Michele Farquhar is a Practice Area Leader of the firm's communications group. She focuses her practice on commercial and private wireless and mass media regulation, strategic planning on complex spectrum allocation and auction-related transactional issues, regulation and licensing of new domestic and foreign technologies, and global telecommunications convergence and competition issues. She has extensive experience in practice before the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and federal courts as well as U.S. Congress, the White House, the U.S. Department of Justice, the U.S. Department of Commerce, and international regulatory bodies.
Before joining Hogan & Hartson as a partner, Michele served as Chief of the Wireless Telecommunications Bureau at the FCC, where she had primary responsibility for the Bureau's implementation of the Telecommunications Act of 1996 and numerous rulemaking proceedings, spectrum auctions, licensing and ownership issues, and enforcement matters. Under her leadership, the Bureau undertook rulemaking proceedings addressing interconnection, resale and roaming, enhanced wireless 911, refarming, and microwave relocation; she also developed auction rules and enhanced flexibility for many different wireless services, including local multipoint distribution service (LMDS), paging, specialized mobile radio service, wireless communications service, and new services at the microwave and millimeter wave frequencies.
Michele previously served as the Acting Deputy Assistant Secretary and Chief of Staff for the National Telecommunications and Information Administration at the U.S. Department of Commerce, where she had a leading role in developing the administration's positions on telecommunications reform as well as on spectrum, international, electronic commerce, universal service, and federal telecommunications grant issues. As Vice President for Law and Regulatory Policy at the Cellular Telecommunications Industry Association, she represented cellular carriers on regulatory issues before the FCC, including the initial personal communications service licensing, ownership, and service rules. Michele was Senior Advisor and Mass Media Legal Advisor in the office of FCC Commissioner Ervin S. Duggan. She previously served as Special Assistant for mass media issues in the commission's Office of General Counsel, and before that was an attorney in the Policy and Rules Division of the FCC's Mass Media Bureau.
During her years of service in government and industry, Michele spoke and wrote extensively on wireless and other communications law issues. She continues to speak at major telecommunications industry events and contributes regularly to industry publications.
Michele started in private law practice as a corporate lawyer with a major Washington, D.C.-based firm, and served as a judicial clerk for U.S. District Court Judge John M. Shaw of the Western District of Louisiana immediately following law school. Before attending law school she worked in the White House Press Office and as part of the USA Today launch team at Gannett Co.