WASHINGTON-Michael Powell, chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, is not resigning.
To emphasize this point, which has been widely quoted amid ever-growing speculation that he would leave after some embarrassing defeats, Powell held a press breakfast to discuss his fall agenda. He called his agenda the “out with the old and in with the new.”
But the wireless issue he said is at the top of his list is actually nearly two years old. “The 800 MHz issue is vital, and it is at the top of our list,” said Powell.
Later in response to a question, Powell seemed to back away from a straight rebanding solution and said that both the FCC’s Office of Engineering and Technology and the FCC’s Wireless Telecommunications Bureau are working together to craft an answer to the public-safety interference problem in the 800 MHz band.
“800 MHz is one of the most complicated issues I have ever seen both as a matter of policy and technology. We have to have both bureaus. I don’t care what anybody says, both of them are working on it in partnership and making recommendations to the FCC. I have had many meetings with all or both of them, and we do not have some major divide between the two bureaus. We have differences in emphasis sometimes or concerns about things in different ways, but if I don’t have a staff organization like that, we are pretty bankrupt anyway. I would expect that,” said Powell. “I think we are actually on the verge of making some pretty significant progress and beginning to roll this thing up, and I think everybody is on board.”
