FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski runs perhaps the most embattled department in the Obama administration. And he’s in it to win.

By Andrew Leonard

When Julius Genachowski worked alongside Barack Obama on the Harvard Law Review, few would have imagined that just two decades later, the two would be reshaping the communications industry. As chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, Genachowski influences what apps are on your smartphone, how much you pay to access the Internet, and how the most powerful media and telecommunications companies in the world are allowed to go about their business. He operates against a backdrop in which billions of dollars are at stake, technological changes occurs at light speed, and every decision is greeted by both blistering political crossfire and corporate litigation. To add to it, he deals with some of the most competitive businessmen in the United States, including Rupert Murdoch, Bob Iger, and Steve Balmer. In 2009 — to give just one example — he got between Silicon Valley icons Steve Jobs and Sergey Brin and Larry Page, discouraging Apple from blocking Google Voice from the iPhone. Sure, there may be more challenging jobs in Washington, but you can count them on one hand.

All of which makes Genachowski’s accomplishments over the past year remarkable. While the rest of Washington languishes in perpetual gridlock, Genachowski, the son of Eastern European Jews who survived the Holocaust and settled in the northern tip of Long Island, is making good on his goals to, as he puts it, “drive innovation, investment, empower consumers, and remove barriers to economic growth in this important space.” So how’s he doing? Here’s a quick look at four of Genachowski’s most successful solutions so far.

Making the Internet Neutral

It’s been called the great first amendment fight of the Internet age. Advocates of “net neutrality” want to ensure that Internet providers can’t unfairly discriminate against web sites or services — like charging higher rates for streaming Netflix video or banning Google Voice from the iPhone. In December 2010, the FCC issued its Open Internet Framework, a set of  guidelines that are supposed to ensure Internet providers don’t act anti-competitively. Conservatives immediately called the move an unwarranted power grab, public interest groups complained that the new rules didn’t go far enough, and Verizon is in the process of suing the FCC to block their implementation. “This has been a contentious issue for a very long time,” says Genachowski, “but there was widespread  — if not unanimous — agreement that this framework would lead to an increase in innovation and private investment throughout the broadband economy. And that’s exactly what we’ve seen over the last year. Our mobile apps economy is the envy of the world.”

Broadband to the People

In late October, the FCC accomplished something that’s been talked about for years — redirecting federal subsidies that have promoted rural telephone service for decades to extend universal broadband access to underserved regions. “The regulatory underpinnings of what we do basically haven’t changed since the time of Alexander Graham Bell,” he says. “It was clear to me that we needed to make sure that our universal service policies drove broadband deployment around the country. It is a key piece of our strategy to make sure that the U.S. remains competitive in a global digital economy.”

The Indecent Fight

The FCC continues to juggle its role as censor for indecency on public airwaves. This past November, the U.S. 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia upheld its ruling against the FCC’s fine to CBS over Janet Jackson’s “wardrobe malfunction,” viewed by some 90 million people. After the ruling, says Genachowski, the FCC will still “use all of the authority at its disposal to ensure that the nation’s broadcasters fulfill the public interest responsibilities that accompany their use of the public airwaves.”

Fighting Companies Controls Over Wireless Speeds

One big criticism of the FCC’s new Open Internet Framework is that the rules for wireless broadband are more relaxed than for traditional wired. While wired broadband providers are forbidden from “unreasonably discriminating” against network traffic, wireless providers aren’t. This means that your mobile broadband provider could charge higher rates for accessing bandwidth hungry services like Netflix or Pandora. “There are fundamental capacity differences when you’re managing wireless networks as compared to when you are managing fiber networks,” says Genachowski. These physical limitations to the airwaves lead to another big battle — over the spectrum.

The New Competition Over Airwaves

Spectrum — the space where radio waves, on-the-air television and, now, wireless Internet access lives — is divvied and managed by the government. Wireless companies argue that the fast growth of mobile services means we’re going to run out of space — and soon. Genachowski agrees: “An averagely used smartphone puts demand on spectrum that is twenty-four times as great as the feature phone you upgraded from. The tablet equivalent is 140 times greater. The calculations that we did concluded that there will be a spectrum shortfall; this world is coming. If we don’t act, the costs of not addressing the spectrum crunch — dropped connections, congested airwaves, lousy service, and rising prices for data — will get higher every day.” The answer to the shortage? “What we need to do is reallocate spectrum that is being used for older, less efficient purposes, and put it on the market for flexible global broadband use.” In short, he wants the government to get involved in auctioning off that unused space.

Taking Down Cell Phone Bill Shock

For many people, the FCC’s most welcome achievement in recent years is a voluntary agreement struck in October with the wireless industry. The agreement guarantees that users will receive alerts when their smartphone or text-messaging data usage approaches its limits. “A very large number of consumers were getting hit with surprise charges at the end of the month because they exceeded data limits, or incurred roaming charges that they weren’t aware of. Once we started to shine a light on the problem of ‘bill shock,’ I think everyone involved realized that the unavoidably right answer for American consumers and the companies was to treat consumers fairly and empower them with information allowing them to control and manage their bills.”

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