Levin: Reclaiming Spectrum For Broadband Puts FCC On 'Right Side' Of History

The Federal Communications Commission's Blair Levin said March 26 that he believed the national broadband plan's proposal to reclaim spectrum from broadcasters -- and other incumbent users -- put it on "the right side of history" and was one of the parts of the plan he was most proud of.

In an interview with C-SPAN's Communicators series, Levin declined to comment directly on a recent speech by his former boss, then FCC Chairman Reed Hundt, that Hundt's plan had always been for broadband to replace broadcasting as the national medium. Levin said he would leave the media historian post to Hundt for now. But he said what was "certainly true" was that every country needed a "common medium that has certain characteristics." He did not elaborate on those, but he conceded that the FCC had made a number of decisions back then (in the mid-1990's) "that were useful to the Internet and to broadband." Levin said that it was the market driving the move to broadband. He cited a report in 2000 that found that 80% of the respondents would rather give up the Internet than TV, compared with today, when "a majority of people say they would rather give up television. If you look up the under-45 [age group], it is overwhelming. That is consumers speaking. That is the market speaking."