Op-Ed

When it comes to 5G and America’s security, we can’t afford to take a risk and hope for the best. We need to make sure our networks won’t harm our national security, threaten our economic security or undermine our values. That requires a comprehensive effort, one the administration has been undertaking, including through a May 2019 executive order. The Federal Communications Commission, for its part, has been working at home and abroad with federal agencies, including the intelligence community.

When I first took office, President Donald Trump directed me to lead the Rural Prosperity Task Force, a team of federal, state and local leaders focused on improving the lives of those who live in rural America. The task force’s top takeaway was how critical access to broadband is in rural communities. I always say, investing in the expansion of rural broadband is as vital as the rural electric and telephone networks were decades ago.

Building new broadband infrastructure is a big investment for any municipality. While the cost of that investment shouldn’t be overlooked, it’s equally important to consider the significant cost savings that can be reaped with publicly owned infrastructure. Many cities have slashed the cost of connecting their schools to broadband by opting to build their own infrastructure, instead of continuing to pay a private provider for connections. Portland (OR), for example, had been paying an incumbent provider $1,310 per month for  10 Mbps connections to schools.

There’s a health-care crisis in the country and it’s hitting rural areas particularly hard. The US could face a shortage of 95,000 physicians by 2025, according to a recent report from the Association of American Medical Colleges. But health care’s physician distribution problem, with too many doctors in urban areas and not enough in rural locations, could be alleviated by community broadband.

On Oct 16, as a commissioner at the Federal Communications Commission, I voted to block the merger of T-Mobile and Sprint, the country’s third- and fourth-largest wireless carriers. But I am only one of five votes at the agency, and a majority of my colleagues have already voiced their support for this transaction. On top of that, the Department of Justice recently reached an agreement with the carriers, giving them a green light to combine. The largest wireless merger in history is now headed toward approval.

What is the agenda that provides hope and opportunity for Americans in a new digital-based economy? So far, much of the campaign focus on the new economy has been reduced to a misleadingly simple “break ‘em up!” solution for Big Tech.

In early 2009, Congress directed the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to develop a National Broadband Plan with a functional objective to ensure every American has “access to broadband capability.” Now, with just 165 days left before the National Broadband Plan was to meet the plan’s original stated objectives, I explore some of the key components and objectives of the plan. Ten years is a great deal of time in the telecommunications realm, and it is true that the plan asked a great deal of the FCC from the very start.

Targeted online ads and data harvesting are incredibly lucrative for the platforms but harmful for local newsrooms and the communities they’re supposed to serve. The shift in eyeballs and ad dollars to the platforms has hastened the collapse of the traditional advertising marketplace that once helped sustain quality local journalism. This collapse has led to widespread layoffs, which has meant less of the content that readers are willing to pay for, which has resulted in more cutbacks and the continuation of a vicious cycle.

Tech journalism has made impressive strides in recent years. Journalists covering Silicon Valley have increasingly embraced the role of “watchdog” rather than “mascot.” This critical turn in tech journalism has ushered in reporting on the broken promises, negligence, and other shortcomings of Big Tech companies and their most prominent executives. But this may not be enough to spur the public engagement necessary to affect real change.

The D.C. Circuit issued its long-awaited decision in Mozilla v. Federal Communications Commission.  The court affirmed the Federal Communications Commission’s Restoring Internet Freedom (RIF) Order, identifying some flaws in the agency’s reasoning but finding the agency could likely correct those errors on remand without vacatur. Though largely expected given the Supreme Court’s precedent in Brand X, the decision is nonetheless a sweeping victory for the FCC and judicial validation of Chairman Ajit Pai’s light-touch regulatory framework for the broadband industry.