WASHINGTON — President-elect Donald Trump has added some populist pop to his Federal Communications Commission “landing” team as he prepares to remake the agency come Inauguration Day (Jan. 20).

Trump will get to pick a new chairman, and, if he chooses one of the agency’s two current Republicans for that post, one new GOP and one Democratic commissioner as well.

The newest, fourth member of the FCC transition team is David Morken, the co-founder and CEO of Republic Wireless parent company Bandwidth.com. Last month, Roslyn Layton, a visiting fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, joined fellow conservative think tank alumni Jeff Eisenach and Mark Jamison on the team providing input on new FCC leadership.

Bandwidth.com built its wireless business on the theory that WiFi could serve as the primary network and a cellular network, specifically Sprint’s, as backup, which would allow it to charge less — $19 per month with no contract.

Morken combines several life experiences that appear to hold a lot of weight with the incoming president and could apply to the tenor of the new commission. He is a former member of the U.S. military (a Marine) and an entrepreneur/disruptor who built an “overnight success” through a decade of hard work growing a business.

Morken clearly has a populist streak, or at least a consumer-empowering marketing approach to challenging the big carriers.

“The cellular emperor has no clothes — smart consumers have been clamoring for someone to unlock the value of our home and office networks for years,” he said when launching the hybrid WiFi/cellular approach in 2011.

The Trump transition team has not responded to requests for information on when the President-elect will chose a new chairman, though one of the sitting Republican commissioners — either Ajit Pai or Michael O’Rielly — will almost certainly preside at least as interim chair following the inauguration.

The FCC last week moved the public meeting to Jan. 31 to give Republicans more time to plan for it.

WASHINGTON — Chairman Tom Wheeler declined to predict the FCC’s future under a new administration, pointing out that he doesn’t have a crystal ball.

Perhaps, but the makeup of the agency, the Federal Communications Commission, got clearer with his announcement that he had tendered his resignation to the president effective Inauguration Day, Jan. 20. The signals are clear that Republicans want to undo much of Wheeler’s legacy.

With Democratic commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel failing to get a Senate floor vote on her renomination, barring some miracle, she will be leaving by the end of the year or briefly thereafter. Lack of clarity about Wheeler’s exit was cited for Rosenworcel’s failure to get that vote. But Wheeler insisted he had made it clear he would hold with tradition and leave by Inauguration Day. He suggested it was because the commission would initially be 2-2 with Rosenworcel reinstalled that Republicans balked at voting her renomination, particularly since he had said last week he would leave the same day she got voted.

WHEN WHEELER MET TRUMP TEAM

Wheeler confirmed he had met at least twice with Donald Trump’s FCC transition team and promised to help with a smooth transition, pointing out he knew something about that process — he led the FCC transition team for the Obama administration.

As of Jan. 20, the Republicans will have a 2-1 majority (with Mignon Clyburn the remaining Democrat) and President Trump will get to pick two new commissioners, a Democrat and a Republican. Clyburn could slow things down in the interim by not showing up to public meetings. The FCC needs a quorum to vote, but the chairman could vote items on circulation, which would not need her vote.

Traditionally, the Democratic pick would be deferred to the Senate minority leader (Chuck Schumer of New York in the new Congress), but President-elect Trump ran on running roughshod over standard operating procedure in D.C., so that is hardly a given.

Ajit Pai is the leading candidate to be interim (and perhaps non-interim) chair. A possible pick for the Republican to fill out Wheeler’s commissioner term — chairmen are also commissioners — is Brandt Hershman, the Indiana state senator with a telecom deregulatory bent. He is said to be a suggestion from VP-elect and former Indiana congressman and governor Mike Pence, who is heading the transition team. That puts Hershman in the chairman conversation as well.

Although Wheeler was not saying what a Trump FCC should do, he was advising on what it should not do, which is throw out regulations in service of anti-government rhetoric that he branded dangerous.

In his final press conference, the chairman said that far too often what goes on in Washington is demeaned. If Wheeler’s mantra was competition, competition, competition (it was), Trump’s arguably has been “drain the swamp, drain the swamp, drain the swamp.”

Wheeler said it was tough to make decisions in the common good as opposed to making decisions in self-interest.

“If we don’t use government to argue these issues out, it doesn’t mean decisions won’t be made,” said Wheeler. “It just means that decisions will be made without the input of the people. The cry for a laissez-faire government that walks away from oversight is also highly dangerous to consumers and those who operate in the marketplace.”

That was clearly a shot across the bow at his Republican successors.

Internet-service providers operating in that marketplace were cordial in their goodbyes to Wheeler, who branded Internet access providers as a virtual monopoly on the conduit to the consumer, with the incentive and ability to discriminate in those companies’ self-interest.

The FCC’s name for ISPs in official documents was even something of an outside joke in the Wheeler regime: broadband Internet-access service providers, or BIAS.

Wheeler’s legacy will be mixed. He was drawing praise from public-interest groups for his effort to spur set-top box competition, but that ran into pushback from his own party. He ran out of time on a business data services proposal that cable operators and other ISPs pushed back on. He was being praised for advancing the spectrum auction, but so far that is in its fourth stage as the spectrum the FCC can reclaim for broadband continues to drop. And the Title II reclassification of ISPs that was arguably the centerpiece of his tenure will likely be rolled back, as well as the broadband privacy regulations that are connected with it.

Wheeler appeared to have a clear sense of his mission, which was to make sure that broadband, the transformative technology of this century, was available to all — which he combined with a distrust of the marketplace gained from experience as a lobbyist.

He said last week those lobbyists were good people, but pushing self-interest rather than the public interest.

Wheeler is a famed student of history, which includes the struggles to get electricity to the farm wives still beating clothes on rocks well into the last century.

BIAS TOWARD THE EDGE?

Some can fault — and many in the industry do — how he chose to accomplish his task. But it is hard to argue against trying to get broadband to everyone.

ISPs argue that is what they have already been doing, and that the best thing the FCC can do is provide regulatory certainty, preferably the certainty of a light regulatory hand, in a climate conducive to investment and innovation. They took issue with the FCC’s continued suggestion under Wheeler that broadband was not being deployed in a reasonable and timely manner, a stance used to justify new regulations.

Wheeler signaled from day one that he viewed the FCC as a consumer-focused agency and consumers, not industry, were his constituency. But again, media companies argue that they serve consumers too and could serve them better freed from some of the rules Wheeler imposed or refused to unimpose.

The outgoing chairman also made clear that he viewed edge providers like Google and Facebook as creative forces for good that need to be protected against ISPs and their monopoly conduits into the home.

That approach is likely to change under new management.

“Perhaps the primary legacy of the Wheeler era is the relative primacy of companies at the ‘edge’ of the Internet, such as Netflix or Google, over Internet access providers like Comcast or Verizon,” communications attorney Robert Cooper, a partner in Boies, Schiller & Flexner, said. “While telecom regulation need not be a zero sum game, I would expect the pendulum to move in another direction in a post-Wheeler FCC.”

FCC chairman Tom Wheeler has twice met with Donald Trump's transition team for the agency, Wheeler said Thursday (Dec. 15) at his post-meeting press conference.

Wheeler said he had met once individually with team leader Jeff Eisenach, and with all three members, including Mark Jamison and Roslyn Layton, on a second occasion.

He called them good meetings, and said he made it clear that if there were any issues that came up, "I was the guy to call first to solve those."

Related:Transition Team’s Mark Jamison Asks, Do We Need an FCC?

Wheeler, who had announced earlier in the day that he would leave the FCC on Inauguration Day, has experience in transitions, having served as the Obama administration's FCC team leader back in 2008.

The Federal Communications Commission chairmanship is not usually among the first posts filled in a new administration. It can sometimes take months after the inauguration for a new chair to be installed, with a sitting commissioner — in this case either of two Republicans, Ajit Pai or Michael O’Rielly — serving as interim chairman in the, well, interim.

But a lot of names and scenarios have been bubbling up for the new chairman of the agency, particularly since it is hard to predict if the Trump administration will follow form or blaze new paths to various nominations.

Here is the current laundry list (with background input from various sources), with the caveat that someone could come out of left field to be named the FCC’s starting pitcher, as it were:

Pai: Senior sitting Republican. The last two Republican chairs — Kevin Martin and Michael Powell — were plucked from the ranks of sitting commissioners, though Powell had big name recognition as the son of Secretary of State Colin Powell, and Martin had been a lawyer in Florida representing President George W. Bush in the 2000 recount court battle. Still, Pai has Senate connections: He once worked with Attorney General nominee Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.).

O’Rielly: A dark horse, but multiple sources said his name is in the mix, given his Senate connections as a former Hill staffer.

Jeff Eisenach/Mark Jamison/Roslyn Layton: They are the deregulatory think tankers leading the FCC transition team. Wheeler was an Obama technology and FCC transition team leader and got the big chair, as was former Republican FCC chairman Mark Fowler. Fowler confirmed for the Wire that he “was in charge of supervising the transition teams of all major regulatory agencies, including the FCC” back in the Reagan years, so there is precedent for the pickers becoming the picked.

David Fellows: A telecommunications industry vet spanning engineering and operations, he’s the co-founder and chief technology officer of Layer3 TV, the Denver-based, self-described “next-generation cable operator,” and is also serving as chief scientist of the cable-focused Energy 2020 initiative. Fellows has deep experience in various facets of the telecom and tech sectors, including past key roles at MSOs (Comcast and AT&T Broadband), major suppliers (Scientific Atlanta, now part of Cisco Systems), telecom (GTE) and as a venture capitalist (Genovation Capital and Pilot House Ventures).

Rep. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.): He is a member of the House Communications Subcommittee, though he does not have a high profile there. Cramer was also an early Trump supporter, which appears to count a lot with the President-elect.

Brandt Hershman: An Indiana state senator with telecom deregulation chops and a degree from Harvard, he is said to be a suggestion from VP-elect and former Indiana congressman and governor Mike Pence, who is leading the transition. “I wouldn’t be surprised if the next chairman had connections with Indiana,” said one FCC transition watcher.

Rep. Marsha Blackburn: The Tennessee Republican is another early, and vocal, Trump supporter who is a member of the transition team executive committee, though she may be looking for a bigger post. She is vice chair of the House Energy & Commerce Committee and has been very active on communications issues.

Ann Coulter: OK, that’s a long, long shot. But the conservative commentator was another early (and late) Trump supporter and last summer all but campaigned for the FCC post, telling Business Insider she would take aim at big media companies she said had “just gotten very powerful and very unfair,” something Trump echoed in criticisms of the proposed AT&T-Time Warner and approved Comcast-NBCUniversal deals and his attacks on media news outlets in general.

###

One World Sports, Facing Reported Woes, Looks to ‘Bright Future’

One World Sports, the niche sports network that has been the go-to channel for distributors locked into, or looking for alternatives to, onerous carriage contracts, is having some money problems of its own, according to sources last week.

Sports news website Awful Announcing first reported the channel had furloughed workers in an effort to cut costs, and in fact had considered bankruptcy and failed to pay employees and vendors for months. Sources said last week the network — with access to 43 million homes but mostly carried on lightly penetrated sports tiers — had lined up an investor that backed out at the last minute, prompting the need to take quick action.

One World CEO Sandy Brown said some of the reported signs of financial distress weren’t accurate but didn’t give specifics. He said talks were ongoing with a potential investor and he was optimistic a deal would be reached. “We’re very excited about where the network is headed,” Brown told The Wire. “We’ve got a very bright future and we’ve just got to get through this.”

The channel is owned by One Media Corp., a Dallas investment firm headed by Seamus O’Brien. He’s also the owner of the New York Cosmos of the North American Soccer League, and Cosmos games air on One World Sports. That team and the league itself are in financial difficulties, according to reports. OWS also airs international hockey, basketball and golf matches, along with table tennis and badminton competitions. It’s landed several deals with distributors that were otherwise locking horns with pricier networks.

— Mike Farrell

WASHINGTON — Depending on who’s doing the talking, zero-rating plans are either potentially anti-competitive violations of the Federal Communications Commission’s new network-neutrality rules or an innovative business plan that could help drive broadband adoption and benefit low-income Web users.

But the key to the future of those toll-free or sponsored data plans, which are becoming increasingly attractive, is what the FCC decides they are after it completes an inquiry into the practice.

The FCC is still vetting the information it requested in December from major Internet-service providers — the mid-January deadline for data in the inquiry was pushed back by Winter Storm Jonas, which buried the nation’s capital.

The inquiry appeared to be a reaction to pressure from zero-rating plan critics after FCC chairman Tom Wheeler in November praised T-Mobile’s new “Binge On” offering, which allows the mobile phone provider’s subscribers to access video from certain providers without it counting against subscriber data caps, as just the type of innovation the FCC’s new Open Internet order would not discourage.

When Wheeler seemed to backtrack on that praise and said the agency wanted more information about Binge On, Comcast’s Stream TV service and AT&T’s sponsored data plans, AT&T responded, “We remain committed to innovation without permission, and hope the FCC is too.”

AN INQUIRY, NOT A FIAT

Wheeler insisted two weeks ago that the FCC’s inquiry was merely that, telling reporters he had not sat in on any of the meetings, nor had any of the members of his staff.

But the chairman controls the agency’s bureaus, Republican commissioner Michael O’Rielly countered. “We do all know that the bureaus are at his discretion because otherwise, I would get a lot more information,” O’Rielly said.

O’Rielly said he is still trying to find out more information about the inquiry, but said that he was troubled by the direction in which the FCC was heading. He said he was troubled by the “mother may I” approach of the agency’s having to bless — or reject — new business models. That was concerned him about the net-neutrality rules, he said.

The new Open Internet rules do not prevent zero-rating plans, but they do prevent paid prioritization and also give the FCC some wiggle room through a general-conduct standard with which it can essentially review any business practice it thinks might have the effect of favoring some content over others for anti-competitive purposes.

“Because the Internet is always growing and changing, there must be a known standard by which to determine whether new practices are appropriate or not,” Wheeler said back when he proposed the Title II-based rules.

At the Internet Education Foundation’s 12th annual State of the Net conference in Washington two weeks ago, people on both sides of the issue were trying to help the FCC decide.

Roslyn Layton, a visiting fellow at the American Enterprise Institute’s Center for Internet, Communications, and Technology Policy, made the case for why zero rating plans were not the threat to Internet openness that some have claimed.

She said that there is no good or service that is not subject to a differential price and said it was “strange” to her why Internet service would be singled out.

She said the one of the best things about the history of TV, radio and the Internet was that advertisers and sponsors were allowed to lower the cost to end users. That’s a key difference between media industries in the U.S. and Europe, she said, saying Europe’s license-fee model has meant fewer channels and less content.

The Internet also benefits from third-party subsidization, she said, pointing out that edge provider Google effectively zero-rates its search by displaying ads.

One criticism of the FCC’s approach to its new Internet rules is that they target ISPs while leaving edge-provider business practices alone. ISPs aren’t explicitly asking the FCC to regulate the edge, but point out that there are opportunities for edge providers to interrupt the virtuous circle that the FCC appears to gloss over in focusing on regulating ISPs. Wheeler has said edge providers are outside the scope of the rules.

On the other side is Stanford University law professor Barbara Van Schewick. The key to the issue is whether a zero rating plan has the effect of “picking winners and losers online,” she said. The bright-line net neutrality rules are about doing that with technology, via slowing or blocking traffic or by buying a technical advantage for a fee, aka paid prioritization.

Zero-rating is just a different form of favoring some content over others, she argued — via business plan, rather than technical limitations or advantages.

WATCHING FOR ‘COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE’

Comcast’s Stream TV, for example, was not about subsidizing access, but instead about “giving a competitive advantage to [Comcast’s] own application,” she said. That is a key net-neutrality concern, she said.

Kevin Martin, former FCC chairman and now an attorney for Facebook, which has its own zero-rating program to try and boost basic connectivity, said he didn’t have any problem with the FCC taking a case-by-case approach to vetting business plans under its new rules, but said zero-rating can be beneficial.

Martin signaled the FCC was right to be vetting the plans, but did not throw cable operators under the bus. He said MSOs would argue their customers have already paid for the programming ISPs are zero-rating.

But unlike cable operators, which have issues with the FCC’s case-by-case approach under the general conduct standard, Martin was all for it. “I think an analysis of what’s actually going on with each program is appropriate, and the FCC got that component right,” he said.

Layton argued zero rating plans aren’t just for the big dogs. She said they benefit smaller network providers who can’t compete with larger providers in terms of speed, but need another way to differentiate themselves.