Commissioner Clyburn: A Voice for the Voiceless

A Q&A with former-FCC Commissioner Mignon Clyburn

MCN: You didn’t have to leave until the end of the year, or until your successor has been confirmed, so why are you leaving now?

Mignon Clyburn: I feel I can be more effective in speaking about the things I care about from the outside.

MCN: And those are?

MC: Inmate calling and lifeline and the Connect2Health Task Force, and trying to bring more certainty and clarity to connecting different parts of this country. You are right, I could have stayed, but it was time for me to move on, and I’m ready.

MCN: You said recently that the FCC was too fixated on infrastructure. But you have to have infrastructure to have broadband.

MC: You also have to have consumers in order to take advantage of it. I said “fixated and monofocal.”

We need a multifocal approach, looking at our entire universal service construct, looking at not just the infrastructure side and the affordability side. This agency is supposed to be about enabling ubiquitous, affordable opportunities for all of our citizens. Now, all is not created equal for our communities. In rural communities, it will take more investment. In urban communities, where the infrastructure is there, if you have people who can’t afford a connection their lives are not enhanced.

You can bring fiber to my doorstep, but if I don’t have the $50 or $60 or $70 dollars a month to be connected, then it does me no good. That is a platinum technology to nowhere.

You can’t be fixated on infrastructure and have all the incentives go there while you kill the lifeline program, the very program that allows these people to be connected. We are supposed to be providing those opportunities regardless of your race, or your background, or where you live. This agency can often be an enabler of opportunity, but monofocal policies ensure that the opportunities will be for those who already have the economic wherewithal, and the rest of us will be left behind. That is building tech canyons, not bridges.