State house in oregon. Elected to the u. S. House, i am cutting through a lot of history quickly. Very married to the patient and virtuous m ilene. As chair of the inner cc 2006 until 2013, and as been chair of the a former commissioner, there are a few numbers and letters that are very important, w7eq1. That is his amateur radio license, which we all had to know. When we jump right into things. There have been a few things in the news cycle over the last 12 or 24 hours. One of which has to do with apparently a National Security council, someone has maybe recommended that for National Security reasons, the next beingtion 5g network built with private risk capital in the u. S. Should be nationalized, owned and operated by the federal government. I dont know if you want to think about that a little longer. [laughter] or if you want to just make some news. Everyonen thank you who worked on that, getting everyone interested in the internet ecosystem. And robert, thank you for your service on the fcc, it was always at what have you on the committee, when i chair the subcommittee on telecommunications and the internet, you did a Great Service and we appreciate your leadership and brainpower. 5g. We have done a lot of work in the last two years to clear spectrum, get it in the public domains we can expand out and be the center for innovation and really increase conductivity across the land. When i learned about this issue, i think it was yesterday that it broke. I didnt know. [laughter] obviously we all care about the security of our networks and all those issues and the security for the country. But the first thing came to me mind was that hack that got into all the governments secure data called opm. Now, a government that cant protect the data of its own employees, i just struggle with the notion its going to run a complete architecture and network that will be hackfree. Nor do i think its in the best interests of the kind of culture and economy we have here that believes in Capital Investment from the private sector. Were not venezuela. You know, we dont need to have the government run everything as the only choice. Now, we need to make sure these networks are safe and secure. We know there are bad actors out there and in Different Countries trying to infiltrate our networks, so i got that youve got to have a partnership here. Government taking it over, controlling it is probably, clearly, not the way to go. Mr. Mcdowell so i was just sent a text from good sources saying that the white house is now saying theyre not considering nationalizing 5g. Mr. Walden thats good. [laughter] mr. Mcdowell nor 3g. Nor 4g. [laughter] mr. Walden no, look, we have to be able to have these discussions. Were having a little fun with this here. We need to have robust discussion, people need to kick out ideas, i get that, and i dont think it had elevated itself to where the white house had a position on this, by the way. And i have every confidence that, you know, some of the other important elements of the government, the fcc, the ntia , would have weighed in in the proper time and matter. This is a leaked document, apparently, according to news reports. It should also trouble us, friendly, the other part of me, the National Security council cant keep track of its own power point . [laughter] mr. Walden just saying. Thats probably all i should say on that topic. My staff says im out of time, gotta go. Mr. Mcdowell so i think originally before this news sort of broke with the state of the union coming up, as we always have state of the net around the time of the state of the union, and infrastructure being a hot topic for 2018, historically infrastructure initiatives have been very bipartisan. When i say that thinking about spectrum in particular, but it could be a number of Different Things involving the internet, broadband in particular. And what would you like to see happen this year . Mr. Walden well, id like to continue to build on our successes from the past. As you know, back to 2012, we were able to free up begin the process to free up the spectrum that went to auction, generated incredible receipts, unpredicted in terms of amount. Was 44. 4 billion, by the way, for those of you that keep score, cbo gave us a zero score. When it sold, 44 billion, and the rest of the Television Auction took place. And weve got to fix the repack piece to make sure its properly funded, which was the commitment to broadcasters. So that is working its way through the process right now. Ive been in regular contact with do i have to call him assistant secretary . David riddle. For those of you who dont know, he was the chief counsel on Telecom Subcommittee for six years, and now i have to probably address him as the honorable too, but not in public. [laughter] mr. Mcdowell you could also subpoena [laughter] mr. Walden you know, i am waiting, my team over here already has the letters written. 38 questions for everything he says. [laughter] mr. Walden but to continue, so we did 2012, we did spectrum auction, were continuing to scrub spectrum because it is finite. What else is out there that we can bring to market. So thats one piece of this as a continuing effort. Second, the fcc under chairman pai, who i want to give great applause to, hes been a great leader to work with and has identified that they should follow the law. This is shocking news in the nations capital. There is a problem in the law that precludes him from legally putting the auction, some of the auction deposits, proceeds into the proper place legally. The last Administration Just went ahead and did it. Hes not going to do that. We literally have to change the law to say you can deposit it here, there, wherever. We have legislation to do that. Thats high on our list so we can proceed in regular order with more spectrum auction. Second, we have of a hearing tomorrow starting at 10 00. We have 25 pieces of legislation, ideas from republicans, democrats, republicans and democrats, democrats and republicans on infrastructure. And a lot of it has to do with getting the governments processes out of the analog age into the digital age. And by that i mean streamlining how you can move forward and getting the government to move at the pace of innovation in the hightech sector. Im going to give you an example, and im going to refer to my notes because sometimes you get fact checked in this business. Crown castle. Crown castle was a Wireless Infrastructure company, and in 2016 was looking to expand their tower site which was in a parking lot by a 14 by 10 area adjacent to its existing tower. They had to prove there was no adverse effect in doing that in a parking lot. They had two dozen entities to work through. It took them five months to complete and thousands of dollars just to add 140 square feet around the tower they already have. So my friend and colleague, fred john shimkus, has introduced a bill addressing the subject. It is things like that that stand in the way of the buildout we all want. And in our rural areas, this is especially important, in districts such as mine its even more important where 55 of the land in the district i represent which, by the way, is twothirds of the land mass of oregon, bigger than any state east of the mississippi with the exception of michigan because of the lake. But with all the siting requirements, its not that you want to void the environmental requirements, its just you need to be able to expedite the process so it does i had a tiny little town of less than probably 150 people spend well over three years trying to get permits to put four power poles on bureau of Land Management land so they could finally get threephase power into this town. Four power poles. So, i mean, these are the things were going to look at, see how do we expedite the process Going Forward. And then we want to make sure the mappings done right. When the Obama Administration did the stimulus, they pushed the money out the door before they knew where the maps were for weather areas were served or underserved. We want to get the mapping right. The limited federal resource that does get spent on broadband buildout should be spent in areas where its least economically attractive to the private sector. In other words, we dont need to overbuild, and we need to build where theres minimal service. 39 of rural areas in america, some 23 million people, lack access to modern day highspeed internet. Thats for the Public Investment to go. So weve got a whole series of bills to look at all of those issues and more. Mr. Mcdowell so you come from a uniquely rural area, you just said how large and diffuse the population is. Very few people spread over a large area. What do you think are some of the Better Solutions for rural you talked about removing regulatory barriers that the state and federal or and local level. But what else could be done . More spectrum . Mr. Walden youre always going to need the backhaul, so you need to get fiber out across these areas and using existing rightofways makes sense, but trying to streamline the siting process where you can. But also i think with the new wireless technology, perhaps a new satellite technology, the ability to move more data through existing systems makes sense. Lets face it, in some of these areas ive got some county cans where theres one person for every nine miles of power line. Thats probably not going to be economically achievable by connecting each house with a cable or fiber. But what you can do now from a wireless standpoint and when you get to 5g and get 100x of the throughput you can get now with lte, thats going to change lives. So i think the faster we can get 5g developed here and then out, removing these ill call them analog impediments, and then getting the streamline part with the federal agencies. And the Trump Administration issued a couple of proclamations directing the federal agencies to try and streamline their siting efforts. And, again, its not to void any of the environmental laws, its just to try and speed up the process. Mr. Mcdowell so we look forward to dave giving us more federal spectrum to make the auction. Mr. Walden by thursday. Mr. Mcdowell by thursday, ok. Good to know. Mr. Walden i have a subpoena. Mr. Mcdowell so Net Neutrality. I know were short on time here, but how does the fccs recent action affect broadband rollout , but also legislative priorities . Mr. Walden you know, it affects it. Its affected it for years. I remember sitting down in my Capitol Office with senator thune and thenchairman upton and myself and tom wheeler , asking tom not to proceed and give congress an opportunity to legislate. And we thought we were moving down a pretty good path that way, and then that got reversed, and he went ahead with the title ii regulation. The effect of that was we had real difficulty trying to find any bipartisan agreement on anything that came anywhere near the fcc since then because one side says it is all Net Neutrality. No, actually, we need to modernize the fcc, we need to do other things, and so were marking through that. Look, we ought to be able to find Common Ground to prevent the bad behaviors that all of us can agree upon, throttling, blocking. Were going to have a hearing on paid prioritization, because that gets into how the internet works today. You know, you have, in effect, paid prioritization, cdns, you have a situation where traffics prioritized today. 911 calls should be prioritized over watching some crazy cat video on youtube, right . Voice packets over data packets. There are things that happen today in the management of the internet that make sense. And i dont think theyre fully understood by the public or my colleagues or even myself. I mean, thats why we do hearings, thats why we ask for the input. We want to get the policy right. But what with we need to get is certainty. Certainty will drive more investment. If we just continue on with litigation versus litigation, administration versus administration, america will move further back and back in innovation. And i dont want that to happen. I want broadband investment to go up, not go flat. And i think youre seeing that with the tax code changes and other things we can do. We can drive more investment in broadband buildout. And its done at the private sector more than the public sector. You know, you think about the huge amount of coverage over the arra investment in the Obama Administration was 7 billion. The private sector every year does about 80 billion. 75, 77, 78 billion a year. Thats where its at. Thats whats going to build out. And we need to cement that partnership, move forward and get connectivity everywhere we can at high speed. So id like to see us move forward in a bipartisan way on the issues where we can find agreement. I think the cra is dead on arrival at 1600 pennsylvania avenue. Its great politics for some, but its not going to, its not even if it passes the house and the senate, i cant imagine itll end up with the djt on the paperwork. And so why are we coming together today, as ive tried to do for the last five years before the Net Neutrality rules were implemented by the Wheeler Administration or fcc, and legislate in this space . And so im asking all parties, lets do it. Ive had draft proposals on the table since probably 2014, 2015. Mr. Mcdowell part of what youre saying is the cra effort is not the legislative solution that some are advertising it to be. Mr. Walden no, its just a bulldozer. Takes you back to where it was and says the fcc cant do any activity in this space, most likely. Which may not be what people want. And beyond that, you know, youre seeing a growing debate out there, including at davos, where some pretty surprising characters said its more than just the Internet Service providers that may need to have a discussion about Net Neutrality, it may be the edge providers, it may be the facebooks and the amazons and all that. And the more you learn about how they operate and how their algorithms work and the trolls and, you know, how many followers do you really have and how many did you just buy, and is somebody monetizing all that, by the way . You know, you go back, youre in the newseum here, and a great newspaper business has to certify how many readers they have and publish that. Because thats what they sell advertising rates based upon. You think about todays information world, are we getting scammed in this market . Who knows . I dont know. We know there are bots out there that pretend to be people, and there are followers that dont exist, and all of this is getting monetized. I think theres role for the ftc, the fcc and congress. Mr. Mcdowell so this an area where your committee will be doing some further investigation . Mr. Walden yep, absolutely. Mr. Mcdowell on the state of the market, the state of the net overall . Mr. Walden absolutely. Heres my view, youve got to put the consumer first. And if you put the consumer first, it means you have a market you can trust in, and that will drive innovation and competition, which should lower prices and expand choices more consumers. And if theres bad behavior, we will go after it, i dont care who it is. And the energy and Commerce Committee has a pretty good record on doing that going back, republican and democrat chairs. Mr. Mcdowell excellent. So you mentioned earlier the broadcaster repack process. This is in the wake of the 600 megahertz auction, the spectrum act of 2012, which you and i worked on a little bit together when i was at the commission as you were writing it. And its a complex endeavor with endeavor, what the fccs about to undertake, and you mentioned before there might need to be some more help or thought in that area. I wanted you to sort of elaborate. Mr. Walden you know, the commitment that was made to broadcasters, if youre not part of the auction, were going to do our best to make sure youre not harmed in viewership or paying price or penalty because you are licensed and getting moved around. Initially in the legislation we put forward, we had 3 billion was the identified figure of what we thought it would cost to do the repack. That got negotiated down between the parties to 1. 75 billion and now, guess what . The number is probably about 3 billion. Now we have allocated all the auction proceeds, so we have to go find money to make this up. We need to make this up not only to keep our word, but also to grease the skids at getting the repack done. Public broadcasters are running into a problem because the fcc, i think, is only laying out 80 of the money at the time, so there are questions about where you can go, what you can commit to and what are you going to get reimbursed. We dont need that. So im working really hard to figure out the funding stream and make any other associated changes we need to to make sure the repack can continue on time. Because we are on a really tight timeline. 39 months, youve got tower issues with a limited supply of people that climb and move and erect towers. Thats an issue weve looked at in the committee. We dont need anything that stands in the way of this progress, because what stands in the way there is building out the new networks and the higher speeds and throughputs and coverage areas. We need all this to stay on track and work. Its what the investors in the spectrum paid for, was the spectrum on a timeline. They predicated their Business Model on that, broadcasters were promised they wouldnt incur any losses, and congress now needs to step up and true this up. And i think well have an opportunity to do that. Mr. Mcdowell and do you think that can be done on a bipartisan basis. Mr. Walden yeah, i hope so. I dont you know, frank pallone, who ive developed a great working relationship with on many issues, i know hes got a bill authorizing this. Its always easy to authorize, by the way. Its hard to appropriate from an authorizing standpoint. [laughter] mr. Walden appropriators get funny about that. But weve got to find the money. And were shoulder to shoulder on that. Mr. Mcdowell very good. So i know were starting to run out of time, but the recent false alarm in hawaii brought attention to all of our Emergency Alerts and even a conversation regarding 911, nextgeneration 911. What would you like to see happen . Mr. Walden well have the commission before the committee next week, is that right . Ive got to look february. Mr. Mcdowell false alarm. Mr. Walden well, i guarantee you a couple of things, one, you mentioned im an amateur radio operator, although im not active too much, and two, i have a wired in Emergency Alert system or two or three in radio stations because my wife and i ran radio stations for 20 years. I know a little bit about that and i go back far enough to remember when it was the emergency broadcast system and it was an orange book in the control room next to the operator, and inside was a pink envelope that had identification codes in case of a national emergency. And those got changed out ill say every month, you got a new envelope, you destroyed the old one, you never opened it. I dont know what would have happened, its like ripping the thing off your mattress, i think. [laughter] mr. Walden seriously, this was very well thought out. I cannot imagine a scenario where me sitting goes, hey, pushed the wrong button, and we have a Nuclear Attack coming. I just dont know how that would have happened. And so i think this needs evaluation. I talked to chairman pai that night, we discussed it. There could have been loss of life as a result of this because you know, we had, we had an interesting thing when i was in the radio business. Fortunately, i had a retired guy who just wanted to do saturday morning shift. And tom was a great guy, cool head, and they were doing a mock drill in oregon, and the whole shtick was that one of the major main stem dams across the Columbia River had been breached. Now, if that happens, portlands under a whole bunch of water. So theyre going through all the drills and emergency casualty stuff, this is all a drill, and he gets the call saying, ok, now its your turn to activate the Emergency Alert system and notify people of this disaster. And he said, ok, thanks. No, you have to do that. He said, no, no, no, i dont think im going to push the button and actually go on the air and say bonneville dams been breached. I think thats sort of orson wells stuff. He refused to do it, but it can get to that level. Wherever we are, weve got to be cognizant that safeguards are in place and especially in these treacherous times, dangerous times in places like hawaii or guam or somewhere that theres better command and control. So on the 50th anniversary of 9 11, on these events happening, i look forward to working with our First Responder community and broadcasters and states and the fcc to see whatten went wrong and how do we make sure it doesnt happen again . Mr. Mcdowell are we on time . One or two questions . Are you willing to mr. Walden of course. Ill take em, you answer em. [laughter] mr. Mcdowell well start over here first. Wait for the mic. I apologize, i should have said that. We do have microphones, and there are people watching on the internet, apparently. Mr. Walden i thought this was all off the record. [laughter] mr. Mcdowell a lot of tweets. Thank you, congressman and commissioner, for a very enlightening presentation. I was encouraged to hear your discussions regarding infrastructure, and when we can you sayen who youre with . Im here with connect americans now, my name is bill sheeting. And when we talk about the Digital Divide in rural america, we often hear a lot about Public Investment but little about specific technologies that will deliver broadband to underserved areas. And there are some stakeholders, including the coalition connect americans now, who are advocating for the use of tvwide Space Technology to play a role in this mission. Do you believe it should be a part of the solution, and then if so, what steps do congress and fcc need to take to ensure internet providers . Mr. Walden you know, i think they can be. So as an old radio guy, i want to make sure we dont have interference, thats the first thing. Wherever you are in the spectrum, we went through this with light squared and all the issues that followed that, you want to maximize use of the spectrum, but you dont want to create unintended consequences , and in this case, could be interference with existing users. And so thats something we asked the gao to look at, thats something were continuing to investigate. Im not opposed at all to it as long as there isnt some sort of interference issue. That has to be first and foremost. But, look, were scouring every bit of spectrum we can to do the kinds of things that youre talking about as well as look at unlicensed, what the appropriate amount of that is. Its attention we had in the 2012 act. Were going to try to get millimeter spectrum out there. Theres a lot were doing. There was a time i would say in 2012, and i may be wrong on this, but where we thought some of the upperend spectrum , people werent really sure what that would be used for and did it have much value, and now we know thats some of the new beachfront, if you will. Were looking at how do we maximize use of that as long as there isnt an interference issue. Mr. Mcdowell time for one more . Mr. Walden yeah, sure. Mr. Mcdowell just wait for the microphone and identify yourself. [inaudible] can you say anything about any opportunity to update the 1996 telecommunications act. In other words, reform. Mr. Walden yeah, thank you. You know, i started an effort on that when i chaired the telecommunications and internet subcommittee. We did a very extensive informationgathering project, connect update, and it had a lot of good input on how to do that. It was my hope to do kind of a major rewrite. That, as i mentioned earlier, kind of collided with the big Net Neutrality in the room and kind of precluded our ability to move forward. On a big one. So what were doing is looking piece by piece by piece. As a, as a member of congress, jurisdiction over an agency, i also think we need to look at the fccs functions, how it today and modernize it. We always have all that obligation over all our agencies. We are doing it with the department of energy and we should do it with the Responsibilities Commission has. Live in a different era than when the 96 act was written. The market has changed somatic when you look at these change dramatically. We need to get the piece by piece. Instead, you see Program Program of valuation Going Forward and i should say she is a terrific chair of the subcommittee and wants to get done. If he was Elvis Preston manager said the crowd wanting elvis has left the building. Please give him a round of applause. Tuesday morning we are live in jackson, miss. 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