Hill, The

House Commerce Committee Ranking Member Frank Pallone, Jr. (D-NJ) and Subcommittee on Communications and Technology Ranking Member Mike Doyle (D-PA) sent a letter to the Office of Special Counsel requesting an investigation into all three Republican Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Commissioners regarding their involvement with the 2018 Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC). 

[Commentary] The Senate may soon be voting on net neutrality. The net neutrality debate is driven in part by the fact that Internet service providers (ISPs) have the technical ability and financial incentive to act as gatekeepers, picking winners and losers in the Internet marketplace. Perhaps an ISP will favor a particular airline reservation website or an online newspaper by blocking access to its competitors, or simply by making access to competitors’ content painfully slow.

Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said that building a 5G mobile broadband network is a chief concern for the Trump administration. “I think the pitch that Sprint and T-Mobile are making is an interesting one, that their merger would propel Verizon and AT&T into more active pursuit of 5G,” Sec Ross said. “Whoever pursues it, whoever does it, we’re very much in support of 5G. We need it. We need it for defense purposes, we need it for commercial purposes,” he continued.