Biden’s FCC must attend to cybersecurity, 5G development, and data-gathering issues that Trump’s FCC ignored

Three institutional and strategic problems that President Joe Biden’s Federal Communications Commission will have to resolve:

1. Amid global hacks, cybersecurity has gotten little attention. During his four years as chairman, Pai maintained the view that the FCC had no authority in the cybersecurity space. The FCC is even further behind in having the technical and legal foundation for addressing the issues.
2. US has fallen behind in 5G leadership.
3. A data deficit in the FCC. What is remarkable about the last four years was the degree to which the FCC decided to ignore its data-gathering function, which is the underlying ingredient for any economic or policy analysis. This can be illustrated in three areas:
   1. Mapping. It will be the task of the next FCC to develop an improved map.
   2. Network performance standards. One might have hoped that the FCC would have used the pandemic-induced "remote everything" experiment to reexamine the network performance standard (below which, broadband is deemed unavailable), the performance standard that subsidized networks are required to perform above, and the standard for eligibility in the Lifeline program for low-income Americans. But the FCC leadership performed no independent studies and simply praised overall network performance.
   3. Misinformation. The FCC, which has the responsibility of assuring that the public airwaves are used in the public interest, turned a blind eye to the many ways those airwaves were being used to harm the public during the pandemic. While the FCC must not act in violation of the First Amendment, it should take actions to protect public health.

It is unfortunate that so many of the biggest telecommunications-related impediments to the American economy and society were ignored or made worse in the last four years.