FCC chief’s painstaking approach earns mixed reviews in turbulent times for telecom industry

When he isn’t chairing the Federal Communications Commission, Julius Genachowski enjoys a seat at a poker table.

And as it turns out, he approaches cards much like he regulates: with great caution.

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Quiet, brainy and restrained, the nation’s top telecom cop carefully evaluates each hand. He typically shies away from high-stakes, high-risk rounds. Instead, he’ll play the river in Texas Hold ’Em long enough to size up rivals, but not long enough to test his luck — even with a decent hand, according to people who have played with him in the homes of Beltway government officials, journalists and sports pros.

But in a town full of aggressive lobbyists paid to bend the FCC’s positions in their favor, that measured approach can draw attack. Genachowski has sometimes been called a regulatory “Hamlet,” deliberating over details as powerful companies push impatiently for action.

The approach has turned some early supporters into detractors.

Regulators aren’t supposed to play the role of negotiator between companies, said Derek Turner, head of policy analysis at public interest group Free Press. “He’s squandered an opportunity to give consumers the competitive communications market they deserve,” Turner said. “If someone like him upholds compromise, it quickly leads to capitulation, which is what he’s done. He folds, folds, folds to the pressure of big companies.”

Those high-stakes battles have reached a fever pitch during Genachowski’s four-year term, with the agency at the center of the massive technological transition from phone lines and TV broadcasts to the Internet. Consumers are dumping home phones for smartphones and trading cable subscriptions for streaming videos. And the industry has been upended by multibillion-dollar mergers as companies scramble to adapt.

Genachowski points to a string of achievements, including outlining a plan for auctions of airwaves that could raise billions of dollars for the government and a landmark effort to expand access to broadband Internet in rural America, a priority of President Obama.

And the 50-year-old says he’s intentionally held his cards close to the vest, negotiating agreements on controversial issues behind the scenes.

“One thing I learned from my predecessors is that people don’t remember the day-to-day battles, but they remember you got it done,” Genachowski said in an interview.

His term ends next summer, and while Genachowski, a law school friend of the president, hasn’t announced plans for departure, he is widely expected to leave as soon as the administration can arrange for a successor.

After two successive Republican chairmen who had generally been restrained in exercising regulatory authority, Gena­chowski entered the job intent on staking out the government’s claim over the fast-growing Internet industry.

He wound up presiding over a crucial period in which the powerful companies of Silicon Valley turned into Washington power players. Lobbying the FCC has become a major economic franchise. Each day, hundreds of dark-suited lawyers crowd the antiseptic, midcentury-modern agency building.