FCC Commissioner Pai: FCC Has Made No Meaningful Progress On Process Reforms

Federal Communications Commission member Ajit Pai said that the FCC still had work to do on the mobile spectrum allocation and process reform fronts. He also said the FCC either needs to set an internal schedule for various elements required for holding a broadcast incentive auction in 2014, or concede it will need to move that goalpost.

He said the FCC needed to accelerate efforts to allocate spectrum for mobile broadband; remove regulatory barriers to infrastructure investment; and be "as nimble as the industry we oversee." Commissioner Pai said that the FCC had not made "any meaningful process reforms" over the past 12 months since his first speech calling for them. He conceded that some of those reforms would take congressional action. On the spectrum front, Commissioner Pai said, the FCC had achieved the first three steps he had outlined, adopt and revise rules for the AWS-4 and WCS spectrum bands and launch the incentive auction rulemaking.