topic.

MR. POEHLMAN: Thank you, and I look forward to the continuing evolution.
And if I can help in any way, let me know.

MR. GOREY: Okay. Thanks.

CHAIR ROOKER: Thank you, David. Do we have other questions? Susan
Palmer.

MS. MAZRUI: I also want to say that I think there has been a lot of
progress. And I think that there\'s a lot of good things that have
happened. I do have a question about what processes you have in place to
make sure that the website is 508‑ compliant, not 504, but 508. And
also, following the way guidelines. And if there\'s a testing process
that looks at the needs of people who are using screen readers, but also
people who are seniors. And things like time‑outs and things that can be
problematic.

MR. GOREY: Right. Sure.

MS. MAZRUI: And, you know, I do commend the fact that you\'re putting
many documents in multiple formats, but I would really like to see some
kind of a policy in place that it doesn\'t go out until it\'s available
to everyone. Just as you don\'t open the doors to a building when it
just has stairs, you want until there\'s a ramp.

MR. GOREY: Right. Right. The answer to your first question is probably
multi‑faceted. We have a 508 office here that operates out of our Office
of the Managing Director. And they set policy and, you know, they have a
certain role to play FCC‑wide. Now within the CGB, there\'s formal and
informal processes. One of my favorite informal processes is going to
Scott Marshall and saying Scott, does this work for you, you know. So
that\'s one thing that I do, but we also do converse pretty carefully
with our Disability Rights Office, as well, and make sure that we\'re on
solid ground, so those are a few examples.

CHAIR ROOKER: Follow‑up, Susan.

MS. MAZRUI: Do you have people who use screen readers in the Disability
Rights Office? And also, I have to warn you about Scott, because he\'s
incredibility bright and adept, so he may have some more problem‑solving
skills than some lowly person like me.

MR. GOREY: All right.

MR. MARSHALL: I\'m not a computer expert either.

MR. GOREY: You know, I\'m not certain how many people ‑ ‑ yes, we have
Arlene. Does Arlene have ‑‑ Scott, does Arlene have screen reader? Okay.
Yeah, I\'m not sure that we do have anybody in the Disability Rights
Office with a screen reader, so all the more reason for me to go to
Scott.

CHAIR ROOKER: Okay. I think Claude had his hand up next. Then we have
some questions here.

MR. STOUT: I also wanted to compliment your work on the website along
with everybody else here. Two considerations for you to think about in
the site. If you\'ve added information about Video Relay Services, if
there are videos on there, to caption those videos on the website, and
not only streaming videos but, you know, like Chairman Powell\'s
speeches before, you know, some type of audience in a conference. Not
just those, but it would be neat to have infomercials, perhaps. There
are a lot of people on the street throughout America that look at, you
know, different features, and they look at the information and say
that\'s it? Oh, wow, it takes such a long time to read all this stuff,
you know. I\'ll read it later. But if you have streaming video with
captions or somebody doing sign language, it would be even better. There
would be a lot more people who would be willing to get access to that
information, and if you can keep it short, then it\'s great for people
to look at it, and some video to go along with your text would be a
great thing to have.

MR. GOREY: Okay. Good idea. We\'ll think about that.

CHAIR ROOKER: Yeah. Thank you, Claude.

MR. GOREY: See what it takes for that.

CHAIR ROOKER: Okay. I think we had two comments. Mike, you had one, and
then David.

MR. DUKE: Wandering microphone. Especially for pages which do not,
because of the nature of their content, do not have to change very
often, is there somewhere on that page last updated on April 25th,
whatever?

MR. GOREY: Yes, there is.

MR. DUKE: Okay. Because that\'s a great ‑‑ that\'s one of the first
things I look at when I go to a site, is to (a) not only to see how
current they\'re keeping the site, but ‑‑

MR. GOREY: Right.

MR. DUKE: ‑‑ if I just looked at it two weeks ago and, you know, and it
hasn\'t changed, I don\'t need to waste my time looking there today.

MR. GOREY: Exactly. Especially when there\'s a lot of text.

MR. DUKE: Right.

CHAIR ROOKER: That\'s a good point.

MR. DUKE: Okay. Thank you.

CHAIR ROOKER: David\'s next.

MR. HOROWITZ: It\'s funny. I was going to ask a question like that, but
make a suggestion. And that is, on the page, on the home page that they
have the date everyday, because people go to a website and they look and
say oh, that thing is four days old, three days old or whatever. And
it\'s not trying to fool anyone, but just have a date.

MR. GOREY: Right.

MR. HOROWITZ: You know, this is today, whatever, whatever, Washington,
D.C. You can have a little box. And the other thing is what about doing
some things that are bilingual? I mean, we have ‑‑ everything is English
here, which is fine, but ‑‑

CHAIR ROOKER: No, it\'s in Spanish.

MR. GOREY: No, we have quite a bit of Spanish.

CHAIR ROOKER: It\'s in Spanish. A lot of it is in Spanish.

MR. GOREY: I didn\'t cover that, but we do have a lot of Spanish in the
FCC ‑‑

MR. HOROWITZ: Is Spanish the only language?

MR. GOREY: Pardon me?

MR. HOROWITZ: Is Spanish the only language?

MR. GOREY: No, it isn\'t.

MR. HOROWITZ: What other languages are there?

MR. GOREY: We have done some things in about 13 different languages.
There was one brochure that we did in 13 different languages.

MR. HOROWITZ: How will they access it then if they went to the home
page? Say they want to do something in Vietnamese or ‑‑

MR. GOREY: Yeah. I\'m not going to sit here and tell you that we do a
vast amount of things that are not in Spanish. But we have dabbled with
other languages. In fact, it\'s surprising, some of the languages we got
the most interest in, and one of which was Tagalog.

MR. HOROWITZ: Really?

MR. GOREY: Right. At least with regard to the ‑‑

MR. HOROWITZ: Well, the Philippine population in this country ‑‑

MR. GOREY: Right. At least with regard to the brochure that we did. But
we are talking at the FCC about a commission‑wide contract with a web
translation service that specializes in a number of different languages.

MR. HOROWITZ: That\'s a good idea. What about font sizes? The font sizes
seem to be, you know, pretty much throughout the website, they\'re
pretty much the same. I mean, you have what, 12 point or 10 point, or
maybe 8 point some places.

MR. GOREY: Right.

MR. HOROWITZ: But for seniors again, you know, a lot of seniors, they
have their dictionaries now in large type. I\'m not saying go to 18 or
14 type.

MR. GOREY: Right.

MR. HOROWITZ: But go to something that\'s over 10, and also ‑‑ and I
know there\'s a way to do it where you can just push a button and you
can pick out the size you want. In other words, if you can\'t read it,
you can adjust it to ‑‑ if it\'s 10 you can go to 12 or 14.

MR. GOREY: Right. And a lot of that, again, keeping in mind that we\'re
responsible for one Bureau page. A lot of that is in discussion
throughout the FCC through the webmaster and certain groups that we
have, and going to maintain the entire site.

The other thing is, I mean, the thing you always struggle with in a
website is how do you meet the needs of the widest array of people with
different issues, and it is a problem.

CHAIR ROOKER: Thank you. Eugene, last question.

MR. SEAGRIFF: Hi, Steven. I\'ve only been involved in policy kind of
stuff for the past two years, and I have to tell you that yesterday I
had to a research project that involved calling a lot of information
form the FCC site, and it was remarkably better than the first time than
I had to do it two years ago.

MR. GOREY: Good. Good.

MR. SEAGRIFF: And the user experience was very positive, and I was able
to much more quickly and easily find much of the data that I was looking
for. I have two suggestions, perhaps. I love the idea of the ECFS
Express, and I have a question. I was wondering if you do submit a
comment, when you get a confirmation, does it then include the docket
number for future reference?

MR. GOREY: I think it does, actually. It gives you a confirmation
number, as well.

MR. SEAGRIFF: Right. And the other thing I was wondering about is also
related to docket numbers. Since I\'m not a policy kind of guy, I don\'t
often know the docket that I\'m looking for. And I haven\'t found the
search portion of ECFS to be all that useful if you don\'t have the
docket number.

MR. GOREY: Right.

MR. SEAGRIFF: And that\'s an area that would be worth looking into.

MR. GOREY: Right.

MR. SEAGRIFF: I know it\'s a difficult and complex problem to solve in
the database, but if there was some way that ‑‑ I mean, I think that
would even further elevate the usability of the site. Already, I\'m
really thrilled with all the things you\'ve done, but that may be
another place to work on to keep your number one position.

MR. GOREY: Right. It is a thing to work on, and I should mention that in
some ways, ECFS is a stop‑gap measure, because we have requested funding
to completely re‑engineer ECFS, and to address some of the things you
just mentioned.

CHAIR ROOKER: Well, that was a nice way to end it, with a compliment.

MR. GOREY: Yes. Thank you.

CHAIR ROOKER: Thank you, Steven, very much.

MR. GOREY: Thank you very much.

CHAIR ROOKER: Joining us next, our educational process continues. We\'re
going to take a look at the way the FCC works, what it does, how it does
it, the decision‑making process structure. We\'ve got a lot of work
ahead of you, and the person who\'s going to do this is Donald
Stockdale, who\'s a Senior Legal Advisor for the Office of Strategic
Planning of the FCC. Donald, welcome.

While Donald is getting set up, Byron asked if he could just make one
comment about something.

MR. ST. CLAIR: Yes. The National Translator Association has a proposal
before the FCC which we think is consumer‑friendly, particularly for
people who live in rural areas. We have asked the FCC to streamline the
application procedure for translators. The Commission has come out with
a notice acknowledging that we\'ve asked for this, and basically saying
should they do anything about our request. I would be glad to tell
anybody, provide more details to anybody who thinks they might be
interested, and just even some minimal supporter saying they don\'t
understand the technical aspects, but the whole idea seems like a good
thing. So I solicit the support of anybody who is concerned about free
over‑the‑air television in rural areas. Thank you.

CHAIR ROOKER: You\'re welcome. And sorry to take your time.

MR. STOCKDALE: No problem. Thank you. I\'m pleased to be able to talk
with you today, and to present a brief introduction and overview of the
FCC.

I\'ll basically try to describe the organization of the Commission, its
procedures, and its functions. Now the slides I\'ll be using today were
prepared for a new course that the Commission has begun offering to new
FCC employees, so you\'re going to be receiving the same kinds of
information all our new employees receive. Now these slides should be
available in your materials. And Scott tells me that for those of you
using Braille, the slides begin on page 45. And for others, the slides
begin on page 17, so you may want to refer to that.

Because this introductory course was actually designed for a longer
period than I have today, I may ‑‑ I will be skipping over some of the
slides. But if I skip over something that interests you, you should feel
free to raise your hand and interrupt, and we can discuss it. I also
encourage you to ask questions throughout the presentation. As a
regulator for several years, I have an unfortunate habit of lapsing into
the use of acronyms which normal people would not know. And if I do,
remind me so that I can explain it, and I hope that that will liven the
presentation a bit.

Finally, at the end of my slides, you\'ll see my e‑mail address. And I
do encourage you after this session, if you have suggestions on how the
presentation can be improved, or if you have additional questions you\'d
like me to answer, feel free to contact me.

Okay. Now this is a basic outline of the talk. And I\'m going to start
by talking about the legal framework within which the Commission
operates, since clearly, we must comply with the laws that Congress
passes. Then I\'ll briefly talk a little bit about the communication,
the market framework, and the growing size of the communications
industry within the U.S. economy. Then I\'ll turn to organizational,
administrative framework, the decision‑making process, and finally talk
a bit about external influences and the various stakeholders to the
Commission. And the issue of public trust safeguards is primarily an
issue that is relevant to employees, but we may touch on that if we have
time.

Okay. Now as a bit of brief history. In 1887, Congress passed the act to
regulate commerce, which created the Interstate Commerce Commission.
This Commission was the first independent regulatory commission, and it
was created initially to regulate railroads. Now the ICC became the
model for independent regulatory commissions. And I think it\'s useful
at this point to briefly note that in the United States, the Congress
has developed basically a two‑pronged approach to regulating industries.

Where Congress believes that an industry is or can be effectively
competitive, or workably competitive, it will rely on the Anti‑Trust
laws, the Sherman Act, and the Clayton Act. Where, however, Congress
believed that in industry, that competition might not work, either
because it believed an industry was a natural monopoly, or because it
believed that it was subject to what used to be called destructive
competition, it would frequently create an independent regulatory
commission, and subject the industry to industry regulation.

Okay. Now by 1910, Congress passed the Mann‑Elkins Act, which brought
interstate telecommunications within the jurisdiction of the ICC, so
this was the first time that Congress began to believe, or expressed its
belief, that telecommunications was a natural monopoly.

Okay. Next 1912, Congress passed the Radio Act following the sinking of
the Titanic. And apparently, during ‑‑ as the Titanic was sinking, the
radio operator was trying to radio a distress call, and its location,
and unfortunately, the receivers in I think it was Newfoundland, were
unable to clearly hear it because of interference by amateur radio
operators, so this made Congress recognize the need to regulate the
radio spectrum, and it initially gave responsibilities for that to the
Secretary of Commerce and Labor.

Okay. Then in 1927, Congress passed the Radio Act, which created the
Federal Radio Commission with authority to issue radio license, and to
assign specific frequencies. Okay. Then it was in 1934 that Congress
passed the Communications Act, which created the FCC, and which gave FCC
basically the powers to regulate not only telecommunications, but also
the spectrum and media.

Now I think it\'s important to mention sort of a non‑ statutory event,
which was the Sherman Act suit brought by the government against AT&T.
In 1974, the Department of Justice, Anti‑Trust Division, sued AT&T for
monopolization. And this suit dragged on for seven years until trial
begin in 1981. And after government presented its case, the parties
agreed to a settlement which was confirmed by, or approved by Judge
Green, the Federal District Court judge in 1982. This settlement, called
the Modification of Final Judgment, basically provided for the
divestiture of AT&T. AT&T\'s long distance operations were separated
from its local exchange operations, and those local operating companies
were reorganized into then seven regional Bell operating companies. And
the Bell operating companies were required to inter‑connect equally with
all long distance carriers, and were prohibited from competing in the
interstate long distance market, or from providing information services,
or from manufacturing telecommunications equipment. But on the other
hand, AT&T was free from similar prior restrictions under a 1956 decree,
so one of the reasons I mention this is because this ended up being a
crucial event in the sort of development of competition in
telecommunications.

Okay. Three other statutes that are worth mentioning. The first is the
1984 Act that Congress passed called \"The Cable Communications Policy
Act\", which pre‑empted rate regulation, which had been done at the
local level, where the Commission found there to be effective
competition.

Now unfortunately, the FCC implemented this law and adopted a standard
under which if there were three over‑the‑air television broadcast
stations, it found there to be effective competition. After this
implementation, much of the U.S., or cable rates in much of the U.S.
were deregulated, and this generated consumer complaints. So in 1992,
Congress revisited cable regulation, and basically required cable
companies to offer a basic tier, and it allowed local authorities to
regulate rates in certain circumstances.

Okay. And then finally, in 1996, Congress passed the Telecommunications
Act of 1996, which was a most substantial revision of the Communications
Act of 1934, and which was designed to promote competition in all
telecommunications markets, but particularly in local telephone markets.

Okay. So that\'s a brief history. Now what are the two main governing
statutes? They are, first, the Communications Act of 1934 as it has been
amended many times. And second, is the Administrative Procedure Act of
1946, which has also been amended many times.

Now this latter Act, which I\'m not going to spend much time on, because
it sets the general procedural rules with which the FCC must comply, and
these rules govern not only rulemaking procedures, but also
adjudications. And the rules, in essence, are intended to ensure that
all the Commission and all of any federal government agency\'s
procedures are open, that they are accessible for public comment, and
that they will ensure a reasoned decision‑making.

Okay. Now I\'m not going to spend a lot of time on the Communications
Act, but I will just cite ‑‑ mention Title I, because it indicates the
general purpose of the FCC, which is to regulate interstate and foreign
commerce in communications by wire and radio, so as to make available to
all the people of the United States, without discrimination, a rapid,
efficient nation‑ wide wire and radio communications service at
reasonable rates. So clearly here, and the fundamental purpose of the
Communications Act is a goal to sort of ‑‑ is basically a consumer
welfare standard.

Okay. The second point that\'s worth making is the Act applies to all
interstate and foreign communications by wire or radio, but it generally
does not apply to intrastate communications. And this is important,
because in the U.S., there has traditionally been a split of regulatory
responsibility between the federal government, i.e., the FCC, and state
regulatory commissions. And so that frequently we, at the FCC, will get
questions from consumers. And unfortunately, many of those questions
relate to issues that are within the purview of state regulators and,
you know, we will try to provide information, but I think it is
important to recognize the sort of limited responsibility of the
Commission.

Okay. Now I\'m not going to go through all the titles of the
Communications Act, but I will note just three of those titles, which
are substantive titles. The first is Title II, which regulates common
carriers. And it basically is the title that gives us regulatory
authority over telephone companies that provide interstate or foreign
communications by wire or radio.

Title III contains the provisions relating to radio, and it gives the
FCC jurisdiction over radio stations, television stations, satellite
operators, wireless communications companies, and private wireless
providers. And then finally, there\'s Title VI, which discusses cable
communications. And it basically defines the relative roles and relative
regulatory authority of the FCC on the one hand, and local franchise
authorities on the other over cable television companies. Okay. Any
questions on this general legal background?

Okay. Let\'s talk a little bit about ‑‑ I\'d like to give you just a
sense of the size of the communications sector. And the first slide
basically indicates that the communications sector defined broadly,
basically now represents 15 percent of U.S. GDP. This is as of the year
2000, which is the last year for which we have detailed statistics,
unfortunately. And this percentage has been growing steadily over time.

Now I should note that, and as you can see, this pie chart has three
slices, sort of non‑communications, a yellow slice that is other
communications, then a pink slice that is the telecommunications sector
that is directly regulated by the FCC. Now other includes such things as
information services, including computer and data processing. It
includes, also includes telecom apparatus and radio and TV
communications equipment, fiber optic cable and equipment, services and
support of voice and data communications equipment, and services and
support of network infrastructure equipment.

Okay. But what the Commission is directly responsible for, represents
about 413 or 414 billion, and of those, they basically are split into
three large groups. The largest is telecommunications itself, which is
about 291 billion in 2000. Second is services provided by multi‑video
programming distributors, and these include cable companies and direct
broadcast satellite firms, among others. And they represent about 63 and
a half billion. And then there are broadcast TV and radio industry that
represents about 60 billion.

Okay. And finally, with respect to telecommunications itself, which is
the largest part of the communications industry that the Commission
regulates, the primary segments there are local exchange at 116 billion,
long distance at about 87, and wireless at about 63.

I guess it\'s worth noting that the long distance segment has been
declining recently, while wireless has been expanding. In fact, I\'m
sure many of you now have cell phones, and you probably take advantage
of the free buckets of minutes on evenings and weekends, and that\'s one
of the reasons long distance revenues are dropping. So we\'re soon going
to see wireless, I think displace long distances, the second largest
source of revenues, if it has not already done so.

Okay. Now let\'s get to the meat of the talk, and talk about the
organization of the FCC. Well, the FCC actually is a commission that
currently employs about 2,000 employees, of which about 900 are
attorneys, engineers and economists. In the federal bureaucracy, that
isn\'t particularly large, though it is quite large if you compare it to
telecommunications regulators in some other countries.

The Commission\'s budget for Fiscal Year 2002 was approximately \$245
million. Most of the activities are funded by regulatory fees at levels
set annually by Congress. And the Commission also collects application
fees and, in particular, auction revenues, but we don\'t get to keep
those. Those go to the U.S. Treasury, so we help the Treasury even
though we can\'t help ourselves.

Okay. Now the Commission is headed by a Chairman and four Commissioners,
and I\'ll talk more about those in a second. It then has six operating
bureaus that are organized either by technology or major function, and
these operating bureaus are then sub‑divided organizationally into
divisions and branches. There are also 10 offices that provide support
in key areas.

Okay. Let\'s talk a little bit about the Chairman and the Commissioners.
And again, this organization or the rules governing the Chairman and the
Commissioners sort of harkened back to the original Interstate Commerce
Commission, and to the general template for all independent regulatory
commissions, so there are an odd number of Commissioners. There are five
including the Chairman. They are appointed by the President. They are
confirmed by the Senate. They have staggered terms so that there\'s one
Commissioner each year whose term expires. And by statute, no more than
three Commissioners can be from any one party. In fact, it\'s always the
three Commissioners are from the party that occupies the White House.

Okay. Now each Commissioner under the law is entitled to be assisted by
three legal advisors. In recent years, those legal advisors have
generally specialized, so one will deal with wire line competition
issues, one will deal with media issues, and the third will deal with
wireless international, and the issues that come up before the Office of
Engineering and Technology.

Okay. So the current Chairman and Commissioners, the current Chairman is
Michael Powell. He\'s a Republican since the White House is occupied by
a Republican, and his term extends until June of 2007. The remaining
four Commissioners in alphabetical order are Commissioner Abernathy, a
Republican; Commissioners Adelstein and Copps, Democrats; and
Commissioner Martin, a Republican. And as you see on this chart, their
terms, as I indicated before, are staggered.

Okay. Now let\'s turn to the Bureau. And the first Bureau, as I said
before, there are six operating Bureaus. The first is the Consumer and
Governmental Affairs Bureau, and I gather they\'ve spoken to you
already. This Bureau handles consumer inquiries and complaints, and
conducts consumer information and education campaigns. It also
coordinates policy efforts with industry and other governmental
agencies, including federal, state, local and tribal agencies.

Okay. Next is Enforcement Bureau. The Enforcement Bureau, as the name
suggests, enforces the Communications Act, as well as the Commission\'s
rules. Among other things, it resolves complaints by carriers against
carriers, by customers against carriers, as well as complaints relating
to spectrum interference, radio transmitting towers, and media
programming. Now it\'s probably worth taking a minute or so to talk
about the relative responsibilities for the Consumer and Governmental
Affairs Bureau and Enforcement Bureau, because both of them handle
consumer complaints, but they do it slightly differently.

Informal complaints generally go to the Consumer and Governmental
Affairs Bureau. So if someone writes a letter complaining about being
slammed by their long distance carrier, that will go to CGB. If,
however, someone were to file a formal complaint, that would go to the
Enforcement Bureau. Now the Enforcement Bureau, in addition, will sort
of monitor all the informal complaints that CGB receives, so that if it
sees a pattern of abuses of consumers, it can then ‑‑ it may then decide
to file its own enforcement action, a formal enforcement action against
a particular carrier.

Now I should also note that both the CGB and Enforcement Bureaus are
relatively new bureaus, and they sort of reflect the increasing
competitiveness of telecommunications markets. In prior years where you
had one carrier, there probably were in some sense fewer complaints. Now
that there\'s more competition, more carriers, there\'s at least the
potential for greater consumer confusion and abuse, and the Commission
has responded by creating these two new bureaus. Okay. Any questions
about the relative functions of those two bureaus? Okay.

The next bureau is the International Bureau. It regulates international
satellite and telecommunications services, and it also represents the
Commission on satellite and international matters at domestic and
international conferences, so it\'s the people in the International
Bureau that get the good trips. Okay.

Next is Media Bureau. The Media Bureau regulates and licenses inter
alia, A.M./F.M. radio and television broadcast stations, and it also
regulates cable television operators, and it regulates providers of
direct broadcast satellite service.

Okay. Fifth Bureau is Wireless Telecommunications. It regulates fixed
and mobile one‑way and two‑way terrestrial wireless communications,
including communications provided by cellular and PCS phones, pagers and
two‑way radios. It also regulates the use of radio spectrum by
businesses, state and local governments, public safety providers,
aircraft and ship operators, harkening back to the Titanic, and
individuals.

And then finally, there\'s a Wire Line Competition Bureau that basically
regulates telephone companies that provide interstate telecommunications
services to the public using wire‑ based transmission facilities.

Now as you probably recognize, particularly now with the growth of
wireless, there are issues that relate ‑‑ I mean, wireless actually does
compete with wire line companies, so the Wireless Bureau and the Wire
Line Competition Bureau frequently have to cooperate on policy issues
that are relevant to both industries.

Okay. How are bureaus organized? Well, I\'m going to just describe a
certain typical organization, and individual bureaus may vary slightly
from that. Bureaus tend to be run by the front office, and the front
office is headed by the Bureau Chief, who is assisted by varying numbers
of Deputy Associate and Assistant Bureau Chiefs. Each bureau also has a
Chief of Staff, which is in charge of sort of not only staffing, but
certainly administrative areas. There will be legal advisors. Most
bureaus also have a Chief Economist, a Chief Engineer, and then they
will have an Administrative Staff. They will then also have various
divisions, and under the recent FCC reorganization, most of the bureaus
have a Policy Division, a Licensing Division, and an Industry Analysis
and Technical Division.

Okay. And I don\'t recall the ‑‑ I\'ll just add that the bureaus tend to
be the largest organizational bodies within the Commission. Okay. Now
what about the offices? Well, there are ten different offices that
basically perform more specialized functions. There\'s the office of ‑‑
and I will go through these quickly, and then just talk briefly about
two of them. And if you have questions, feel free to ask.

The first is the Office of Administrative Law Judges, ALJs will preside
over any hearings that the Commission might hold. For example, last year
when EchoStar tried to acquire DirectTV, the Commission found that there
were substantial issues of fact about whether such an acquisition would
be in the public interest, so it designated that application for a
hearing before an ALJ. Now it turns out the parties abandoned the
transaction before we held the hearing, but if they had not, we would
have conducted a hearing, and the ALJ would then have issued an initial
determination, which then would have been reviewed by the Commission.

Okay. Second office is the Office of Communications Business
Opportunities. And it provides advice on issues and policies concerning
opportunities for ownership and contracting by small minority and
women‑owned communications businesses.

Third is the Office of Engineering and Technology. It allocates spectrum
for non‑government use, and provides expert advice on technical issues
before the Commission. Now it turns out that a separate government body,
the NTIA, National Telecommunications and Information Administration,
which is part of the Department of Commerce, is charged with allocating
spectrum for government uses, but NTIA and FCC cooperate closely on
spectrum issues, in general.

Okay. Fourth is the Office of General Counsel. They are the
Commission\'s lawyers. And fifth is the Office of Inspector General,
which conducts and supervises audits and investigations relating to the
operations of the Commission.

Now I\'ll just briefly note that one of Chairman Powell\'s initiatives
was to try to improve the sort of technical expertise of the Commission,
and as a result of this initiative, we\'ve hired a number of new and
very talented engineers. And I think that the Commission\'s sort of
ability to understand technical issues, and particularly spectrum
issues, has improved significantly under this initiative. And much of
the expertise is contained within OET.

Next about the Office of General Counsel, they are the Commission\'s
lawyers, and they represent an incredibly talented group of lawyers. And
the Commission and Bureaus need and generally clear all initiatives
through them, so that I can\'t over‑estimate both the importance and the
sort of comfort that having good lawyers to advise gives the staff.

Okay. And then Office of Inspector General, my view is I hope I don\'t
have to get to know them very well, so can go from there. Next, Office
of Legislative Affairs. They act as a main contact point with Congress.
Office of Managing Director functions as the Chief Operating Official,
serving under the direction and supervision of the Chairman. Office of
Media Relations is the main press contact. Office of Strategic Planning
and Policy Analysis, which is the office with which I\'m associated,
helps the Commission develop a strategic plan identifying both
short‑term and long‑term policy objectives, and it also engages in some
sort of research related to telecommunications regulatory issues. And
then finally, there\'s an Office of Workplace Diversity, which advises
the Commission on issues related to internal workforce diversity,
affirmative recruitment, and equal employment opportunity.

And then, of course, there are also multi‑bureau task forces and working
groups, some of which are wholly internal to the Commission, such as the
Media Ownership Working Group, which had ‑‑ was staffed from different
bureaus and offices, but it also includes some outside councils, such as
this one and the Technical Advisory Council. Okay. Any questions to date
about the organization?

Okay. Let\'s talk a little bit about the decision‑ making framework. In
general, the Commission conducts two basic types of proceedings. They
are first, general rulemaking proceedings, which are really a ‑‑
represents a quasi legislative function of the Commission. And then
there are adjudications, which sort of represent a quasi judicial
function by the Commission.

Rulemaking proceedings may be initiated either by a party filing a
petition for a rulemaking, or by Congress telling us to initiate a
rulemaking, as it did in 1996 when it told the Commission that it had
six months to implement and adopt rules implementing the 1996
Telecommunications Act, or it can be initiated on FCC\'s own motion.

Adjudications, in contrast, are initiated either when a party files a
petition for waiver of a Commission rule, or files an application for a
license or a license transfer, or files a complaint, or requests a
declaratory order, or if the Commission files an enforcement action. So
both types of proceedings then can be initiated either by the Commission
itself, or by outside parties.

Okay. What is the general process? Well, for both rulemakings and
adjudications, there will be an initiating document. In the case of a
rulemaking proceeding, there will be a notice of proposed rulemaking. In
the case of say an application for license transfer, the parties will
file an application for transfer, or parties may file a formal
complaint. The Commission will then issue a public notice seeking
comment, whether it\'s on the NPRM or the complaint, or the application,
and giving the public an opportunity to comment.

In general, now the length of time that the public notices gives for
public comment may vary depending upon the complexity of the issue, the
urgency of the issue. My guess is the most typical comment periods are
30 and 15, but it\'s frequently longer than that, and on occasion, it
can be shorter.

Okay. Following the public notice, the Commission will receive public
comments, and then replies. After this comment cycle, then there\'s
normally a period in which interested parties come in and make ex parte
presentations both to Commission staff and to the Commissioners.

Now under the APA, whenever an interested party comes in to make a
presentation, it must within 24 hours file a written ex parte notice,
which is then filed in the record, that informs the public about exactly
the names of everyone at the Commission with whom they met. And
basically, what they told those people, so that we try to keep it as
open as possible. And, in fact, in major proceedings what you\'ll see is
there\'s almost a battle of ex partes as people will come in and present
say, an economist\'s analysis of a particular issue, and then two weeks
later an opposing group will come in with their own economist and
opposing analysis, and this is very much a part of ‑‑ an important part
of developing a good record for Commission decision‑making. So the
extent you become interested or involved in Commission proceedings, you
can\'t just read the comments and replies. You need to go to all the ex
partes, as well.

Okay. Now once those comments and replies, and ex partes have been
filed, it\'s then up to the staff to review them, and that can be quite
an arduous task. In implementing the 1996 Telecom Act, I think there
were 17,000 pages of comments filed, and I believe there were even more
filed this past year in the tri‑annual review because they didn\'t set a
page limit. So it\'s actually quite a task for the staff, and the
ability of some of these young lawyers to actually remember what\'s said
in all these filings is quite impressive.

Okay. So the record is reviewed initially by staff, and later by higher
level staff on the eighth floor. And then the staff who are involved in
a proceeding will prepare Options Memos and Recommendations for review
initially by Branch Managers, and then Division Managers, and then the
Bureau Front Office, and then it will go from there.

Okay. And then with drafting, likewise you have the similar process of
multiple levels of reviews. The staff attorneys and economists and
engineers are working who are working on a particular proceeding will do
an initial draft, which will then be reviewed and edited by a senior
attorney, and then by branch management, or division management, and
finally the front office. And then generally an item will go to the
Chairman first, and after the Chairman has reviewed it, it will then be
distributed to other Commissioners.

Now items when they get to the Commission may be, some of them may be
scheduled for a Commission meeting. If you are scheduled for a
Commission meeting, then there is what is called a Sunshine Period. And
basically, one week before a Commission meeting you\'ll see a notice
being posted on our website that lists all the proceedings or orders
that will be taken up at the next Commission meeting. And as soon as
that Sunshine notice is released, all ex parte contacts must cease. So
in case you\'re involved in any of these proceedings, once you see the
Sunshine Notice, the Commission staff can no longer talk to you.

Besides that, it\'s a very open process and the Commission had made
every effort to try to increase the openness. And I think the previous
‑‑ I wasn\'t able to hear the entire previous session, but the
Commission has spent a lot of effort to try to improve its website so
that you can actually easily find ‑ that\'s too strong. We\'ve tried to
make it as easy as possible to identify comments and replies, and ex
partes, but I\'m sure that there\'s much more than we can do to improve
that.

Okay. What about voting? Well, the Chairman and Commissioners can either
vote to approve an item, they can dissent either in whole or in part, or
they can concur in part or in the result. Frequently, if you listen to
Commission meetings, when the Commission votes for an item, they will
allow for post adoption edits so that the staff can fix typos and little
mistakes. And frequently, the Commissioners and the Chairman may issue
separate statements that will be released with an order or notice. And
then finally, with varying periods of time, the item will be released.

Okay. Now slide may be more important for staff, but it\'s probably
useful to discuss it briefly here, because the professional staff at the
Commission, when we\'re working on items, are really hounded by the
Office of General Counsel, and by more senior attorneys to follow
certain rules so that Commission orders when they\'re released will
actually be able to stand up to court challenges. And among the
principles, young lawyers are told that a Commission order must explain
and justify the Commission\'s decision, and it must be based on the
record, and on public policy factors.

Importantly, it must address all significant issues raised in the
record, particularly those raised by parties whose views the Commission
is rejecting. And that\'s one of the reasons we can get 400, 500, 700
page orders, is we need to address all those issues, or we may be
reversed.

A third, we must either follow Commission precedent, or we must explain
why we are not following it, and how our order differs from existing
Commission precedent. And we must explain how the order is consistent
with governing statutes and case law.

And then finally, and this is sort of what we call an Administrative
Procedure Act Notice Issue, is that any decision the Commission makes
must have been a logical outgrowth of a proposal on which comment was
sought in the NPRM. Or to put it another way, if the Commission issues a
notice, it has to give people enough of an idea about what it is
considering doing. And if it comes out with something completely
different, that will be deemed as not giving the public enough notice,
and we can be reversed for that. Okay. And then finally, at least a
summary of all Commission orders must be published in the Federal
Register.

Okay. Questions at this point about procedure? Okay. Let\'s talk a
little bit about external influences. And there are a number of what are
called stakeholders. And by the way, this is an aside, but the term
\"stakeholder\" was first coined in a 1956 Stanford Research Institute
memorandum, and sort of lost there for a decade or so. And then it
popped up in the sort of academic literature on business and public
policy beginning in the late 60s, but then more prominently in the
1970s. And the basic idea of a stakeholder is that that is a person,
group or entity that may affect or may be affected by an organization
that is being studied. And it\'s become ‑‑ corporations are recognizing
more these days that they must consider the interests of various
stakeholders, including not only consumers, but also their shareholders,
or bond holders, regulators. And similarly, government agencies are
being ‑‑ coming to recognize that they need to consider the interests
and influence of various stakeholders.

And so what are some of the stakeholders that affect or may be affected
by the FCC? Well, the first is consumers. And if you go back to that
slide where I described Title I of the Communications Act, it\'s clear
that the sort of primary function of the Commission is to serve the
interests of consumers. And so that is one of the paramount concerns in
any of the Commission\'s proceedings. Second and very influential
stakeholder is Congress, because Congress can affect us either through
oversight hearings, through the appropriations process, or through
legislation. Third is the courts.

During the time I was in the Common Carrier Bureau, all but one of the
proceedings I worked on was appealed, and if you make a mistake, the
courts will reverse you. And so the courts have enormous impact on
Commission precedent.

To give you another example, when the Commission implemented the 1996
Act, we adopted rules which were almost immediately vacated by the
Eighth Circuit, and it took until was it January of 1999 or June of
1999, basically three years until the Supreme Court finally reversed the
Eighth Circuit, and said that the Commission had authority to issue
those rules. And a few months later, the Eighth Circuit came back and
invalidated our pricing rules on substantive grounds, not on
jurisdictional grounds. So those were again vacated until June of 2002.
So basically, for seven years some of our rules were not in effect, so
courts are incredibly important.

You also obviously need to consider industry and other interested
parties. If you look at Commission proceedings, you\'ll find that not
only will the particular regulated entities file comments, but also
other entities, such as firms that are supplying equipment, or other
firms that use facilities that may be affected. And then there are other
groups that will file, for example, Consumer Federation of America
frequently files comments in Commission proceedings.

Next there are other federal departments and agencies with which the
Commission interacts, and which can affect the Commission. Department of
Justice, Federal Trade Commissions, MTIA and State. In the case of the
Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission, we cooperate
with them extensively in reviewing mergers. In cases of, and I\'m being
a bit loose here so I hope you won\'t criticize me for being too
imprecise, but basically, for mergers involving common carriers, and for
mergers that involve a transfer of a wireless license, those must
receive approval from the FCC, and in most cases, they must also, if
they exceed the Hart‑Scott‑Rodino Anti‑Trust thresholds, they must be
notified both to the FCC and the Department of Justice Anti‑Trust
Division. And one of those two Anti‑Trust agencies will then review the
transaction.

Typically, we obtain from the parties a waiver of the Hart‑Scott‑Rodino
confidentiality rules so that we can talk with lawyers at the Department
of Justice of the FTC, and discuss issues raised by the merger, so we
cooperate very closely on this, and this is something that\'s ‑‑ I think
the Commission has made a great deal of effort on over the past few
years, and I think the level of cooperation has increased.

As I indicated before, we also work with and cooperate with NTIA in many
spectrum issues, and at various points, this varies somewhat with the
administration, but NTIA frequently will file comments in proceedings,
and we will generally give considerable deference ‑ deference isn\'t the
right word, but we will certainly consider seriously those comments. And
we also work with the State Department in many instances.

Okay. Next stakeholder group are states and state regulatory
commissions. As I indicated early‑on, since the early 20th Century,
responsibility for regulating telecommunications companies has been
split between the states and the federal government. And it has been
important that the two regulatory bodies communicate and cooperate.

Now almost necessarily, there are tensions at times, but I think the
Commission and the states have generally made real efforts to try to
develop policies, work together and develop policies that further
consumer interest, though that obviously can always be improved.

Okay. We also work with the international organizations. And finally, of
course, we need to deal or we need to work with, and we recognize the
importance of the press.

Okay. Now there are also sort of specific checks on FCC authority. I
mean, before we were talking about sort of stakeholder groups. Here are
groups that can actually really affect us, and the first is judicial
review. Courts can, or parties that disagree with FCC decisions can
appeal them to Federal Courts of Appeal, and if we haven\'t adequately
justified them, the court will reverse, and frequently vacate the
Commission\'s decision.

IN some cases where a Federal Court of Appeals has vacated the decision,
or even if they\'ve affirmed it, aggrieved parties may then petition the
Supreme Court to take the case. And I believe there have been over four
different Supreme Court cases that have just involved implementation of
the 1996 Act. And then, of course, there is also legislative review and
oversight, and this can be direct; such as, Congress can pass an act
like the Telecommunications Act, which the Commission will then
implement. But it\'s also indirect in the sense that Congress can change
our budget, and so we certainly cannot ignore the interest of Congress.

Now this last section on public trust safeguards was intended primarily
for the new employees, but I\'ll just briefly touch on it because I
actually think it\'s an extremely important part of maintaining the
integrity of a regulatory process. All sorts of rules that apply to
employees that are intended to ensure that they aren\'t unduly
influenced by outside parties, or that they won\'t be bribed, or
influenced by the prospect of a job on the outside. So, for example,
there are specific rules limiting gifts from outside sources, and a
prohibition on bribery. There are rules that limit the ability of
Commission staff to invest in companies that are regulated by the
Commission, because that might affect our decisions. And even, there are
also rules regulating the investment by family members. There are also
rules affecting both the work that a new employee can do, if he or she
were previously in the private sector, or what work they can do if they
leave government and go to a company that is regulated by the
Commission.

And then probably most importantly from ‑ I shouldn\'t say most
importantly from an ethical basis, but most relevant to you, is that
there are various rules that require employees to keep Commission
deliberations confidential. And so, for example, pre‑decisional
Commission documents and decisions are not public, options, memos,
drafts, that kind of stuff.

In addition, certain documents filed by parties may be subject to
confidential treatment and/or protective orders. So, for example, in
many proceedings, parties may have information that\'s highly relevant
to a Commission decision, but on the other hand contains sensitive
business information that they would not want to disclose to
competitors, so we have various procedures where we can allow access on
a limited basis that\'s intended to protect the business that is
sensitive, the business sensitivity of the documents, but that allows
both the Commission and public to comment on.

Okay. We also have internal procedures that govern certain highly
sensitive proceedings, and that the employees are frequently reminded
about the importance of complying with. Now these procedures are sort of
inculcated constantly by managers on the staff saying ‑ and I think
it\'s very important. At times though for outside parties, it can be
frustrating because there are certain times where an outsider calls us
and asks for information, we simply can\'t respond because it would be
revealing some information that we\'re prohibited from revealing, so I
think the Commission staff generally tries to be as open with the public
as possible, but we are constrained by these confidentiality
requirements.

Okay. I\'m actually a little bit ahead of time, so we do have some time
for questions. But I did want to mention the Internet site. The
Commission has put a lot of effort into it, and there\'s a lot of
information there. To the extent you have suggestions on how to improve
it, I think they\'d be welcome. And then my contact information is at
the bottom of the last page, and again, I\'d be happy to have you e‑mail
me any questions you might have, and certainly any suggestions on things
I could do to improve this presentation.

CHAIR ROOKER: I do have a question. This is the Chair. Can I ask a
question? May I ask a question?

MR. STOCKDALE: Please, feel free.

CHAIR ROOKER: Early on you mentioned the difference between an informal
complaint and a formal complaint. This is rather confusing to consumers,
because we usually send people here if they have something that has to
do with communications, because we feel it\'s important for them to
register a complaint with you, even though we may be handling it
ourselves.

We\'ve had people come back to us and say well, I followed ‑‑ they told
me it was an informal complaint. What does that mean? Can you define the
difference? You mentioned it. Shame on you.

MR. STOCKDALE: I know. It is a shame on me. I knew this was going to
happen.

CHAIR ROOKER: Well, that\'s okay. Maybe we should ‑‑ I can ask that
question of someone else. I didn\'t mean to put you on the spot.

MR. STOCKDALE: I think probably someone from the Consumer and
Governmental Affairs Bureau can better do it. My understanding is that
with informal complaints, it\'s basically very ‑ as the name suggests ‑
it\'s informal. People can simply write a letter in explaining the
problem. It will go to Consumer and Government Affairs Bureau, someone
will handle it. Depending upon the nature of the complaint, they may
contact the carrier and try to resolve it.

Formal complaints are basically subject to the full APA requirements for
an adjudication, and then you\'re subject to all the rules about filing
requirements and things like that.

CHAIR ROOKER: I think, unfortunately, and maybe this is what we should
discuss at another point as Scott said, but I think sometimes consumers
think an informal complaint means you\'re not really taking it
seriously. So perhaps ‑‑ I mean, that\'s the feeling that we\'ve gotten
from consumers, so perhaps we should address this at another meeting, so
let me just withdraw that. Okay.

MR. STOCKDALE: Okay.

CHAIR ROOKER: Does anyone else have questions? No. Well, we would like
to thank you very, very much for give us insight into the Commission. I
think what we can do then, let\'s take an early break. Be back here at
20 after, so that we can start working on our working groups. Oh, that
was kind of redundant, wasn\'t it? Anyway, please be back at 20 after 3.
That gives you 10 minutes.

(Whereupon, the proceeding in the above‑entitled matter went off the
record at 3:09:01 p.m. and went back on the record at 3:23:37 p.m.)

CHAIR ROOKER: We have a number of important items we need to take care
of, and the most important one is for us to identify some of the issues
that we want to address over the coming months. And our working groups
can be quite flexible in terms of the length of time they stay in
existence. A working group could be from just now until July, or it
could be from now until the end of the charter runs out, so it will
depend on the complexity of the issues that we choose to address.

At any rate, I\'ve heard a lot of things from a number of you today.
I\'m hoping that you\'re eager to jump in and start forming some working
groups. The working groups can ‑‑ we would like to start out at least
with three of them, and they can be composed of five or six people. You
can designate your own chair of the working group, if you wish, however
you want to do that. But the main idea is for us to identify issues that
we want to bring to the Commission, issues that we think need
addressing. I, for one, am going to volunteer to see if we can get the
name of the ‑‑ to change the names of the complaint process, because
consumers are very confused when they call here and say ‑‑ and they\'ve
been told they\'ve filed an informal complaint, and they think that
means it\'s not going to be taken seriously. And that is not what it
means, so that\'s going to be one of the things, and that\'s just a
minor issue. So what I\'d like to do is to open the microphones. Just
hold your hand up, and give us your name before you make a ‑‑ and
that\'s for the transcript, folks. I know who you are now. You can\'t
hide, but I need that for the transcript, and so that we can get this
process started. So does somebody want to jump in? Oh, Scott wants to
make some comments. Do you think we should let him talk? Okay.

MR. MARSHALL: Just a couple of logistical comments about how the working
groups have worked in the past, and how we would be able to support you
in this endeavor. In the ideal world, it would be wonderful to have
travel money to bring groups to town to have face‑to‑face time, but
unfortunately that\'s not possible.

What we\'ve done in the past is these groups have worked primarily via
e‑mail, and we can set up a private e‑mail discussion list for your
particular group so that this will facilitate your e‑mail communication.
We can also have conference calls, if that\'s appropriate. That
sometimes can be difficult though, for people who are deaf or hard‑of
hearing, but again, we can work on that issue, and the possible way of
getting time for your group to work together.

If you\'re local here in Washington, you\'re certainly welcome to have a
meeting here, and I\'ll try to facilitate that. And as always, if a
working group needs a resource person from the Commission to help
provide some information, I\'ll do my best to find that right person so
that the working group can have that technical expertise at its disposal
while you\'re developing recommendations.

And as Paula said earlier, and I think we mentioned this morning
briefly, the working groups have to come up with the recommendations,
which then go to the full committee. And only the full committee then
can comment to the FCC or provide recommendations to the FCC.

And as Shirley indicated, we\'d like to get these working groups
started. We don\'t have to have all of them done today. We could develop
them on an ad hoc basis as issues come up, but it would be great if we
could get something working so that we could have a couple of reports
back in July, realizing that that\'s only going to be a couple of months
away. But we\'re ready to roll up our sleeves and help you in whatever
way we can. That\'s it.

CHAIR ROOKER: Oh, very well, Scott. You helped make us much more
informed. Thank you. He always makes me more informed. I do know that a
couple of people left early, did have some comments. I think Dixie was
wanting to be on something, did she not, Scott? TRS, so she\'s
interested in starting a TRS working group.

MR. MARSHALL: She doesn\'t want to chair it.

CHAIR ROOKER: So anyway, is there someone else interested in
participating in a working group on TRS? Rebecca. Who else, anyone?
Brenda. Joe.

MR. GORDON: May I suggest that a TRS working group might be part of a
disability access group, and more than one topic be covered?

CHAIR ROOKER: Well, I\'ll tell you, we tried that last term. We had
subcommittees set up for disability access, and that was the title of
the subcommittee. We found that it was not terribly effective to do
that, that we really needed to focus on issues. That\'s why we\'ve given
up on the concept of putting together subcommittees because they just
didn\'t work. Some of them worked better than others. But what we found
was when we gave a group of people a specific charge to work on a
specific issue, it was much more effective. I mean, how do the rest of
you feel about it? Claude.

MR. STOUT: Shirley, I have to politely disagree with you. I feel that we
should have a disability access group, the reason being is say if we
start with the Commission today, we make a list of main concerns or
issues, and we have two years to work with that Commission and also with
the FCC. If we have a work group that only has one issue, it kind of
delays actions, or research, or analysis on other issues.

CHAIR ROOKER: Okay.

MR. STOUT: And besides that, we\'re going to be discussing general
consumer issues. Do you kind of see the point I\'m trying to make?

CHAIR ROOKER: I do, Claude. Actually, I do see what your point is. I
think what ‑ are you saying that by having the broader group ‑ well, let
me ‑ Rich has got something to comment. See if he can help me.

MR. ELLIS: The problem that we had last time around was we had one
committee that had such a big basket of issues to study, that we kind of
didn\'t make a lot of progress in a lot of areas. And I think what
Shirley\'s aim is this time, if I understand it properly, is to have
more groups more focused in.

CHAIR ROOKER: Yes.

MR. ELLIS: So you could have more than one working group addressing
disability issues. It doesn\'t mean because you\'re doing one, you
can\'t do another. It just means that you have people who are tasked to
study specific topics, as opposed to the whole general concern. I think
last time what happened was the committees got so over‑extended that
nothing got done.

CHAIR ROOKER: Yeah. That\'s exactly right. And thank you, Rich, for
clarifying that, because that is really what we\'re saying, is that
there could be multiple groups working on multiple disability issues.
Nothing is going to get missed by us if it\'s important to you, because
that\'s ‑‑ our goal is to listen to what you\'re saying. But what we
found is that it just didn\'t function very well that way, when we had
this charge of broad issues. So perhaps what we should do is, if you
want to set up a disabilities committee and identify some priority
items, but we tried that last time and it just simply didn\'t seem to
work.

Now let me hear from others about it. Larry had his ‑‑ stick your hand
up, Larry, so the microphone will know where you are. Okay. Give us your
name.

MR. GOLDBERG: Larry Goldberg. I think those of us who did work on
disabilities issues last time were exactly frustrated the way you said.
A thousand issues, and through no fault of our own except multiple
pregnancies, the chairman of that group just didn\'t have the time to
put the time into it. And the returning members or the people who were
watching last time absolutely agree, they want to see more traction on
the key issues. It could be done vertically with a lot of disability
issues, but knowing full well that we would absolutely have to narrow
those rapidly down to the five or six we have to deal with. And I think
we are prepared to do that. We could go for multiple groups, as well,
and maybe they ‑‑ if we could actually rapidly deal with one in three
months and be done with it, but I think we\'re already so focused since
the last two years, we learned a very big lesson then.

CHAIR ROOKER: Yes.

MR. GOLDBERG: And David will probably have some comment, as well.

CHAIR ROOKER: Yeah, a lot of comments here. I saw Joy\'s hand, and I saw
Eugene\'s, and then David\'s. Okay. Joy, over here.

MS. RAGSDALE: I wasn\'t part of the Committee last year, and I\'m
thankful to have the opportunity now, but when reviewing the archives of
the formal organization, I believe there were only two filings and one
ex parte communication with the Commission. And I thought if we could
narrow and focus our goals, then we might find we\'re more productive,
and really make a difference and are more active before the Commission,
and can address a number of issues.

CHAIR ROOKER: You\'re right, Joy. That\'s exactly what we thought with
the idea of doing subcommittees. We found nothing was happening, and
that was where we were. Thank you. Eugene.

MR. SEAGRIFF: Eugene Seagriff. I participated as a member of the public
on the disability committee last year, and what I\'d like to suggest as
a possible opportunity is, you know, today the FCC laid out for us the
goals that are most important to them, you know, broadband, spectrum,
media. And I think (a) our input would be more valuable if we also
aligned ourselves with the things that they\'re currently considering.
And in each of those, of course, there are disability issues that need
to be addressed. And perhaps we can be more effective if we break it
into the pieces that match the way the FCC is thinking about things, and
include disability issues in our deliberations of those items.

CHAIR ROOKER: I think that makes sense to look at what the FCC has on
its plate right now, and look at areas that we might be able to make
some contributions. Did I read that right? Yeah. Okay. Thank you. David.
Hold your hand up so she knows where you are. If you all see me doing
pointing, it\'s because ‑‑ so they can turn the microphones on for us.

MR. POEHLMAN: This is David Poehlman with the American Council of the
Blind. Sort of keying off what Larry said, and a couple of other things
gone on here. One thing, I think that we might want to keep in mind is
if we break up into smaller groups, historically smaller groups get more
done. But there\'s nothing to say that you can\'t join more than one
group at a time. The only conflict might be is if both groups are
meeting on the same day, at the same time. You might have to decide
which one you want to go to.

CHAIR ROOKER: Scott\'s a good traffic manager.

MR. POEHLMAN: Now on the other side, there\'s a couple of things. One of
the things that we asked for last time, and we\'re getting it now is
more clear direction from the FCC as to what they\'d like to see from
us, and what their plans are, and what issues concern them, you know,
most, or what they\'ve received, and what\'s on their plate. And I think
we saw a good bit of that today, and I imagine that we\'ll see a lot
more of that kind of communication in the future.

There has been a very strong interest from the Commission in what we
have to say, and what we would like to see done, and input to them, to
the Commission concerning the issues that ‑‑ not only the issues that
they are dealing with at this point in time, but also as things go
forward, and also from our perspective.

I\'ve been reading over the charter, and all the related materials that
form the foundation for the CSE, you know, I see that there is a lot of
work to be done. So to bottom this out, we also learned some lessons
from the last round. And one of the lessons, or the key lesson that we
learned is that, you know, we really do need to be as clear as quickly
as possible in determining and, you know, setting our priorities and
agendas and process management, and just going forward with it. So I can
see the benefit of having several, you know, two or three large groups
and small groups, and I can also see the advantage of having just small
groups. So, you know, I liked the idea last time of having large groups.
One of the things I like about the small group approach though, is that
we can get a wider mix of people across stakeholder lines involved in
some of the different issues, because I know that some of us around this
table, some of us in this room have our feet in several houses. And, you
know, wear several hats and, you know, are involved in several things.
You know, some of us who are involved with disabilities are not just
involved with disabilities, so I think that characterizes the group. And
I think it could be, you know, very effective to utilize small groups.

CHAIR ROOKER: Well, some of the things if we ‑‑ just a minute, Joe. Some
of the things, if you go back and look at ‑‑ I mean, I have a list here
of what\'s on the Express page of the ECFS, and some of the things that
you\'re mentioning, like the TRS, people already interested in forming a
working group. There\'s the broadband, plug‑and‑play, E‑911 Services
which is a critical issue for many, many of us. Also, the rural wireless
service, so there\'s a lot of issues here, going back to Eugene\'s
comment, that is before the FCC right now that we could work on.

For example, they\'re looking at the telephone solicitations. Now we did
make recommendations to the Commission on that issue last year. So now
who else has a comment they want to make? Joe. Stick your hand up so she
can find you.

MR. GORDON: Hi, Joe Gordon. The only suggestion I make whether you have
one large committee or smaller committees, that enough time on future
agendas be left open for these committees to make presentations.

CHAIR ROOKER: Oh, yes.

MR. GORDON: I think that might have been lacking in the past.

CHAIR ROOKER: Well, we\'re tried to have feedback. Sometimes we didn\'t
have reports from the subcommittees, so it was kind of hard to get some
of them. But at any rate, what we really want to do is to get
everybody\'s voice in here, and to get something that\'s productive. It
took us a while last year, the beginning of our two years before, to
figure out what we were doing and how to do it, and I think we learned
some valuable lessons. And hopefully, we\'ll benefit from that. Larry,
stick your hand way up so she can see you. There you go. Oh, I\'m sorry.
Claude\'s next. Okay.

MR. GOLDBERG: As a suggestion then, to perhaps not ‑‑ if it\'s desired
not to have a vertical group that\'s just about disability issues, I
think there are three issues that do cut across everyone\'s concerns.
One of them is broadband. It\'s of deep concern to the disability
community. Access to broadband content and services, and I\'m guessing
lots of people here are interested in broadband. The second one is the
complaint process. Everyone is concerned about this complaint process,
and finding a way to streamline it. And the third one is enforcement of
existing rules.

There\'s a lot of rules on the books already that don\'t seem to be
enforced. And it doesn\'t take a new rule to take a look at what we
could do to recommend to the Commission that some of these existing
rules have enforcement.

CHAIR ROOKER: Okay. Claude, you had a comment. Claude, you had your hand
up.

MR. STOUT: I want to just support what Larry just said. If you set up
those three groups, then we could have a disability access filter type
of arrangement where, you know, we can work on each of these areas like
he said, enforcement, compliance and broadband. What was your third one,
Larry?

CHAIR ROOKER: Complaint process.

MR. STOUT: And complaint. Okay. Right. So the disability group, we could
work on each, conclude from each of these issues how to apply disability
access into those issues and, you know, verify that information. But
I\'d like to know what other general consumer issues are concerns of the
rest of the Committee.

CHAIR ROOKER: Okay. Good question. Let\'s get comments here. Susan had
her hand up.

MS. MAZRUI: This is Susan Palmer from ‑‑

CHAIR ROOKER: Oh, I\'m sorry, Vernon. You\'re next.

MS. MAZRUI: Oh, I\'m sorry.

CHAIR ROOKER: Go ahead. Go ahead.

MS. MAZRUI: Me?

CHAIR ROOKER: Go ahead, yeah.

MS. MAZRUI: I\'m from Cingular Wireless. I think there\'s also a
consumer participation or input issue in terms of the electronic filing.
And I think we need to look at it. I\'m assuming there may be an issue.
I think it\'s something we need to examine, how are seniors
participating and taking advantage of the Express. How are people with
disabilities who are using screen readers or other electronic access
modes interacting with that? And how are they getting information, so I
think that\'s a general one that covers both seniors and people with
disabilities. And maybe it\'s even broader than that.

CHAIR ROOKER: Okay. Vernon, down here at the end. There you go. Thank
you, Vernon.

MR. JAMES: Thank you, Shirley. This is going to be difficult for me to
explain. Maybe it won\'t be if I take Larry\'s example, and Eugene\'s
statement about the strategic goals that the FCC wants to address,
broadband competition, spectrum, media, Homeland Security, modernizing
FCC. We have all the interests in rural America. Our reservation has a
lot of interest in these areas. Unfortunately, many reservations,
including rural America, don\'t have the services that are enjoyed in
populated cities or larger towns. I propose to address those issues as
far as rurality.

The problems of the western half of the United States as it relates to
geography and some of the natural barriers to wireless, to wire line,
the cost of wire line per mile, the cost of infrastructure to provide
communication services in general. Rural America does not always get
addressed, and I would like to champion that cause, if I may, as part of
any committee. Thank you.

CHAIR ROOKER: Well, there is ‑‑ the rural wireless service is one of the
issues that\'s before the FCC right now, which fits into what your
comments are. We\'re going to have to at some point making some progress
on forming working groups. I mean, from your comments, I have a feeling
that that is the way you tend to go. Am I wrong? I know that Claude
disagrees with that, but from my experience as the Chair of this the
last two years, the working groups are just ‑‑ the subcommittees were
just not effective. I take that back. Some of them were, but overall it
was generally a lot of effort on our part to try to get reports put
together, and some of them did a really good job. Andrea\'s group did a
really good job. Thank you. But it was hard, because they were too
large, and they just were not effective. They just weren\'t focused. And
some of them would spend hours trying to get focused and it never
happened. That\'s why I really believe if we can give this concept of
working groups a chance, because I think we\'ll be able to accomplish a
lot more because we can address disability issues, consumer issues, all
kinds of issues within small working groups, put together
recommendations to the Commission, which is what we are charged with
doing, and be much more effective. So is it agreeable with you if we
move in that direction? Okay.

All right. Having said that, we already have formed a ‑‑ yes, Claude.

MR. STOUT: I think you and I don\'t necessarily disagree on how we
arrive at a solution, and I just want to make that clear. I think you
want to see the working groups work, you know, on everything, you know,
and progress and that\'s great. I agree with you on that. But I\'m
thinking if we had a disability access subcommittee we could come up
with the issues that way. But that subcommittee, for example, to make
work ‑‑ could have its own working groups as a part of it. I think in
the past, the Disability Access Subcommittee didn\'t have working groups
to accomplish anything of the big initiatives it wanted to. I remember
in the first two years, the subcommittee was trying to identify itself,
to figure out the purpose of its work and its functions, and so I don\'t
know. My suggestion would be that we continue with working groups and
that\'s fine, but also have the Disability Access Group have a
subcommittee where they have several working groups as a part of that
subcommittee.

CHAIR ROOKER: The only problem with that is then you have a little group
on their own working on issues that may be worked on with the rest of
the organization, of the committee, so I\'m not sure that that would
really work, Claude. I respectfully disagree with you, and I believe
that we have a consensus here that we should move forward with the
working groups. If we don\'t find out that\'s working, we\'ll come back
to you, Claude, and apologize, and do something different. But I respect
your input on this, but I feel that we\'re going to accomplish what you
want to accomplish, which is addressing disability issues in a more
effective way because we\'ll have input from the entire Committee. The
groups will be formed, the working groups will be formed from the entire
Committee, which I think is more valuable than just a subcommittee.

All right. Let\'s ‑‑ can we move forward then in determining what are
the things that you would like to see the Committee working on, our
working groups working on? That I need to hear from you. Don. Stick your
hand up. There you go.

MR. SNOOP: One of the things that I mentioned when I first came in, and
I think that\'s going to be more and more prevalent to the consumer is
digital issues, broadband issues, technology, emerging technology. Like
I\'m using right now VDSL, absolutely nothing about it. Small phone
companies are getting into it, the RBOCs haven\'t really addressed it,
except for Qwest, and they kind of put it on the back burner, so
there\'s a lot that the Commission can do to influence the growth of
this part of the industry, which is part of broadband. And at some
point, I think that should be one of our goals.

CHAIR ROOKER: Okay. So Don is suggesting that we set up a broadband
working group. Do you want to ‑‑ should we be more specific and give
them something ‑‑ broadband is a very large issue. Some of the things
before the Commission right now are the broadband access over telephone
networks and Internet access service over the telephone lines. I don\'t
know. What are your thoughts? I mean, I\'m not an expert on broadband.

MR. SNOOP: If we could just add digital TV and all the things going on
with that, like HDTV right now is a big issue with the FCC. They don\'t
quite know how to deal with that, especially on the must‑carry side.

CHAIR ROOKER: And how would you focus this group? Give me some key words
as to what we\'re asking people to participate in. I think it\'s a great
idea. Think about that. Eugene has a comment. We\'ll come back to you.

MR. SEAGRIFF: Actually, it\'s a request. The things on the ECFS Express
and the strategic goals list that Margaret reviewed today, could we get
the docket numbers that go with those things so we can look into the
angles that need to be addressed, and then we can perhaps be better
informed about how to divide up and target, because there will be areas.
As you pointed out, each area is rather wide, and there\'s a lot of
facets to it. And my strong feeling is if we really want to influence
the FCC\'s current activity, we\'ve got to align our activity with the
way they\'re going.

CHAIR ROOKER: Right. Exactly.

MR. SEAGRIFF: And along the way, address the rural issues, address the
disability issues, address the issues of this wide variety of
stakeholders that they\'ve consciously assembled to help them deliberate
about these very issues.

CHAIR ROOKER: Right.

MR. SEAGRIFF: If we can get that information ‑‑

CHAIR ROOKER: May I make a suggestion?

MR. SEAGRIFF: Yes.

CHAIR ROOKER: Can we form a broadband working group and let them decide
which issues they take in priority.

MR. SEAGRIFF: Sure, and I\'d like to be on that group.

CHAIR ROOKER: Based upon the docket information that we will get to you
via e‑mail. Does that work? All right. Who would like to be ‑‑ and I\'ll
come back to the people who have their hands up. Ron and Matt are next,
and Susan and ‑‑ let me get a little progress here if I could.

All right. So who wants to work on the broadband working group? Okay.
We\'ve got Eugene, Matt, Cindy, David, sorry. I don\'t even know who I
am. David Poehlman and David Brugger. Two Davids. Okay. And are all you
wanting to be on the broad ‑‑ okay. Vernon, Rich, Ron, Larry, Don and
Debra. Won\'t work. There\'s too many people, and Karen. Okay. I\'ll
tell you what I suggest. I love the interest in this, and it really is a
compelling topic. I think why don\'t we do this? Why don\'t we come up
with the docket information. Is one of you willing to act as the point
person or chair of this? Not to pull the documents together, but to just
coordinate the e‑mails and get people signed up to the various aspects
within this group. Larry would do that. Thank you, Larry. We love people
who volunteer.

Okay. My goodness. I love this. So what you can do is within your own
self, much as Claude was suggesting, you can form some of the working
groups that you want to deal with in terms of broadband, or whatever, or
if you want to work on one issue as a whole group. I think that would be
up to you.

Now I apologize to the people who had their hands up before we were
trying to do this. Ron, you had a comment. You want to stick your hand
up so we can identify you.

MR. MALLARD: Actually, you\'ve kind of answered my question, because
you\'ve given us as a Committee the opportunity to kind of create our
own agenda, and one of those things that I was going to suggest when you
were looking for examples is the protection of consumer ‑‑ customer
service standards for cable modem services offering high speed data. And
that\'s no longer a cable service; therefore, it is outside of the
authority of local governments to provide any kind of protection to
customers, or guarantees of customer service standards. And that\'s
certainly something that the Commission, I\'m sure, is looking into, but
it\'s also a very high agenda for most local governments throughout the
United States.

CHAIR ROOKER: Okay. Thank you. I want to just go over and make sure that
I didn\'t miss anyone who is interested in being in broadband. Let me
just read it now, and if I missed you, holler. Eugene, Matt, Cindy,
David P., David B., Vernon, Rick, Rich, Ron, Larry, Debra, Don and
Karen, and Tom. Okay. All right. That\'s half the group. And Mike, you
have a comment or you want to volunteer for something? Okay. Go ahead.

MR. DUKE: It would be good to form the groups and then let us figure out
where we can best serve, I think. I mean, I would like to serve on the
broadband group, but there\'s quite a few people on that already, but
I\'d also like to know what else is coming up.

CHAIR ROOKER: Well, that\'s what we\'re trying to do. So what do you
suggest? Put you on the spot.

MR. DUKE: Well, yeah. I don\'t know that I have a suggestion at this
point, other than I\'d like to know what the other groups are, so I have
to pick where I want to work.

CHAIR ROOKER: Okay. That\'s what we\'re trying to accomplish today.
Susan, I think you had your hand up a while ago, and I totally ignored
you, and I\'m sorry.

MS. MAZRUI: Actually, you answered my question, so you didn\'t.

CHAIR ROOKER: Okay. All right. Let\'s see. I think Rich had his hand up,
and then Tom.

MR. ELLIS: Shirley, it might make sense in the short term to focus
ourselves by going by what the Commission sees as priorities right now,
rather than bringing all kinds of new issues in. If we want to make a
quick start and then get something done fast, it might make sense to
talk about the things that Margaret discussed this morning ‑‑

CHAIR ROOKER: Right.

MR. ELLIS: ‑‑ that the Commission is seeking input on, and focus on
those initially, and then branch out afterwards on other issues.

CHAIR ROOKER: Okay. I think that makes sense. And yeah, that\'s kind of
where we were focusing here for a minute. Susan.

MS. MAZRUI: Yeah. I\'d like to respond to that. This is Susan Palmer. I
think that\'s a good idea, but I don\'t want to exclude other groups
because I think that there\'s a situation like Vernon brought up where
it\'s not going to fall into what their priorities are, but are very
separate from what we\'re going to see in those four categories.

There\'s a serious issue that I perceive in terms of consumer
participation in the process. I mean, we\'re talking about looking at
the Express, you know, looking at information through that, and that\'s
not accessible. And so I think that that\'s another issue that\'s a
broad one, that\'s not going to be on their priorities, but maybe the
information or the issues around it need to be brought to their
attention, since part of what we\'re doing is bringing to their
attention things they\'re not aware of.

CHAIR ROOKER: Well, would you like to suggest that we do a working group
on this access and the consumer participation?

MS. MAZRUI: Yes. I would say consumer outreach and participation would
be another subcommittee.

CHAIR ROOKER: Okay. Consumer ‑‑

MS. MAZRUI: And I think there are some rural issues that I can\'t speak
to.

CHAIR ROOKER: Okay. Consumer knowledge and participation. Okay. So ‑‑
knowledge and participation? Consumer outreach. Okay. Yes, and you all
brought up some excellent things today I thought during the website
presentation. Okay. Susan, we\'re going to sign you up for that. Who
else? Okay. Hang on a minute. Who else wants to be ‑‑ Linda, David P.
Cheryl, are you signing up for that one, or you want a question? Okay.
Cheryl. Okay. Consumer Outreach and Participation, we\'re looking at
right now. Who else wants to be on that working group? Okay. Mike and
Jim, and who else? Claude. Annette. Okay. All right. Debra. My God,
Debra and Joe. Okay. Okay. Let me see if I\'ve got this.

MR. GOLDBERG: Can I ask a question?

CHAIR ROOKER: Sure.

MR. GOLDBERG: Are those who are signing up interested in including the
complaint process as part of this topic?

CHAIR ROOKER: Well, you know, we did ‑‑ I need to send you back to
review, because Claude chaired a complaint process working group that
came out with some recommendations which were great. And you may want to
go back and review those. They are in the archived website at the FCC
and see what they have done. But yes, then I\'d like to make changes in
their terminology. That\'s the only part that I\'m really concerned
about. So at any rate, that could be something that you would go back
and look at, if you want to set up a complaint form. Should that be part
of the outreach? Okay. Okay. So now let me ‑‑ consumer outreach,
complaints and participation. Okay.

Now let me just go through and see if I\'ve got ‑‑ is anyone else
joining that subcommittee? Okay. Ron and Debra. Is that what you ‑‑

MS. BERLYN: At some point I want to ask a question about what this group
is going to do, because I\'m not sure if it covers one of the topics
adequately.

CHAIR ROOKER: well, go ahead and ask. You\'ve got the microphone.

MS. BERLYN: Well ‑‑

CHAIR ROOKER: No better time.

MS. BERLYN: Commissioner Abernathy this morning talked about consumer
education. She mentioned a specific community of senior citizens, but I
think consumer education generally is critically important for beyond
senior citizens, all consumers. And I\'m not sure whether or not this
working group encompasses that element of outreach, education, ensuring
that consumers have the information they need to make the right choices,
that type of information.

CHAIR ROOKER: I think this is what we\'re discussing, yes.

MS. BERLYN: Okay.

CHAIR ROOKER: Yes. Okay. Now let me go back and recap to make sure that
I\'ve got ‑‑ Andrea, you want to be on that, or you want to ask ‑‑ you
want to be on it? Okay. Andrea, Joy, okay. Tom. My God, I love you.
You\'re wonderful. You had dreams about this? You dreamed that nobody
was going to volunteer. Well, this is great. I mean, look, we\'ll get
this process down right yet. Okay. Let\'s recap on this. We have the
complaints, the consumer complaints, outreach and participation working
group which consists of Andrea, Joy, Tom, Susan, Linda, David P.,
Cheryl, Mike, Jim, Claude, Annette, Debra, Joe and Ron. Did I get it
right? Did I miss you, Rich? Oh. Did I miss anyone? Oh, let\'s see. Wait
a minute. Mike D. Okay. They\'re both Mike D. Mike DelCasino. Mike Del.
We\'ve got two Mikes.

Now let\'s go back. Do we have it? Okay. Rich has a question. Stick your
hand up, Rich. There you go. We\'re training everybody.

MR. ELLIS: Just a comment. It sounds like we\'re sort of starting at one
spectrum and then going back to the old way.

CHAIR ROOKER: I know. I\'m worried about that, but ‑‑

MR. ELLIS: I think we might be closer to what Claude is thinking about.
And maybe what we ought to do is get the broader topics today, and then
appoint somebody to kind of oversee those broad topics, and be in charge
of coming ‑‑

CHAIR ROOKER: Well, that\'s kind of what we\'re doing.

MR. ELLIS: ‑‑ who\'s in charge of coming back next time and saying the
broadband group is going to work on these topics, and the work groups
are these, these, and these.

CHAIR ROOKER: That\'s exactly ‑‑ that is really I think what is going to
have to happen, because you can\'t have all of these people working on
the same issues. And you\'re going to have more than one topic.

MR. ELLIS: Right.

CHAIR ROOKER: That\'s why we\'re going to provide you, for example, with
the information, the docket numbers that was asked for, I think, that
Eugene asked for.

MR. ELLIS: But I think it would be good also as we go through that
process of whittling things down, to keep going back to the strategic
goals of the FCC and say this refers to ‑‑

CHAIR ROOKER: Exactly. Now I need to ask if someone will be the point
person on this committee that would be willing to ‑‑ Joy. Okay. Joy is
going to be our point person. Okay. Yeah.

MS. RAGSDALE: My concern about waiting until the next meeting, July ‑‑

CHAIR ROOKER: We\'re not going to wait. I\'m going to talk about that.

MS. RAGSDALE: In a number of the proceedings, the closing of comment
periods are really now.

CHAIR ROOKER: Exactly. And Joy\'s point is so well taken. We really need
to get moving on this. That\'s why those of you, Joy and Larry who have
agreed to be the point persons for these two working groups, we will get
the docket information to you all. Anything else that you need. The
members ‑‑ okay, yes. Yes, we will get that. Can we get that off to them
via e‑mail within the next day or so? Yeah, next week early in the week.
And your charge is to come up with a list of the issues, and then not
come back to us, but let us put them out over the Internet to the rest
of the group to see who else wants to work on the subgroups. Does that
make sense? You can get some input before the July meeting. That was our
goal, and we\'d really like to have something before the July meeting.

Now, Andrea, you had a question. She\'s over here.

MS. WILLIAMS: Andrea Williams. I guess I\'m a little confused in terms
of what our goal is ‑‑\*\*CHAIR ROOKER: Oh, good.

MS. WILLIAMS: ‑‑ for the next meeting and all these working group,
subcommittee. What is the action item? What do you want us to deliver at
the next meeting?

CHAIR ROOKER: I think that\'s a very good point. What I would hope that
you would do is over the next two weeks, is to set up the items that you
think should be action items, since we ‑‑ I think the education one is
going to be easier than the broadband. I think the broadband is going to
be a real challenge to come up with the action items. Maybe not, I\'m
not ‑‑ I don\'t know, but I would like to see within a two week period
that you all have maybe three of those things that you want to break
into sub‑working groups to address. Let us know what they are, so that
other people on the Committee, if they want to participate, can
participate. Is that possible? Okay. All we need is agreement from Joy
and Larry that that will happen, and that will happen. Okay.

Then within that group, we would like for you to start addressing the
issues that you feel, especially if they are issues that are now before
the FCC, how you feel the comments should come in, what we should be
looking at, what the issues are. If you can get organized enough and do
anything, even to come into recommendations for discussion at our next
Committee meeting. Does that help clarify it?

I don\'t know what the action items are because they\'re going to have
to determine that within the subcommittees, within their working groups.

MS. WILLIAMS: Right. If the Commission ‑‑ I know the issue was brought
up in terms of some of these issues are being before the Commission
right now, I just want to make sure everyone on the working group
understands that the working group cannot make recommendations.

CHAIR ROOKER: That\'s right. They know that.

MS. WILLIAMS: That this will ‑‑ everything will still have to come back
‑‑

CHAIR ROOKER: To July.

MS. WILLIAMS: ‑‑ to July.

CHAIR ROOKER: If there is an issue that is ‑‑ that the comments period
is closing before our July meeting, is it possible, Scott, for us to ‑‑

MS. WILLIAMS: File ex parte.

CHAIR ROOKER: File, yeah. We could. Right?

MR. MARSHALL: Well, we have to have a meeting.

MS. WILLIAMS: We have to have a meeting first.

CHAIR ROOKER: We have a meeting via the Internet. That wouldn\'t
qualify. It would have to be an open meeting, so maybe not.

MR. MARSHALL: Well, theoretically we could have a meeting via Internet.
I ‑‑ it is much more complicated. We\'d have to worry about how to get
the public participation there. Paula indicated that was possible, but
I\'m not sure at this point all of the logistical problems of doing
that.

CHAIR ROOKER: Yeah. So we may not ‑‑

MR. MARSHALL: Even if a comment period closes though between now and
July, if the working groups are able to define the issues they want to
address and start working on recommendations, we can file an ex parte in
July based on what this Full Committee decides that it wants to do,
based on the working group recommendations.

CHAIR ROOKER: See, you all understand the process better than I do.

MR. MARSHALL: I think that would work.

CHAIR ROOKER: Does that answer your question?

MR. MARSHALL: Andrea, is that doable?

CHAIR ROOKER: Who are we asking?

MR. MARSHALL: I was asking Andrea.

CHAIR ROOKER: Andrea.

MS. WILLIAMS: Yeah, that\'s doable.

CHAIR ROOKER: Okay. So our goal would be to come up with the
recommendations that we could discuss in July, and then file, if
necessary, ex parte. Okay. All right. Okay, Larry and then ‑‑

MR. GOLDBERG: Clearly, that would mean that the agenda for July has to
have significant time available to debate draft recommendations.

CHAIR ROOKER: Yes.

MR. MARSHALL: Absolutely.

CHAIR ROOKER: Absolutely.

MR. GOLDBERG: We\'re going to need to spend lots of time doing that.

CHAIR ROOKER: That\'s right.

MR. GOLDBERG: So that at the end of that meeting, we can all, in
essence, vote.

CHAIR ROOKER: You all need to give us adequate notice because we have to
establish the agenda, how far out, Scott?

MR. MARSHALL: About six weeks out.

CHAIR ROOKER: About six weeks out, so you\'re going to have to get
cracking, because time is slipping away here. So you need to come up
with suggestions to the Committee for discussion. You need to let us
know, Scott and me, as soon as you\'ve identified the items. If there\'s
any kind of information or people that you need to come and speak to the
issue before the Committee in July, because there may be something that
you need clarification on from the FCC, for example, or even an outside
expert. So that ‑‑ now, Byron, you had your hand up. Yes, thank you.

MR. ST. CLAIR: Byron St. Clair, National Translator Association. As I
explained earlier, my focus is free over‑the‑ air radio and television
service in rural areas, and I haven\'t heard anything yet where I can
focus in on with the other people. Broadband seems to be ‑ excuse the
pun ‑ too broad. But I wonder if anybody wants to join me in improved
communications in rural areas other than broadband.

CHAIR ROOKER: Well, actually the next thing I was going to ask about was
to follow‑up on Vernon\'s comment, and your comment comes right in
target with what I was going to ask, where Vernon was talking about
issues in rural areas. I think it might be useful, would you be
interested in setting up a working group on issues pertinent to rural
areas, which there may be some crossover to the other working groups,
but that doesn\'t ‑‑ I don\'t think that\'s particularly bad. Vernon.

MR. JAMES: I don\'t see the issue of ruralness as a singular topic, but
a component of each working group.

CHAIR ROOKER: Okay. All right. Now what about Byron\'s comments about
the radio service? That would not really fall under broadband.

MR. JAMES: I would include it in broadband because ‑‑

CHAIR ROOKER: Would you?

MR. JAMES: ‑‑ I think that there are issues that need to be addressed in
how broadband is delivered, and how broadcast, free broadcast is also
delivered. It also ties into spectrum, because we\'re talking wireless.

CHAIR ROOKER: Oh, I see. Okay.

MR. JAMES: As well as wire line.

CHAIR ROOKER: Byron, are you interested in joining the broadband with
perhaps some ‑‑ do you want to do that? So we\'ll put Byron under the
broadband.

MR. ST. CLAIR: If that\'s the way it works the best then, you know, I\'m
new to the group so I follow your guidance as to where to fit me in
best.

CHAIR ROOKER: Yeah. Let\'s see. David, I think you had your hand up.

MR. POEHLMAN: This is David Poehlman with the American Council of the
Blind. My arm must be too short. I\'m trying to see if DVS and audio
description issues, descriptive video issues surrounding digital TV fall
into broadband, because I don\'t think we mentioned that as part of our
agenda for that working group. If not then, you know, we need to find, I
guess, some way to plug that hole.

CHAIR ROOKER: Somebody else comment on that? Don. Larry.

MR. SNOOP: Yeah, Don Snoop. What I think you\'re saying is that you
realize that that\'s all part of the broadcast spectrum, the fact that
SAP and all those various other things are part of the broadcast
spectrum, so they\'re already in there under existing FCC rules. How
it\'s going to be dealt with during the HDTV expansion and various other
things, and the transition from the analog to digital on the broadcast
is a very, very crucial part of that. And that ‑‑ what you\'re looking
for will probably be encapsulated into that. But I think the main focus
should be how we\'re going to deal with the actual use of the spectrum,
and how we\'re going to get cable TV companies, and phone companies, and
various other companies to be able to do this in an efficient manner.

CHAIR ROOKER: Okay. I think, Rich, you had your hand up.

MR. ELLIS: I may be saying what Larry is about to say, which is we\'re
kind of dumping all kinds of things into the broadband bucket that may
not really belong in the broadband bucket.

CHAIR ROOKER: I know.

MR. GOLDBERG: Description issues for both analog and digital TV. I
don\'t really see that as part of the broadband issue. I\'d like there
to be video description in broadband, absolutely. But I think we need to
talk about that also, as a separate working ‑‑

CHAIR ROOKER: What about we set up a working group on video description.
I think that\'s an important issue. What do you think about that?

MR. GOLDBERG: Let Mike ‑‑

CHAIR ROOKER: Mike, do you want to do that?

MR. DUKE: I would like to ‑‑ okay.

CHAIR ROOKER: Okay.

MR. DUKE: I would like to see the ‑‑ at the risk of hearing cries of
oh‑no, the audio information service and video description have a lot of
the same issues. Yes, I would like very much to work with that group,
like for it to include not just DVS‑type issues, but the audio
information services which when the digital radio really gets going, are
going to be looking for a home.

CHAIR ROOKER: Okay. I mean, does that ‑‑ is that some ‑‑ do we have some
people who are interested in doing this? And is that ‑‑ I don\'t know
the technology, so I don\'t know. But we\'ve got Mike Duke, who\'s
interested in this. David P. David, we\'re going to work you to death. I
hope you don\'t have a real job. Larry, are you interested or
commenting?

MR. GOLDBERG: Yes. Well, both. I think that we do need to be a little
bit broader if we\'re going to talk about video description, so it\'s
almost like all ancillary audio services need to be taken on. And
that\'s a good broader topic than perhaps others who would like to join
in too. I don\'t say that we can\'t have a three or more person group,
but if we talk about a larger focus, it might be more ‑‑

CHAIR ROOKER: Okay. So does anyone else want to join that particular
group? Okay. First let me find out, who else wants to be on this ‑‑ and
I don\'t know the technology so you\'ll have to define it for me. I\'m
talking about video description and audio information.

MR. DUKE: What was it Larry called it?

MR. GOLDBERG: Ancillary audio.

MR. DUKE: Yeah.

CHAIR ROOKER: What does that mean?

MR. GOLDBERG: It means all other forms of audio that\'s not part of the
‑‑

CHAIR ROOKER: It\'s Friday afternoon. Can you spell it?

MR. GOLDBERG: A‑N‑C‑I ‑‑

CHAIR ROOKER: I know how to spell it.

(Laughter.)

CHAIR ROOKER: I don\'t know what it is, but I can spell it. All right.
We\'re going to have a working group on ancillary audio. I love that.
All right. Now do I see hands of people who want to join that working
group? Mike, I\'ve got you down, Mike Duke, David P., Larry. All right.

MR. SEAGRIFF: I\'d like to suggest a clarification, if I may.

CHAIR ROOKER: All right.

MR. SEAGRIFF: Larry, should captioning be in that basket?

MR. GOLDBERG: Not necessarily.

MR. SEAGRIFF: Because these are the things that have pass‑through
problems, the way I\'m looking at it.

MR. GOLDBERG: So you really want to talk about ancillary services.

MR. SEAGRIFF: Right. Which has ‑‑

MR. GOLDBERG: Not it\'s not just broadband only.

MR. SEAGRIFF: Which historically have had pass‑through problems, and are
not being thought about in a lot of new media.

MR. GOLDBERG: Ancillary data service. Well, anyone who\'s interested in
V‑chip should join into that, because that\'s absolutely a concern.

CHAIR ROOKER: All right. And who else does that bring in? Byron, are you
interested in that?

MR. ST. CLAIR: First off, I think we need to broaden it because there\'s
not just ancillary audio services. With the coming of digital
television, a lot of extra services can be slid in and delivered, and it
seems to me there\'s a much broader picture here that needs to be
addressed.

CHAIR ROOKER: Well, let\'s try to keep ourselves ‑‑

MR. ST. CLAIR: Yeah, ancillary services in general.

CHAIR ROOKER: Okay. All right. Are you interested in joining that?

MR. ST. CLAIR: Yes.

CHAIR ROOKER: Okay. So Byron. Right now on that we have Mike Duke, David
P., Larry and Byron.

MS. KIRSCH: Shirley, since I am a representative from the National
Association of Broadcasters, I think my expertise would be better spent
on that.

CHAIR ROOKER: You could do both.

MS. KIRSCH: I will just take one. I\'d like to be off of the broadband.

CHAIR ROOKER: All right. We\'ll take Karen off of broadband and put her
on the ancillary services. Okay. All right. Who else? Anyone else? Are
you all volunteering? Okay. We\'ve got Eugene and Vernon. Okay. Anyone
else? All right. I like you folks. Vernon. I\'m doing video description
for Scott. That\'s okay. So we\'ve got on that Mike Duke, Eugene,
Vernon, David P., Larry, Byron and Karen. Who wants to be the point
person on that? I want a hand to go up there. Larry\'s already doing
something. You\'re not getting out of this room. I\'m going to lock the
door. All right. Who\'s on it? Mike Duke, Eugene, audio, my notes are so
bad. Mike Duke, Eugene, Vernon, David P., Larry, Byron and Karen.
Please, we need one person to just say that they will see that things
get started and do e‑mail. Eugene, bless you. Love it. Love it.

Okay. Now as far as the TRS is concerned, we have Dixie, Rebecca and
Joe. Can we get Brenda or Joe to be the point person on that? One of you
going to volunteer. Brenda, bless you. All right.

Well, I think this is a rather ambitious undertaking. We\'ve got four
different working groups. Claude, yes. I\'m sorry. Go ahead.

MR. STOUT: And I will also join that TRS group, if you don\'t mind.

CHAIR ROOKER: Okay. Super. Yes. So we put Claude on there. Okay. Super.
Yes, that is a good group. I\'m proud of you all. Thank you. Unlock the
doors now, please. Yes, Vernon and Tom, I think you had a comment. You
actually had your hand up first. Stick your hand over here so they see.
Over here. Okay.

MR. ALLIBONE: I\'ve got a question going back to the original Consumer
Complaint Outreach Education Group, just to make sure, a clarification
for me on that with respect to the broadness of what we are going to be
looking at.

CHAIR ROOKER: Yeah.

MR. ALLIBONE: We didn\'t talk about ‑‑ I want to know whether we would
fit phone bill‑type issues into that?

CHAIR ROOKER: I would think so, yes.

MR. ALLIBONE: And consumer protection, as well?

CHAIR ROOKER: Yes.

MR. ALLIBONE: Excellent.

CHAIR ROOKER: Okay. Then Vernon had ‑‑ well, you\'re going to have to
define yourself and get some smaller working groups, and then let us
know what they are, because that\'s too many people for working groups.
You won\'t get anything done. But you can divide it up on your subjects.
I mean, we\'re not dictating to you what you\'re supposed to come up
with. I\'m just telling you the process. So, Vernon, you had a comment.

MR. JAMES: Thank you, Shirley. One of the goals that was identified on
the FCC sheet is spectrum, and I think that\'s an important issue that
needs to be talked about. There are a lot of complications and a lot of
concerns as it relates to rural America and Indian reservations.

CHAIR ROOKER: Okay. Would you like to make that an agenda item? Is that
what you\'re saying? You think we should be making that a working group,
or I\'m not quite clear on ‑‑

MR. JAMES: I\'m just saying that it ought to be a working group.

CHAIR ROOKER: Okay. Can we ‑‑ because we\'ve got so much going on right
now, can we put off, can we do that and form it in July, because we may
have ‑‑ some of these working groups may be that they are not going to
last beyond then. I mean, we don\'t know yet. Would that be acceptable
to you?

MR. JAMES: I think so.

CHAIR ROOKER: I mean, I\'m not trying to delay you, but we\'ve got four
groups here. I just don\'t want to see the Committee divided up so
badly, but if there are people who are interested in doing it, we can
set it up. That\'s not a problem. So let\'s take Vernon\'s suggestion.
Are there those of you who would like to work on this in terms of
spectrum? Is there any reason why we can\'t do that? We\'ll do another
one. Yeah. Some of it I think is going to be more long range. What
we\'ll probably have to identify for July are the issues that are
critical, particularly in terms of comments before the FCC, so we will
have to do some prioritizing in terms of the agenda items, but that
doesn\'t stop us from working on the issues. So who else would like to
be on the spectrum? We\'ve got Vernon.

MR. JAMES: Shirley, maybe you ought to ask if this is an interest area
for ‑‑

CHAIR ROOKER: Well, I think so. We\'ve got hands going up.

MS. WILLIAMS: I have a question.

CHAIR ROOKER: Okay, question.

MS. WILLIAMS: Andrea Williams. Well, it\'s more of a comment to make.
With spectrum management, Vernon, I can assure you it\'s going to be
around for a while. I\'ve been working in wireless now for 9 years, and
when I started in \`92, we were talking about spectrum, and we\'re still
talking about spectrum.

I think where the FCC is at this right now in terms of spectrum
management is finding those bands where we can get additional spectrum.
I don\'t think they\'re ready yet at the point where I would say in
terms of consumers, particularly in terms of auctioning the spectrum. I
think first right now what they\'re trying to do is identify where that
spectrum is, how they\'re going to move people who are in that part of
the band out, or how they\'re going to relocate them, how they\'re going
to deal with that spectrum that the Department of Defense wants in the
commercial, and then the next phase will be once they have identified
that spectrum, how should it be used? And I think that is a point where
this Committee could really help the Commission in terms of how
different interests would like to see that spectrum used. I\'m sure
Karen is going to want the spectrum used for some of her constituency. I
know my constituency is going to want to see the spectrum used in
certain ways. There are certain things I\'m sure your constituency is
going to want that spectrum used, and what the rules should be in terms
of once you get to that. So I would like to, if you don\'t mind, Vernon,
if we could defer that working group to a point where I think it would
be more effective.

CHAIR ROOKER: I\'m sitting here. Karen, do you have a comment on this?

MS. KIRSCH: Yes. Andrea, you did a very good job trying to explain, or
explaining part of what the FCC is doing with this whole issue of
spectrum. If I could add another thing. It\'s very technical in nature.
Another thing that they\'re looking at is taking a look at the current
uses of spectrum, and seeing if maybe they can lessen the interference
criteria. And it\'s just really involved, and I think Andrea is right,
that right now it\'s so technical in nature, there really isn\'t a
consumer component, but there will be once they get this technical, some
of these technical issues ironed out.

CHAIR ROOKER: Okay. Vernon.

MR. JAMES: Vernon James. I understand what you\'re saying, but believe
me, there is an issue here that concerns much of rural America. Rural
America was left out of the spectrum acquisition process, and as a
result has a lot of problems as it relates to spectrum. And there\'s no
doubt that wireless, as far as part of the spectrum, is a hot issue. And
I just would want ‑ ‑ I think I\'d be remiss if I didn\'t bring this
issue up on the table, as far as consumers who live in rural America.
That\'s my purpose.

CHAIR ROOKER: Larry.

MR. GOLDBERG: I have a suggestion. One might be that at the next meeting
in July we do have an expert in to talk to us about spectrum management,
and issues particularly around rural.

CHAIR ROOKER: I think that\'s an excellent suggestions.

MR. GOLDBERG: So I don\'t think I understand much of what you are
talking about.

CHAIR ROOKER: I don\'t either.

MR. GOLDBERG: And it is a complex issue, but I know that there are
consumer issues, because there\'ll be a gold rush for some of that
spectrum once the technical issues are cleared up, and consumers will
want some of that.

MS. WILLIAMS: That\'S what I was talking ‑‑ this is Andrea Williams, in
terms of the next phase, in terms of the auctioning part of that
spectrum. That\'s where I see ‑‑ again, I agree. I think we\'re
agreeing, Vernon, that that\'s the area where this Committee could
really provide some ‑‑ give the FCC\'s perception of okay, we\'ve
identified all the technical parameters. These are the bands that we\'re
going to be able to use. Now Commissioners, you are ‑‑ as you\'re
considering what the rules should be to use that spectrum, you may want
to consider if someone is going to purchase X amount of spectrum, how is
that going to serve rural America?

CHAIR ROOKER: Can we just go back to Larry\'s suggestion and see how
that sits with you, Vernon, that we have someone come in and do this in
July, with a pledge that we will take it from there. I\'m not trying to
forestall you because I really understand your need, and you want to do
that. Does that work? Okay. If you ‑‑ now I\'ll press ahead with a
working group if you want me to.

MR. JAMES: No.

CHAIR ROOKER: Okay. All right. So we will make that an agenda item for
our July meeting. We will get someone in to come in and talk about it so
that even I can understand it. And that\'s a challenge to you, Scott,
there. All right. Eugene, and then we\'ve got to wind up here.

MR. SEAGRIFF: Yes. Similar to spectrum, another issue that was on
Margaret\'s list that maybe we can\'t fit into anything that currently
exists is E‑911 issues.

CHAIR ROOKER: Yeah.

MR. SEAGRIFF: I don\'t know if we want to establish a group, or we want
to hold off on that until after July. I just wanted ‑‑

CHAIR ROOKER: I know that\'s a very important issue. I ‑‑ do you think
that we can do this in July? This is going to be with us for a while.
Yeah. I think we need to ‑‑ I mean, we can set up something in July if
we want to look at that.

MR. MARSHALL: July is only two months away.

CHAIR ROOKER: That\'s right, it\'s two months away. Got your work cut
out for you. Okay. Folks, Brenda, this is going to be the last one.

MS. KELLY‑FREY: Hello, this is Brenda. I\'m curious to find out whether
outsiders can participate in these working groups, or is it just limited
to the committee members?

CHAIR ROOKER: No, outsiders can participate. Just let us know who\'s
participating. I mean, these are really open public discussions open to
anyone.

All right. I want to thank you. You\'ve done a yeoman\'s job today. I\'m
very excited about it. I like the energy. I like the ideas that I hear
coming from you, so thank you all very, very much. It\'s now the time
where we accept comments from the public, so I\'d like to open the
microphones to anyone who might be with us, who has patiently waited,
that would like to say something to the Committee. We do not have anyone
who wants to make comments.

Well, thank all of you very much. We\'ve got a lot of work. I think
it\'s going to be fun. I hope you enjoy it, and I hope you have a
wonderful week. Yes, Joy. Those will be coming out to you next week.
Yes, early hopefully. As early as possible next week. Okay. Thank you
all very, very much.

(Whereupon, the proceeding in the above‑entitled matter went off the
record at 4:29:37 p.m.)