Remarks of FCC Chief of Staff Ruth Milkman at the Evercore Tech Change Conference

This week marks my two-year anniversary as Chief of Staff at the Federal Communications Commission. In his very first speech as Chairman, FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler said that the FCC’s two primary responsibilities were, and I quote, “facilitating dynamic technological change to ensure the US has world-class communications networks [and] ensuring that our networks reflect our civic values.” He went on to spend the bulk of his remarks discussing how he viewed competition as the best way to achieve those goals.

I said earlier that where competition cannot be expected to exist, we will not hesitate to act to protect consumers and advance the public interest. Perhaps the best example of this principle in practice would be our universal service programs. The truth is that in many sparsely populated parts of the country, there is no business case to build private broadband networks. As a result, millions of Americans can’t get broadband at any speed.