American Enterprise Institute

The Federal Communications Commission just gave the wireless infrastructure effort a lift by streamlining the rules for deploying small cells. I found last week’s editorial by the mayor of San Jose (CA) quite odd. Mayor Sam Liccardo argued that the new FCC rules to encourage faster deployment are an industry effort to “usurp control over these coveted public assets and utilize publicly owned streetlight poles for their own profit, not the public benefit.” But the new streamlining rules do no such thing. Public rights of way will still be public.

My report “Tech Policy and the Midterm Elections” examined the role of tech policy in the election and whether the issue of net neutrality would encourage millennials to vote.

Over the past several years the Federal Communications Commission has brought sweeping changes to Lifeline, the telecommunications aid program for low-income households. These changes are designed to shift the program’s focus from telephone service to broadband service. Though few would question the need to narrow the digital divide, many (including me) have criticized the way the commission has chosen to do so.

While there is now a growing consensus among the tech industry, regulatory advocates, and policymakers on the need for comprehensive privacy legislation, a blueprint proposed in President Barack Obama’s 2012 Consumer Privacy Bill of Rights proved unsuccessful. Had Congress taken up legislation in 2012, it may have forestalled the egregious regulations the European Union and California adopted. In any case, the principles agreed on today generally align with those proposed in 2012.

Voters in elections tend to focus on topline policy issues such as the economy and health care, not tech policy, which enjoys considerable bipartisan agreement and offers little opportunity to highlight differences with opponents. Network neutrality internet regulation is an exception, as Democratic lawmakers use it both as symbolic politics at the federal and state level and as a wedge issue to bring millennial voters, a group with historically low turnout in midterms, to the polls.