Robert McDowell

An unexpected perfect storm of public policy variables is gathering and it could cause America’s 5G spectrum pipeline to run dry by year’s end. Under the leadership of newly-confirmed Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel, our former agency, the Federal Communications Commission, is currently winding down a spectrum auction that will supply lifeblood to America’s emerging 5G ecosystem while generating nearly $22 billion in federal revenue. Unfortunately, this is the last scheduled auction of its kind.

Spectrum policy leadership and planning are critical to complete the US 5G ecosystem while planning for the next-generation wireless technology, 6G. It’s also essential to shed some mistakes of the past. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo has indicated that a “whole of government” effort is critical to 5G leadership, and she’s right.

The House should waste no time in passing the badly needed infrastructure bill while expanding its scope to include support for all viable broadband technologies demanded today by consumers. Fixed wireless is an efficient, competitive and popular high-speed alternative to fiber, particularly in more remote areas. With the massive investments going into the deployment of 5G wireless technologies by both national and local broadband internet service providers, fixed wireless capability is only getting better.

As the world gets ready for 5G today, some cellular networks and a few consumers still have 3G technologies even though they are obsolete. 3G, introduced more than 15 years ago, does not offer enough speed or capacity for modern consumers’ thirst for video and life-changing apps. Many service providers are providing significant financial assistance and incentives to enable consumers who remain on obsolete 3G technologies to leap to 5G.

Two judges on the Third US Circuit Court of Appeals have spent the past 17 years blocking a congressionally mandated modernization of antiquated broadcast-television regulations. The Supreme Court will hear an appeal on Jan 19, FCC v.

We served together on the Federal Communications Commission for nearly four years as commissioners: a Democrat from South Carolina and a Republican from Virginia. While we sometimes disagreed, we worked hard with our colleagues to expand broadband deployment and adoption to all Americans — especially the unserved and underserved. And the need to do so is made more acute by the current pandemic. In the midst of this scourge, the importance of broadband to help save lives, jobs and the economy has never been clearer.

[Commentary] The Federal Communications Commission is launching initiatives that will shape the fate of America’s wireless industry. It started to examine competition in the market, and it will propose taking Depression-era utility regulations off mobile broadband networks while protecting an open internet. This is only the beginning. The FCC is acting on a rare opportunity to correct its recent mistakes and restore the Clinton-era light-touch regulatory framework that will drive economic growth and job creation. The FCC should begin by liberating wireless from the heavy-handed rules of a 1934 law called Title II, which was created when phones were held in two hands. This antiquated law imposes powerful economic regulations on the internet, chilling investment in broadband.

The FCC will propose to unshackle the net from this millstone of a law. This would restore the bipartisan light-touch policies that nurtured the burgeoning internet Americans enjoy today. The FCC can take a few other discrete steps. It would accelerate the mobile revolution if it streamlined rules that slow the construction of wireless infrastructure—and deprive consumers of the benefits of next-gen technologies. The agency should also update rules that dictate how much of a particular radio frequency a carrier can own in a market. America’s brilliant wireless engineers are inventing new ways to turn yesterday’s junk frequencies into tomorrow’s gold, rendering current regulations obsolete.

[Robert McDowell is a partner at Cooley LLP and chief public policy adviser to Mobile Future; he served as a FCC Commissioner 2006-13.]

[Commentary] The future of the internet could be at stake at a conference in Tunisia, where diplomats from more than 100 countries will debate United Nations jurisdiction over the web.

What emerges from the World Telecommunication Standardization Assembly will affect geopolitics and global economic growth, and possibly internet freedom for billions of users. Diplomats will discuss the emerging Internet of Things, which will soon connect tens of billions of devices and people to the global network. A new navigational and addressing technology, Digital Object Architecture (DOA), could enable the real-time surveillance and tracking of each device and individual connected to the web. Some governments are advocating that DOA be the singular and mandatory addressing system for the Internet of Things. They also want this system to be centrally controlled by the UN’s International Telecommunication Union, which has contractual rights to the underlying intellectual property. China is working to join the leadership of the global study group on DOA and the Internet of Things.

America must quickly move beyond the divisive argument about ICANN and regain its internet-policy footing. Many more consequential battles over internet freedom loom—conflicts that will shape the digital future. It is time for the US to unify again behind a bipartisan vision and common strategy to safeguard internet freedom for tomorrow.

[McDowell, a former commissioner of the Federal Communications Commission, is a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute. Goldstein is an adjunct senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.]

[Commentary] July 15 is the deadline for the public to comment on the Federal Communications Commission’s attempt to regulate the Internet under the seemingly innocuous moniker of “net neutrality.”

The architect of this movement, and the man who coined the term “net neutrality,” is Columbia law professor Tim Wu. Unfortunately, he has been immensely influential among regulators. Net neutrality advocates have argued that ISPs have an economic incentive to act anti-competitively toward consumers and competitors.

While some tech companies have been inspired by Wu as they try to “regulate their rivals,” phone and cable companies, they may be forging their own regulatory chains, link by link. Wu’s vision shows how their ostensible goal could continue to morph into a regulatory regime for the entire Internet ecosystem, affecting far more than ISPs. Inviting regulators into your neighborhood is likely to embolden them to control not only your neighbor but you, too.

Wu’s supporters should be careful what they wish for.

[McDowell served as a commissioner of the Federal Communications Commission from 2006-2013 and is currently a visiting fellow at the Hudson Institute’s Center for Economics of the Internet]