John Eggerton

The Senate Commerce Committee's first hearing of 2020, "Industries of the Future" dealt with the federal government's role in advancing new technologies. Federal Communications Commissioners Jessica Rosenwrocel and Michael O'Rielly testified and spoke about 5G. On the issue of speeding the 5G rollout, Committee Chairman Roger Wicker (R-MS) pointed out that there is "a company on TV" already advertising that they are already leading the industry in 5G. Commissioner Rosenworcel said there have been some deployments, which was exciting, but that they were chiefly in urban areas.

ITTA-The Voice of America's Broadband Providers "will be shutting its doors effective January 31, 2020 after over a one-quarter century representing wireline communications service providers in Washington." ITTA cited "financial constraints in the wireline service provider sector" for shutting its doors, saying those financial challenges had been "insurmountable." Broadband providers still have a voice via ACA Connects, which represents smaller and midsized providers, NCTA-The Internet & Television Association, NTCCA-The Rural Broadband Association, USTelecom, CTIA and others. 

The House Communications Subcommittee was in agreement that more needed to be done to boost minority media ownership, but Republican members focused more on what they said broadcasters and cable operators were already doing to address the issue. The hearing, "Lifting Voices: Legislation to Promote Media Marketplace Diversity", looked at various bipartisan bills to promote more diversity data collection and analysis at the Federal Communications Commission and provide more access to capital. 

The House has passed three bipartisan 5G bills, which passed out of the House Commerce Committee in Nov. The bills are primarily about considering and strategizing and encouraging, rather than commanding, which helped them get that bipartisan support. It is likely the bills will get Senate approval and President Donald Trump's signature. 

The House Consumer Protection Subcommittee held a hearing "Americans at Risk: Manipulation and Deception in the Digital Age" to look at deep fakes and online manipulation. Subcommittee Chairman Jan Schakowsky (D-IL) used the informational hearing to hammer Big Tech and Facebook in particular. She said that Big Tech had failed to respond to the "grave threat" of deep fakes, dark patterns, bots, and other technologies that are hurting the public in direct and indirect ways.

Federal Trade Commission Chairman Joseph Simons said that the FTC was still investigating Facebook for antitrust violations, and that the FTC's $5 billion settlement with the company is the thing he is most proud of over the past year. The other was the $170 million settlement with Google/YouTube over kids privacy. Chairman Simons renewed his call for Congress to pass comprehensive privacy legislation, but does not favor a Democrat-backed proposal to create a new, separate, privacy enforcement agency.

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai said he thought 5G wireless technology could indeed help close the rural digital divide but conceded there were challenges to building out the next-generation technology to wherever it needed to go. In terms of smartphones, Chairman Pai said, 5G might be more a "big city use case," but he saw opportunities beyond urban with fixed wireless, which was why he was bullish on the trial window for the spectrum in the 2.5-gigahertz band. He also pointed to precision agriculture and telemedicine.

Microsoft is pushing the Federal Communications Commission to respond to its May 2019 petition for rulemaking on expanding access to the so-called white spaces between TV channels. The company wants the FCC to allow more sharing in the broadcast band for unlicensed wireless. In meetings with FCC Commissioners Jessica Rosenworcel and Brendan Carr, Microsoft and its representatives came armed with a report outlining how wireless internet providers have been able to boost their throughput tenfold using TV white spaces.

The Senate passed the Television Viewer Protection Act (TVPA) and the Satellite Television Community Protection and Promotion Act of 2019, two bills that orginated in the House.

The debate over what constitutes high-speed broadband has heated up as the Federal Communications Commission collects comments for its next report to Congress on the state of broadband availability. At stake is whether the FCC gets to regulate broadband to ensure it meets Congress’s goal of universal service.