Information Technology & Innovation Foundation

5G will make wireless connectivity more flexible and better able to be tightly integrated into different functions throughout the economy. Accelerating a secure deployment will be a force multiplier for growth. The private sector will lead the 5G rollout, but governments need to help. Agencies should leverage 5G for their own processes and encourage its use in their related industries. State and local governments should eliminate barriers to deployment.

The general openness of the Internet has generated tremendous economic and social value, giving users the freedom to connect, speak, innovate, and share content without restrictions. Unfortunately, many countries have in recent years enacted policies that undermine this openness. At the same time the Internet has never been fully open. Governments have long blocked illicit and dangerous material such as terrorist propaganda, pirated content, and malware. Too little openness limits the economic and social value of the Internet. Too much openness allows harmful activity.

With discussion of a potential infrastructure package at some point in the Trump Administration that many rightfully hope will include rural broadband, it is worth examining previous attempts to spur rural broadband service, revisiting the basic policies used to encourage broadband deployment in those geographies where the economics do not support competitive delivery, and distilling guidance for any new attempts at the same.

Congress should take the opportunity to support a major infrastructure package by designating a portion of the funds for broadband deployment to rural and lessdensely populated areas. But to do this effectively, any program should be designed to follow the principles articulated in this report. This report first lays out an overview of infrastructure policy more generally, then examines how those high-level principles should apply in the broadband context. Next, it discusses existing rural broadband programs with an eye toward their successes and shortcomings. It then discusses some available policy tools on the table for a future push for rural broadband deployment before offering concluding principles that should guide any future broadband infrastructure legislation.

Recently, a number of legal experts and policy activists have called on antitrust regulators to incorporate the possession of data into their analyses of mergers and possible anticompetitive practices. These observers fear that control of large amounts of data will give companies an unfair advantage over competitors, allowing them to use their market power to harm consumers and competitors. These claims are incorrect.

Data-rich companies are not an economic threat, but rather an important source of innovation, which policymakers should encourage, not limit. And because the use of data is non-rivalrous, one company’s possession of data does not come at the expense of another’s. As such, there is no need to impose additional antitrust scrutiny merely because a company relies on data to conduct business. Moreover, regulators already have sufficient powers to deal with any actual behavioral problems that may arise.