He did however, forge better connections between the tech industry and the FCC and managed to stop a merger that would have certainly hurt consumers. He also tried to make more wireless spectrum available — taking on the powerful broadcast industry to do so. But instead of listing his achievements and capitulations, I dug up a list that my colleague Om Malik and I wrote back in 2009 when he was named to the role.

In the post we told him what he needed to focus on during his tenure. Now, it’s time to look back and see what he has accomplished.

FCC Chairman Julis Genachowski

A focus on one key metric for all FCC decisions — namely returning the U.S. to the global forefront of Internet and mobile technology: On the mobile side, the chairman focused on LTE deployments and getting more airwaves for mobile broadband. And U.S. carriers have already deployed LTE networks ahead of many other countries. On the wireline side, it’s a bit mixed. Broadband caps and a lack of wide scale fiber to the home projects are keeping the U.S. far from the top in international rankings. According to the most recent (June 2012) OECD reports, the U.S. isn’t tops in terms of average or median advertised speeds. We were No. 1 in terms of connections, however. Grade: C+

An emphasis on future technologies (mostly wireless) that boost marketplace competition: Here the FCC has done a lot, despite political and unexpected technical hindrances. Genachowski’s FCC attempted to create a wholesale 4G network using satellite airwaves only to see that idea flail as interference with GPS spectrum was discovered. He also stopped a merger between AT&T and T-Mobile that was not in consumers’ best interests while also pushing for more spectrum and setting in motion an incentive auction that could provide airwaves for the carriers as well as for unlicensed broadband. Grade: B

Special incentives to attract new players (and not older companies) that bring broadband to the masses : Genachowski hasn’t done much here except issue press releases, but others have stepped up including Google and Gigabit Squared to bring gigabit fiber broadband to a few cities. Grade: B-

Tax credits for widespread deployment of broadband speeds of upwards of 20 Mbps down and 10 Mbps up for less than $50 a month without caps: That’s not happening. Grade: F

Better and more connectivity to office buildings, especially from newer players: While companies like Webpass or Sonic.net continue to deploy faster services in more places, business broadband wasn’t an issue the FCC has touched. Grade: F

An IP-centric, rather than voice-centric, approach to reforming the Universal Service Fund: This is a thankless task, but the FCC has started on the road to an all-IP world first with universal service fund reforms as well as a current debate on how to make the transition to an all-IP world, as well as what rules the agency should enforce. Grade: B

FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski.

An understanding that Google, and other web companies, are not the consumer’s friend, so their agenda shouldn’t automatically be trusted: Politics is a sport for big boys and Genachowski’s FCC was pretty transparent in pitting Google and other tech companies against the cable guys and the telcos and assuming that the resulting middle ground was an okay place for consumers. Grade: D

Final summary

All in all, Genachowski spent a lot of time on wireless, believing that to be an area where the FCC had room and regulatory authority to add capacity and improve competition. He was utterly neglectful on the wireline side, not doing much to strengthen competition, or even address issues such as caps and the virtual standstill on investment in rural areas. He also exits an agency that is weaker on the regulatory front than when he started and may end up weakening it further depending on the rulings in the network neutrality case.

He did start the arduous process of reforming the telecommunications regulatory regime to reflect the IP-based future and tackled universal service fund reform. Without a successor named yet, it’s hard to say what the next priorities will be for the FCC, but bringing off a successful auction of airwaves taken from the broadcast industry will be on the agenda as will the issue of how to regulate (and transition to) an all-IP telecommunications network.

Meanwhile, consumer issues such as the high cost of broadband, data caps and the eventual fate of network neutrality are all issues that may or may not change regardless of the new chair. The more things change, the more things still manage to stay the same.

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President Obama nominated Genachowski to the commission in 2009, where he oversaw some fairly momentous -– and controversial — FCC actions: the creation of the National Broadband Plan, the quashing of AT&T-Mo and the approval of Verizon’s plan to cooperate with the cable companies on residential broadband.

Here’s the full text of Genachowski’s statement:

“Over the past four years, we’ve focused the FCC on broadband, wired and wireless, working to drive economic growth and improve the lives of all Americans. And thanks to you, the Commission’s employees, we’ve taken big steps to build a future where broadband is ubiquitous and bandwidth is abundant, where innovation and investment are flourishing.

“To connect all Americans to broadband, we adopted a landmark overhaul of multi-billion dollar universal service programs, modernizing them from telephone to broadband and creating the Connect America Fund and the Mobility Fund, an unprecedented commitment to broadband infrastructure.

“To unleash the enormous opportunities of mobile, we pioneered incentive auctions and other cutting-edge spectrum policies.

“To fuel America’s innovation economy, we put in place the first rules to preserve Internet freedom and openness.
“To drive competition and empower consumers, we opposed and modified transactions where necessary, deployed technology to drive transparency, and took unprecedented enforcement actions.

“We helped harness the power of digital technologies to give students a better chance, people better health care, and make Americans safer in their homes and communities, while also guarding against digital threats and strengthening cybersecurity.

“Today, America’s broadband economy is thriving, with record-setting private investment; unparalleled innovation in networks, devices and apps; and renewed U.S. leadership around the world.

“While there are challenges ahead in this fast-moving, globally competitive sector, a revitalized FCC is prepared to continue taking them on. I’m deeply grateful to President Obama for his vision, friendship, and the opportunity to serve our country.

“I’m proud of what we’ve done together to harness technology to advance the American dream for the 21st century. I know you’ll continue to fight hard to fulfill this agency’s vital mission, and I look forward to continuing to work together until my last day at the agency, and to count you as family and as an inspiration for long after that.”

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Update: A spokesman from the FCC Chairman’s office declined to comment on the Journal story.

Genachowski replaced Kevin Martin (and interim FCC chairman Michael Copps) in 2009 after being nominated by Obama. Genachowski worked on Obama’s first presidential campaign as chairperson of his Technology, Media and Telecommunications Policy Working Group. The working group germinated the seeds of Obama’s National Broadband Plan, which Genachowski oversaw when he took over the reins of the commission.

Since then Genachowski has been in the spotlight on many occasions, advocating the need for more cellular spectrum and proposing the reallocation of TV airwaves for mobile broadband use. Some of those spectrum proposals, however, landed Genachowski and the commission in hot water, such as the conditional waiver -– later retracted — they granted LightSquared to use its satellite spectrum for a terrestrial LTE network.

Perhaps the most controversial period of his tenure, though, was the nearly one year that the FCC weighed and eventually quashed AT&T’s planned acquisition of T-Mobile. The decision is considered a victory for the competitive market and consumer choice after a long period of unfettered consolidation in the telecom industry.

Not all of the commission’s decisions have been so consumer friendly under Genachowski. The commission let pass Verizon’s spectrum deal with the cable operators, which has big implications for competition in the residential broadband market.

Genachowski’s retirement, if true, doesn’t come as a huge surprise. News reports have indicated that the forthcoming departure of Republican FCC Commissioner Robert McDowell clears the way for Genachowski’s departure as well, as it leaves the commission with a 2-1 Democratic majority.

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Last month at CES, FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski announced that the commission was moving forward with a plan to clear 195 MHz of spectrum in the 5 GHz band for Wi-Fi use. Those new frequencies, however, abut the 5.9 GHz airwaves the government has set aside for future vehicle-to-vehicle communications networks.

On Monday, the Intelligent Transportation Society of America (ITSA) sent a letter to the FCC — signed by a veritable who’s who in the transportation industry such as AAA, Chrysler, Mercedes-Benz and Hyundai  – warning the FCC of the potential for these new Wi-Fi networks to interfere with the wireless transmissions between connected cars.

“We support efforts to identify spectrum that may be utilized to expand Wi-Fi applications,” ISTA said in a statement. “But with over 30,000 deaths on our nation’s roads every year, we also believe it is critical that efforts to open up additional spectrum do not come at the expense of revolutionary life-saving technologies.”

As we’ve described before, the auto industry and the U.S. Department of Transportation have big plans to use a highly secure variant of Wi-Fi technology to network vehicles on the road, allowing them to share information about their trajectories, speed, accelerating and braking — even their destinations. These massive ad-hoc networks would allow cars to get early warning of highway conditions, react automatically to avoid accidents and eventually allow cars to coordinate their driving, making them semi-or even fully-autonomous vehicles. (See GigaOM’s infographic on the connected car of the future.)

If the commercial Wi-Fi signals were to bleed out into the protected Wi-Fi signals of the car network, the letter said, the public safety and transportation management benefits of the network could be nullified — along with the hundreds of millions of dollars automakers and the government have invested in developing the technology. The auto industry doesn’t want the FCC’s Wi-Fi plan stopped, but it did ask regulators to guarantee that safeguards would be in place ensuring that such interference doesn’t occur.

That might be easier said then done. Interference issues have killed more than one big spectrum proposal as LightSquared can attest. In this case, the cars and the Wi-Fi devices would be using short-range wireless technologies, which might help mitigate interference issues. But as anyone who has ever turned on their smartphone’s Wi-Fi radio in a car knows, you can pick up a Wi-Fi signal almost anywhere. And as outdoor Wi-Fi deployments become more prevalent, those signals are only going to get more powerful.

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That may seem like an enormous amount but keep in mind 555 MHz of 5 GHz and 83.5 MHz of 2.4 GHz spectrum is available for Wi-Fi use in the U.S. today. Still nearly 200 MHz of new pristine airwaves is nothing to scoff at, and it will be needed as Wi-Fi becomes even more ubiquitous in gadgets and as newer wireless networking technologies hunt for ever-bigger blocks of spectrum. It’s the largest allocation of unlicensed spectrum the FCC has made since doubled the capacity of the 5 GHz band in 2003.

“We all know the frustration of Wi-Fi congestion at conferences and airports,” Genachowski said in an FCC statement. “Today, the FCC is moving to bring increased speed and capacity to Wi-Fi networks by increasing the amount of unlicensed spectrum for Wi-Fi. As this spectrum comes on line, we expect it to relieve congested Wi-Fi networks at major hubs like convention centers and airports. It will also help in homes as tablets and smartphones proliferate and video use rises.”

The FCC will launch a proceeding next month, and while there’s no timeline on when the spectrum might become available, Genachowski said he will “move expeditiously” to work with government agencies to clear the spectrum of its current federal and non-federal users.

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When the FCC instituted the rules last year, Verizon protested vehemently against them, arguing they were unnecessary regulation and that carriers should be free to strike up roaming contracts with whomever they pleased. The court, however, sided with the commission and carrier groups that backed it.

After the ruling Verizon issued the following statement: “Today’s ruling upheld rules that require carriers to offer data roaming on commercially reasonable terms. As we made clear throughout the case, Verizon Wireless regularly enters into such data roaming agreements on commercially reasonable terms to meet the needs of consumers, and will continue to do so.”

As you might expect, FCC chairman Julius Genachowski hailed the decision, as his was one of three Democratic votes that put the rules in place. “This unanimous decision confirms the FCC’s authority to promote broadband competition and protect broadband consumers,” Genachowski said in a statement. “Our rules have empowered consumers and expanded their ability to enjoy the benefits of seamless and nationwide access to mobile data services, including wireless Internet and e-mail.”

The rules state that rural or regional operator that wants to get access to any of the nationwide operators’ 3G and 4G networks are guaranteed access on “commercially reasonable terms,” though they’re not very specific on what constitutes reasonable. Theoretically carriers should be able to use such roaming deals to offer nationwide data service just they use such contracts for nationwide voice service. While there may be no regulatory barriers to those deals there are certainly technology ones.

Steve Berry, CEO of the Competitive Carriers Association, said the unanimous decision from the appeals court was a good sign that the FCC’s efforts to promote more mobile competition will have backing from all corners of government.

“CCA and our members have worked long and hard to successfully prosecute the Data Roaming Order since its inception to intervening in support of the Commission before the court,” Berry said in a statement. “This is a decisive victory for consumers and an extremely positive outcome for competitive carriers and competitive policies.”

In other regulatory news, Dish Network appears to have acquiesced to FCC pressure that set aside some of its satellite spectrum if it wants to get permission to use it for a terrestrial 4G network. FierceWireless reports that Dish is now willing to set aside 5 MHz of its total 40 MHz for a “guard band” against interference and nearby cellular spectrum. Only last month was Dish railing against the proposed limitations on its licenses.

Photo courtesy of Flickruser [steakpinball].

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According to Dish, that would put a severe damper on its ability to deploy a viable commercial 4G service and limit its ability to secure devices. Consequently, Dish isn’t happy, and it immediately began decrying the chairman’s proposal, heading it off before it goes to the full commission after the Thanksgiving break. Here’s what Dish EVP and general counsel R. Stanton Dodge had to say in a statement:

“While the FCC’s proposed order, based on reported accounts, does properly address some of the opportunities with this spectrum, it’s significantly flawed by introducing serious limitations that impair its utility. While the FCC would grant full terrestrial rights, its proposal to lower our power and emissions levels could cripple our ability to enter the business.

“The good news is that this proposed order is not final and we urge Chairman Genachowski and the Commissioners to recognize that the DISH plan delivers on the greatest public interest – the most investment, the most jobs and the most spectrum.”

Whether Dish really deploys a network or merely plans to flip its newly 4G-ified spectrum for a quick profit remains to be seem, though there has been some recent noise about the possibility of Google taking an interest in any Dish LTE venture.

The big point of contention is a block of spectrum adjacent to Dish known as the PCS H-block. The FCC plans to auction off this hunk of frequencies, and Sprint has high hopes of winning it to boost the capacity of the LTE network it’s deploying today. Sprint has lobbied the FCC to put limits on Dish’s spectrum in order to prevent interference with the H-block it so covets. Apparently Sprint is getting its wish.

The FCC didn’t reveal any details of the proposal, but it seems to be taking the position that Genachowski proposal — while not pleasing everyone — will clear the most spectrum for mobile broadband use as well as raise the most money for federal coffers.

“Chairman Julius Genachowski today shared proposals with his colleagues that will unleash up to 50MHz of spectrum for mobile broadband, including LTE,” FCC spokesman Neil Grace said in a statement. “If approved, these actions will promote competition, investment and innovation, and advance Commission efforts to unleash spectrum for mobile broadband to help meet skyrocketing consumer demand, while unlocking billions of dollars of value to the public.”

Dish photo courtesy of (CC BY 2.0) Flickr user Dave Lindblom.

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However, underlying the statistics are numbers that tell a far different story: in fact, there was a dramaticslowdown in wireless traffic growth during the first half of 2012. Of course, CTIA doesn’t want anyone to realize that, because it is significantly at variance with CTIA’s narrative of an impending “spectrum crunch”into which so much lobbying effort has been invested.

The CTIA press release only quotes total wireless data traffic within the US during the previous 12 months upto June 2012 for a total of 1.16 trillion megabytes, but doesn’t give statistics for data traffic in each individual six-month period. That information, however, can be calculated from previous press releases (whichshow total traffic in the first six months of 2012 was 635 billion MB, compared to 525 billion MB in the final six months of 2011).

Counter to the CTIA’s spin, this represents growth of just 21 percent, a dramatic slowdown from the 54 percent growth in total traffic seen between the first and second half of 2011. Even more remarkably, on a per device basis (based on the CTIA’s total number of smartphones, tablets, laptops and modems, of which 131M were in use at the end of June), the first half of 2012 saw an increase of merely 3 percent in average wireless data traffic per cellphone-network connected device, compared to 29 percent growth between the first and second half of 2011 (and 20-plus percent in prior periods).

Data from Sandvine appears to confirm this slowdown, estimating mean monthly usage per mobile device in North America has fallen by 10 percent since October 2011. To be clear, these figures indicate that device owners have effectively plateaued in their consumption of cell-based data—which seems to fly in the face of conventional wisdom, informed by near constant hype of runaway data consumption by mobile consumers.

What was the cause of this dramatic slowdown in traffic growth? We can’t yet say with complete confidence, but it’s not an extravagant leap of logic to connect it with the widely announced adoption of data caps by the major wireless providers in the spring of 2012. It’s understandable that consumers would become skittish about data consumption and seek out free WiFi alternatives whenever possible. And there’s anecdotal evidence that supports the hypothesis.

For instance, in January the Wall Street Journal first reported on wireless users “shutting off their WiFi option … because constantly searching for a signal can eat up battery life.” But then by March, we were told about new iPad buyers who had started to stream March Madness games in HD only to find out the next day they were “out of gas.” In retrospect both of those stories seem laughable, since offloading traffic to Wi-Fi has become de rigueur for savvy cellular users.

Of course, such changes in behavior may not continue indefinitely, but it seems a fair bet that while caps remain a concern, end users will limit their on-network wireless data usage to a much lower level than is necessary simply to stay within their monthly cap. In addition, as others have noted, the penetration of smartphones is approaching saturation, so we can’t count on growth in the number of devices to pick up the slack.

If continued, the implications of much slower growth in on-net wireless data traffic will be profound. If traffic per device only grows at around 3 percent in the second half of this year, then overall data traffic on cellular network for all of 2012 will be up only about 60 percent on 2011— or about half the widely quoted growth forecast by Cisco. Further, Cisco justifies that number based on the assumption that the “move to tiered pricing does not appear to have an immediate effect on overall mobile data traffic.”In other words, Cisco is making what is essentially an open loop forecast of demand, unconstrained by what customers will be willing and able to afford in the real world.

Those dubious Cisco data points are widely quoted, and especially so by those trying to scare us into thinking that we face a so-called spectrum crunch—a bandwagon that CTIA has all too happily promoted. Even such luminaries as FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski has stated in recent speeches that we are at a crisis point, claiming “U.S. mobile data traffic grew almost 300 percent last year” —while CTIA says it was less than half that, at 123 percent. “There were many skeptics [back in 2009] about whether we faced a spectrum crunch. Today virtually every expert confirms it.”

Perhaps therefore we need to take a step back and think about the motivations of those who are telling us of the need for more licensed spectrum because of a purported looming spectrum crunch. Most obviously, Cisco would certainly like to sell more hardware. Large wireless operators, such as AT&T and Verizon clearly don’t want the FCC to impose caps on their spectrum holdings. Small wireless operators want more spectrum to be made available to lower the cost of network expansion.

Those who have made speculative investments in spectrum want their investors to believe these assets will become more valuable. Even the FCC would like you to believe that their “progress in mobile is driving new waves of job creation and investment.” It seems likely that the emperor really does have no clothes. We’ll have to wait to see whether wireless data traffic in licensed spectrum bands will actually meet or fall short of Cisco’s seemingly over-optimistic projections. And perhaps the leading wireless operators will be forced to soften their data caps by consumer pressure and competition from operators offering unlimited data.

However, given the dominance of Verizon and AT&T, neither seems particularly plausible in the current US wireless market. It seems rather more likely that consumers will adapt to a world of offloading instead, so that wide-area cellular networks will de facto become the backup solution for whenever short range solutions such as Wi-Fi aren’t available.

Even before the recent publicity about data caps, Wi-Fi offload was growing far faster than cellular data traffic, and according to the July 2012 PCAST report, one major carrier now claims to be offloading “more than half of its smartphone traffic onto Wi-Fi.” As the PCAST report also recognizes, low power solutions like Wi-Fi will allow spectrum re-use to increase dramatically, “from 900 to as much as 1.3 million times more than a fixed, large cell-based architecture can provide.”

Then perhaps we will realize, as others have notably pointed out, that “there is no more scarcity of wireless spectrum than there is a shortage of, say, the color purple.”

Tim Farrar is President of Telecom, Media and Finance Associates, a consulting and research firm in Menlo Park, Calif., which specializes in technical and financial analysis across the satellite and telecom sectors. 

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As I’ve explained in previous posts, the big problem with WCS was the potential interference a high-powered cellular network would wreck upon Sirius XM’s neighboring satellite radio signals. But AT&T and Sirius hashed out a compromise that would turn 10 MHz of the WCS airwaves into a guard bands on either side of Sirius’s spectrum, ensuring that Ozzy’s Boneyard and Howard Stern would remain protected from AT&T terrestrial mobile data signals. AT&T is then left with 20 MHz of spectrum free and clear.

The only remaining obstacle for AT&T is to consolidate the remaining WCS airwaves still owned by other operators. For Ma Bell’s plan to work it effectively has to own the entire spectrum band.

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Genachowski’s prepared remarks on Tuesday focused on how competitive the U.S. isn’t when it comes to global broadband rankings, unless we’re talking about mobile, which the U.S. is rocking at because we have the most subscribers on LTE networks. The speech covered the basics of this administration’s efforts in broadband — highlighting the importance of spectrum, praising network neutrality rules that the administration implemented in 2010 and noting that investment in networks has not fallen because of them and paying lip service to the need for the FCC to ensure that broadband markets remain competitive through “light-touch” regulation.

Where it got interesting was when Genachowski appeared to admit something we said two and half years ago — that his plan to cover 100 million homes with speeds of 100 Mbps or more by 2020 was a pretty low bar. Now he is calling for faster speeds because when compared with the rest of the world 100 Mbps is fairly middle of the road.

He then called for faster broadband and lauded the creation of faster gigabit networks being built in Kansas City by Google and the creation of an all fiber-to-the-home network in Chattanooga, Tenn. But because he’s still doing the “Julius shuffle” he stopped short of calling on cable companies and telcos to deploy gigabit networks. He also called for higher-capacity pipes so everyone in a multi-person home could download video or partake of high speed internet services, but didn’t mention issues like data caps which could stifle such household use of HD video. Finally he called for ubiquitous broadband that would incorporate mobile and wireline access.

His speech, combined with questions the FCC sent out in August relating to how it measures broadband have me wondering if we’ll soon see a more nuanced series of metrics for measuring broadband. Right now speed is pretty much the sole arbiter of broadband — if you offer 4 Mbps down and 1 Mbps up you provide broadband.

But under the new broadband math, it appears that the FCC is saying that speed isn’t enough and that maybe that speed isn’t even all that impressive when considering the applications people want to run over these networks. Perhaps the FCC is ready to think about whether a 30 Mbps service that comes with a 100 GB a month cap should count as broadband. It’s certainly asking if such a service should rank equally with a 30 Mbps uncapped service in its notice of inquiry from August.

Already the comments from consumers and the industry in response to the FCC’s questions has elicited the usual arguments with ISPs saying that the FCC should stop saying the U.S. isn’t deploying broadband in a reasonable and timely fashion and pointing out that places like New York have 300 Mbps service from cable and fiber to the home from Verizon, while ignoring that there are still plenty of areas where a consumer can only choose between 3 or 6 Mbps DSL and a capped cable subscription. Satellite providers are understandably leery of classifying broadband at speeds that might be higher than their services could deliver, while consumers spent a lot of timing pointing out that caps are a huge problem.

If the FCC does take a look at raising or looking at different broadband metrics, I wonder if price might also factor into play. In one line of his speech Genachowski pointed out that americans tend to subscribe to lower speed tiers than their counterparts in Japan and Korea and wondered if higher prices for broadband might be to blame. For a regulator so adept at doing the “Julius shuffle”, such a comment seemed pretty aggressive, although short of more competition it’s unclear how pricing could possible change.

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