Julius Genachowski knows he canât please everyone.
In a candid interview with the senior editor of Fortune magazine posted this week, the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission said that sage piece of wisdom has helped to guide everything from FCCâs National Broadband plan to its controversial decision on Net neutrality rules.
âOne of the things that I learned quickly in the job is that if you try to tackle policy issues by optimizing for what makes a particular group happy, youâll fail,â Genachowski said. âBecause ⦠you canât make everyone happy. There are many sides to these issues and what we have to do â  and this is our responsibility â is focus on getting the right answers to support the goals that weâve articulated.â
As for the contentious Net neutrality regulations, the chairman said he âinherited a real mess,â because of the piecemeal approach the agency had taken before his tenure began.
âThe agency had been enforcing net neutrality principles, but without ever adopting them as formal rules, and without any clarity on what the rules actually were,â he said. â And it was a mess. Â Companies in any part of the broadband economy didnât have certainty.â
But FCCâs decision, contrary to some Internet service-providersâ protests, was actually a  business-friendly decision, he said. It amounted to a âframework to preserve the freedom and openness of the Internet that ⦠has empowered both businesses and speakers,â he said, and has âalso encouraged the massive amount of investment we need in the infrastructure to have high speed broadband.â