The Information and Communications Technology Agenda for 2017 and Beyond

[Commentary] In order to push the economy out of secular stagnation and to increase average family income for all income quintiles, the next government — both the Executive and Legislative Branches — needs a plan for the information and communication technologies (ICT) platform. Before the technologists and economists set their teeth against this assertion, I hastily add that the plan might be consolidation of the wireless industry or abandonment of network neutrality. Or it could be the promotion of multiple licensees for 5G (next generation wireless) services in a single geography. In other words, the plan could be to allow incumbents to gain advantages or it might be to support new entrants. It could favor redundant networks, or shared facilities. In any case, as Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner famously said in Oval Office debates about rebuilding the balance sheets of the big banks, “Plan beats no plan.”

I can’t think of any way to describe Donald Trump’s ICT plan. However, Republican and Democratic leaders have limned some important parts of an ICT plan in various stalled bills over the last couple of years. And Hillary Clinton’s ICT goals are reasonably detailed, although perhaps purposely not presented as a plan per se. One legacy of the Cold War is the popular insistence on the market-trusting cluelessness of government, even while everyone expects extremely careful government thinking about monetary policy, medical research, national defense, tax and antitrust regimes, securities and drug regulation, and so forth. Whatever. My point is that the pieces of a plan are already out there. So here’s my crack at putting them together, adding in some suggestions of my own. There needs to be a three-part plan. Part one is about the economy; two, culture; three, government as an operations problem.

[Reed Hunt is CEO of CGC and former chairman of the FCC from 1993-1997.]