Doug Brake

5G will make wireless connectivity more flexible and better able to be tightly integrated into different functions throughout the economy. Accelerating a secure deployment will be a force multiplier for growth. The private sector will lead the 5G rollout, but governments need to help. Agencies should leverage 5G for their own processes and encourage its use in their related industries. State and local governments should eliminate barriers to deployment.

Competition is a crucial component of broadband policy in that it pressures providers to be efficient and innovative. Whether any given market has adequate competition is a key underpinning question for the regulatory structure of broadband networks. However, broadband competition is not always analyzed directly. How much competition is enough, and is more always better? Many seem to believe the United States needs more broadband competition.

Data traffic prioritization is one of the most unfairly maligned technologies. Caricaturing commonplace network management techniques as “fast lanes,” net neutrality activists warn that introducing the option of paying for specific performance levels of Internet traffic will destroy the characteristic “openness” of the web. This is false.

A key reason for the contentious fight over net neutrality regulation, and the source of its partisan strife, is that the way we classify broadband Internet access for legal purposes could have weighty long-term implications: Do we want a broadband system more like a public utility under Title II of the Communications Act, or do we want to rely on private companies to drive the evolution of broadband, with relatively light oversight from the Federal Trade Commission (FTC)?

[Commentary] In the coming storm, it will be important not to lose sight of what should be the ultimate policy goal: finding a workable, balanced solution that promotes flourishing innovation throughout the entire Internet, both on the edge and within the core of the network. Under Tom Wheeler, the left-leaning activists got everything they asked for, to the determinant of innovation. Now, under Republican control, we can only hope the other side will resist the same temptation, lest the pendulum keep swinging forever.

The best solution to this issue should be balanced and stable—I say give Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai a shot at stopping the pendulum’s momentum at the bottom of its arc. But at the fourth attempt at net neutrality rules, this is starting to get ridiculous. Congress would do well to start seriously discussing the contours of a compromise so we can put this perennial problem to bed and move on to the real pressing Internet problems, such as closing the digital divide.

[Doug Brake is a senior telecommunications policy analyst at the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation]

With discussion of a potential infrastructure package at some point in the Trump Administration that many rightfully hope will include rural broadband, it is worth examining previous attempts to spur rural broadband service, revisiting the basic policies used to encourage broadband deployment in those geographies where the economics do not support competitive delivery, and distilling guidance for any new attempts at the same.

Congress should take the opportunity to support a major infrastructure package by designating a portion of the funds for broadband deployment to rural and lessdensely populated areas. But to do this effectively, any program should be designed to follow the principles articulated in this report. This report first lays out an overview of infrastructure policy more generally, then examines how those high-level principles should apply in the broadband context. Next, it discusses existing rural broadband programs with an eye toward their successes and shortcomings. It then discusses some available policy tools on the table for a future push for rural broadband deployment before offering concluding principles that should guide any future broadband infrastructure legislation.

[Commentary] At some point Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai is going to have to dance with the elephant in the room: network neutrality. In truth, this fight is much more about the legal authority the FCC claims for regulating broadband, and its long-term implications, than it is about the open internet.

On the one hand, we could return to the prior regulatory structure established under former President Bill Clinton, with the FCC relying on light-touch rules, voluntary codes of conduct, and antitrust-like enforcement to oversee a by-and-large competitive market of different technologies innovating to offer similar services. On the other, we can continue in the direction former FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler laid out toward a heavily regulated utility service. The problem is net neutrality is more religious war than policy discussion, and, with accusations of “alternative facts” already flying, it’s unlikely the gulf between the two sides is closed any time soon. We need some way to break this logjam; I hope Pai is up to the task.

[Doug Brake is a telecommunications policy analyst at the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation]

To most observers of US broadband policy, the regular and increasingly heated debates in this area appear to be about an evolving set of discrete issues: net neutrality, broadband privacy, set-top box competition, usage-based pricing, mergers, municipal broadband, international rankings, and so on. As each issue emerges, the factions take their positions—companies fighting for their firms’ advantage, “public interest” groups working for more regulation, free market advocates working for less, and some moderate academics and think tanks taking more nuanced and varied positions. But at a higher level, these debates are about more than the specific issue at hand; they are subcomponents of a broader debate about the kind of broadband system America should have.

One side wants to remain on the path that has brought America to where it is today: a lightly regulated industry made up of competing private companies relying on a variety of technologies. Another side, made up of mostly public interest groups and some liberal academics, rejects this, advocating instead for a heavily regulated, utility-like industry at minimum and ideally a government-owned system made up of municipal networks. The Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF) firmly believes the former model—lightly regulated competition—is the superior one. But if we are to get broadband policy right going forward, it’s this broader strategic issue we need to identify and debate, not just narrow tactical matters.

Broadband networks are a critical part of America’s digital technology system and, as such, the issue of how to continue to drive investment and innovation in these networks is worthy of robust and sustained debate. But the broadband policy debate should be transparent about what it really involves: Is America better off with an ISP industry that is structured the way the vast majority of the U.S. economy is structured (private-sector firms competing to provide the best product or service at a competitive price, with the role of government to limit abuse and support gaps where private-sector competition does not respond), or do we want to transform this largely successful industry model into either a regulated utility monopoly model or government-owned networks? As we ponder this question, policymakers need to understand what the debate is fundamentally about and what is at stake as broadband populists push for each one of their thousand cuts.