Transcripts For CSPAN Telecommunications Policy Conference Part 2 20170604

The Free State Foundations annual telecommunications conference. This is an hour and a half. Ok, we are going to get started now. One minute. If everyone will take their seats, please. You become so quiet when i say that that i should not even wait the full minute. That is fantastic. We are going to get started now. I think that was a terrific session to get the conference started, talking about regulation more generally, although i knew there would be. I think throughout the day we are going to hear about that neutrality, or restoring internet freedom. The open internet proceeding. We did hear a little bit during the previous session. I will call this the allstars panel. I am not sure i came up with another name. We do have a group of allstars here. We are going to the digging in to Certain Communications issues. I want to do brief introductions. Everyone here has the brochure where we have got the full bios there. The brochure is also on the website, for those of you in our cspan audience. I want to welcome those of you in our cspan audience. We are very pleased cspan is covering the conference today. What im going to do is introduce of the beckley alphabetically our panelists. Im going to ask them to speak in that order, that is probably as good as any other order. Once again, Meredith Baker finds herself in that spot. Im going to give you the brief version of their bio and maybe Say Something personal. They have a lot more you can read about in the official brochure. Our first speaker is Meredith Baker. She joined ctia as its president in june of 2014. She previously served in the bush administration, as the acting assistant secretary of commerce for communications as Information Communications and information. While at ntia, she did a lot of important things. One thing meredith did that may be forgotten, but it is very important, she really is the person that facilitated and led the transition at that period to the Digital Television format. It was so easy going, it made it seem as if it might not have been as difficult and as much work as wedded to it. There were a lot of people that preceded meredith to make that happen. I will always recall that because it was very important at the time. The other thing i will say about meredith that i always like to point out, in case she forgets, she upon becoming a commissioner gave her maiden address at a Free State Foundation conference, which was nice enough. She had to come back from south america and goes straight she came straight from the airport into another room here at the press club to deliver that speech. And it was a good one, as well. I appreciate that. Next, after meredith, we have david cohen. He is the Senior Executive Vice President at comcast and the chief diversity officer. He has a broad portfolio of responsibilities including government regulatory affairs, legal affairs, corporate administration, and community investment. I dont know what you do during the rest of your day. By the way, when david was in law school, actually, he was known as chief Justice David cohen. He and my brother were in law school together. David not at duke, for the record. Randolph not at duke, but everyone makes mistakes. My brother didnt actually tell me that, it is on wikipedia. It says david he was known as chief Justice David cohen because of his intellect and the work ethic his responsibilities tell you something about his work ethic. I do know from my brother, because they were partners in a law firm together, david was the managing partner and it was not unusual at all to get emails at 3 00 in the morning. That probably still happens around comcast, i suppose. We are glad to have you with us as well. Next is kim keenan. This is the first time kim has been with us. Kim is ceo of the multicultural council. What i would say to you, because i dont know much about your Law School Career i know kim is also a former general counsel for the naacp. For many of our conferences, we have had one of your predecessors from mmtc with us, and even before the name was changed. Thankfully, the acronym remained the same. I have always thought it was important for our purposes here to have the perspective of mmtc so im glad you are here with us as well. Next, we have blair. Blair serves as executive director of gig u. I guess that is his university affiliation. I mentioned about howard, when i introduced him this morning, i said his position is often referred to as the regulatory czar. Blair was head of the National Broadband plan. He always points out it was 18 effort. He was a leader. Some of us thought of him as the broadband is our czar. We are old friends. We are old, but we are also friends. Weve got different views about a lot of the issues we are going to discuss. We have a lot of common views as well. Sometimes we say to ourselves, dreaming if we were the communications arczar, maybe we could do it together and come up with a halfway decent act. I am glad you are with us today. Last but not least, bob quinn. Bob is Senior Executive Vice President at at t. He is responsible for at ts publicpolicy organization. He has been with at t for a long time. He steps into the shoes of jims m, who we have the pleasure of having with us on many occasions. It is a pleasure you are here as well, bob. Now what we are going to do, i have asked each of these three excuse me, each of our panelists just take three minutes initially to give us their perspective on what ought to be the fccs priorities or congresss priorities with Communications Law and policy. I know that is fairly broad. Sometimes they talk about what they want to, but i am going to enforce this threeminute limit. That is going to give us a basis. I am absolutely certain to have a Good Exchange back and forth. I know i have some questions and i will try to save some time for questions from the audience. Have an informative and i think interesting discussion with these allstars. Ms. Baker, why dont you start us off . Meredith it is a pleasure to be here with this esteemed panel. It is my birthday, so i am only going to answer questions i want to. [applause] meredith i think we are going to hear a lot about Net Neutrality and privacy. I think we are closer than a lot of people think they are. I dont know how many of you saw this article in the wall street journal, about 10 days ago. It is talking about the Consumer Price index falling surprisingly from april to april. Nearly half of that decline was traced to wireless telephone services. Think about that, a slowdown of inflation was caused by smartphone price declines. Our consumer bills went down 12. 9 because of competition last year. I think that is remarkable for two main reasons. I think the size of the Wireless Industry to affect the economy is interesting and important. I also think the fact that the power of competition to save americans money is also important. That power of competition is also driving the market in wireless to do the next thing, 5g. What i want to do is talk about what 5g is. What impact 5g is going to have on our lives. And then talk about what policies we need to have to get there. What is 5g . I think we have heard this feed is going to be remarkable. 100 times the speed we have today. That is Home Broadband speed. The scale is going to the connecting everything, everywhere. I had an ahha moment when i was at intel and i looked at their prototype a ton this car. It had 200 sensors and five hd cameras. We are talking vehicle to neighborhood. That is a lot of data are 4g network could not handle. That is another reason we are building these 5g networks. The transformative thing is the realtime effect of it. There is virtually no lag time in five g. With that can do, its applications in health care with remote surgeries or transportation, energy savings, i like to say i think we are only limited by our imagination for what 5g can do. Eccentric tells us it is going to bring 3 million new jobs. That means one in every hundred americans is going to be employed by our industries. It is going to add to our economy. What do we need to do to get the policies right . In the last 30 years, the Wireless Industry built 150, 000 towers. We need to double that in small cells growth for the next few years. To do that, to build these new networks for 5g, we need new rules. That includes sitting. We need to have Affordable Access and streamline the process. We are going to need more spectrum. There is nothing in the pipeline right now. It needs to be internationally harmonized. It is going to be to 75 billion to build these networks. We need policies that incent that. There are trials in the United States, trials all over the world. We won the race in 4g and we need to in 5g. David thanks very much and it is a pleasure to be here. I like it when you ask us to distill the complex Communications Policy issues to three minutes. You would never hold yourself to that standard, but maybe between the five of us, we can hope to cover some of the brett of the policy issues that are on the top of the pile, if you will. Randolph you have about two minutes and 30 seconds. [laughter] david im going to focus on two higherlevel policies. I look at the current internet ecosystem. It is the envy of the world. I dont think there is any country or continent that has been able to develop the internet ecosystems and we have that we have in the United States. It is because of a consistent, light regulatory touch developed by republican and democratic administrations up until the last five years or so. The number one priority, i think, for our company, for our industry, i think for everyone on this panel and meredith alluded to it, is to figure out how we keep the United States on the leading edge of investment and innovation for the ecosystem. The private sector has invested 1. 5 trillion. That is twice the per capita investment rate that exists in europe. We have developed open and accessible networks. Open and accessible an openended and accessible internet. It is hard to look at it any fcc action, within the window of a new cycle or two, or even a year or two, but the legacy of the five years of the Obama Administration will be an unexplained, unnecessary retrenchment on a policy that was working, when it moved to reclassify broadband under title ii and absolutely undercut the United States advantage for innovation and investment. It is why our number one priority is to support the chairman of the fcc in unraveling that reclassification of broadband. Not in unraveling that neutrality rules. No matter how many times the opponents of his actions say it, it does not make it true. Getting rid of title ii does not mean getting rid of neutrality. You can support and Net Neutrality rules that you do not have to do that under title ii. Which brings me to my second overall priority, once we have this internet ecosystem that is the envy of the world, we have to make sure it is available to everyone. That is what universal broadband deployment and adoption is all about. I applaud the chairmans focus on this. Whether it is through a combination of further buildout of Wireline Networks or technologys we need to figure out a way to get broadband to all america. The numbers always matter. There are about four times as Many Americans who do not have access to the internet today who have broadband buildout to their homes compared to those that did not have access because the broadband has not been built out. We need to keep our eye on the ball for what we are trying to accomplish, which is to sign more people up for the internet. Which means those dollars should be devoted to unserved areas, not socalled underserved areas. We wont end up with lots of federal dollars going into a bucket where you cant even quantify how many additional americans were signed up for the america internet as a result of 6 billion being spent. These are great opportunities for publicprivate partnerships, a combination of federal programs like extension of lifeline to broadband, and private sector programs like merediths companies have, like at t and comcast. If we keep our eye on those overarching policies, we can make progress. Randolph thank you very much. Now we will turn it to kim. Kim im going to pick up where david left off. People need to hear there are people who have broadband in front of their home, but they do not have broadband. We spend so much time dividing ourselves and slicing ourselves. If you have kids who live in a community where there is broadband around the corner, at the library, at the fast food place, but they do not have access, effectively the not just left behind, they are left in another place. They dont have an opportunity to be a part of what is going to be a digital economy. We care about ownership and diversity in this space. We also care about making sure every american is connected. We spend so much time all of this is lost. To have these people saying, you are giving away something for free. You are going to have a Walled Garden and they are only going to have a little bit of the internet. If you let somebody in your garden, they are coming to your house. We need to be focused on that. We cannot lose sight of the fact that we have americans who do not have this. I had the opportunity to go to brussels. We have the system that is the envy of the world. We have to make sure every american has this opportunity. In 2020, there are going to be millions of jobs in the digital space. How you get your education is important. If you have a kid and they are not using the internet to do their homework, i dont know who they are going to compete with in the future. That is our number one opportunity. I care about that. However i take on these issues, you know that we are thinking about the people that do not have this. They are not sexy issues. The prison phone, the notion people would pay more to make a longdistance call because their loved one is in a jail. That is not a popular issue. Why . That says a lot that we would charge families a tax on their pain. Why are we stripping revenue for that when it could go to broadband or Something Else . Other things people dont think about, they are fighting about open neutrality. They are not thinking about multilingual Emergency Alert systems. It is when theyre is going to be a next disaster, not if. When people cannot broadcast in languages in the community, we do them to not being found. We doomed the people to going to get them to having to do it under the worst conditions. I want us to think about that, too. As david just said, we have the capacity, we have the talent. We can make this. Randolph thank you. Blair is going to be next. When i said we are old friends, i didnt mean too imply you are as old as i am. Blair as a matter of political capital, it is obvious we will spend most of it on Net Neutrality. Are the issues in about 155 other broadband plans around the world, how do you get more affordable broadband . That is where the focus ought to be. One of the things i think is consistent with a lot of other folks have said, i would note when you understand the economics as well as kind of the social elements of those questions, a lot of it resides in cities, not the federal government. We could argue and maybe we well about what the whether what the federal government is doing is helping citizens move in the right direction or Something Else. But that is the focus of what i have been doing. I have to say, most of the money i made in my life i made on wall street. From a wall street perspective, there is really only one question, how far is consolidation allowed to go . We will look at the next three years from the perspective of 10 years from now. The next three years are going to be very important. There is going to be a wave of consolidation. The question is, what is allowed and what is not allowed. I think the conditions are much less relevant. That, as meredith said, what competition has done to the Wireless Industry and what that has done to the economy, if Market Structure is the single most important issue, and that will be tested in a variety of ways in the next couple of years. Randolph bob will be last. I want to be remind you, we do have a twitter handle. It is on your brochure. Feel free to tweet, if you would like. Bob. Bob is there a reason you did the twitter thing right before i spoke . Randolph i have heard you are a tweeter. Bob thank you for inviting me. For the record, i am not as old as either of these guys. All the good things have been said. I couldnt agree more with the focus of meredith and david and kim on deployment and adoption. I agree with the blair, consolidation is going to be on everybodys mind. Certainly in virtually every news story that comes out in this space, and i think it is going to dominate the press for a while. But the area i would go to, and it really kind of echoes the comments that meredith made about 5g, the way we create jobs in the telecommunications space is we dig up streets. When meredith talks about needing 150,000 small cell towers, this is how we really create jobs across the board. I think tax reform is going to be a dominant policy. If you look at the tax rates paid by the largest investors, Telecommunications Companies are at the top of the list. I think the percentages they pay in Corporate Income tax are very high. If we can reform that, and reform the tax code to free up more capital for investment, but also to change the way we look at some of the investment that is made, i think that would go a long way toward clearing the way to building the 5g networks of the future. And when you think about the 5g networks, we always think about Wireless Infrastructure and cell towers that cover multiple miles, two miles to three miles of coverage. In these small cell world, we are going to need fiber. Particularly in densely populated areas, every couple hundred meters. When i talk about digging up some serious is digging up streets. We are going to have to be able to get into their rightsofway in order to deploy that fiber. We going to have a lot of issues. Verizon is not on the panel, but i know when verizon wanted to do fios 10 years ago, municipalities did not have the right attitude. The right attitude should have been, we welcome this, we want it, how do we compete with the business . When google entered the fiber business, it changed the way some municipalities think about it. We are already seeing some rich etrenchment in the area of small cell. I think if the country is really serious about the United States ing in 5g deployment the point meredith made is, if we lead in 5g deployment, will lead in job creation. There is nothing more critical than that. We need to tie these policies together. It has to be tax reform, it has to be incentives to encourage the buildout of the infrastructure, both on the wired side and the wireless side. The point i was trying to make earlier was, it is not wireless. These are wireless radios for the last couple hundred feet now. These are all fiber infrastructures that are being built and we have to make sure we have policies across the thed that in sent incent deployment and the building of those networks. Randolph thank you. Thank you all for these opening statements. This gives us a basis to dig deeper into these issues, which i want to start doing right now. The theme of this conference, each year i try to pick a theme because the issues dont always change dramatically. That is actually a challenge sometimes. But this year, there is a new administration, a new fcc, and the theme for this conference is a new direction for Communications Policy. Less regulation, more investment and innovation. I i understand everyone might not agree with that sentiment, but that is at least the view that i have in general. What i want to do in terms of the first question is ask the panelists in connection with our theme everyone talks a lot about, including randy may, about the discouragement from investment if the regulation is overly burdensome or rigid or costly. If it is more than it needs to be. Specifically, with regard to Net Neutrality, we talk a lot about the impact of the title ii classification on regulation. I want to ask the panelists, bob initially, bob or david and meredith can chime in, and the others as well. But can you we talk about that, and say it so often, i think sometimes we forget there are actually decisions being made that go directly to this point. Are there examples you can give where your businesses where you believe the regulatory regime, the current one, has impacted Investment Decisions . Anyone want to i will take a crack at that. First of all, if you look at at t, what has happened since those rules were enacted, those rules were essentially announced, we moved in a lot of different places. We moved into mexico, where they instituted regulatory reforms trying to encourage other companies to come in and build infrastructure. That coincided with what we were seeing here. I think the thing about title ii, that i think is the overhang on the market, title ii is essentially a rate regulation tool. When former chairman wheeler announced the rules, he said we were not going to get in rate regulation. It was just a matter until we got to rate regulation. We started to see the movement almost immediately upon enactment of those rules. We had a lot of focus on usage on a free data that the Wireless Companies were offering. On it a lot of focus usage allowance on the wired and wireless side. And i think the fear is what we saw in europe. Europe has a very regulated structure on the Wireless Services market. After 10 years of policies, where they did rate regulation and they did extensive wholesale regulation, europe was faced with the prospect of having gotten passed by in the 4g deployment rates. They acknowledged that was a result of the kinds of policies we are moving towards. I think that is what companies are reacting to, and i think that overhang was there, and i think the Prior Commission was making a lot of Movement Towards that. The contrast to that are the policies adopted in this country from the mid1990s on which were aimed at building the Communications Infrastructure that incented companies to move to make the investments to move from the analog era to the digital broadband era. They were started under the Clinton Administration and accelerated under the bush administration. Even the beginning of the Obama Administration, if you look at the National Broadband plan, which blair put together, blair and hundreds of others but which blair led, i think they put a plan together that recognized the importance of getting these networks built and having the right conditions to build it. I think the mistake was walking away from some of the concepts in the National Broadband plan and going into a title ii. A title ii rabbit hole. David i think it is a great question to kick us off. I have to say, i find it almost puzzling that there is even a debate around the issue whether a 1930s era regulatory scheme that was designed to regulate price and access, how could that not have an impact on investment . For anyone who has ever worked in a company that has to make Investment Decisions, the notion that academics and even nonacademics, just activists, would try to argue that does not have an impact on Investment Decisions is creating an alternative reality to the way in which we conduct our business every day. I look at your question at three different levels. First of all, i sit in rooms where we do capital budgets, where we do longrange plans, where we talk about our Capital Investments, and since the prospect of title ii was raised in the tom wheeler fcc administration, every single one of those discussions at comcast has been burdened by the prospect of what title ii means for the business. Now, investments are complicated. There are a lot of different factors involved, we have to competition, we have to make sure our networks operate or else we will blow up our whole business. But the notion that the regulatory structure here has not impacted our decisionmaking is just dead wrong. It impacts it every single day, and i have seen it dozens and dozens of times. I want to also added to the investment calculus, the impact on innovation, and this goes to something bob talked about. In theting plans wireless space, tmobile, s original stream tv, which was not an internet service. We end up with a yearlong fcc investigation, which delayed the launch of a service that potentially could be incredibly popular with customers were 18 months. So, there is a crystallized example as bob says, the Commission Says we will not get into this, and we end up with a 12 month investigation by the fcc, into something that is not even covered by the open internet rules because it is not an internet delivered service. That is level one. Level two is to look at the numbers. We have free press from the who haveassociation hired people to do about the most facile analysis. They said, they have gone up. Obviously, there is no impact of title ii. The problem is, that is an argument that does not reflect the reality of capex decisionmaking. If you are going to look at anything, you should be looking at capital intensity because that is how you measure what a business might really want to be spending on capex. For comcast only, based on the same public numbers the free press and Internet Association used, making an assessment based on capital intensity, that is the percentage of our revenue that we are spending on capital intensity as opposed to the actual capital spend, the leveling off and even reduction of capital intensity since the adoption of title ii suggests that comcast capital spend alone is going to decrease more than 2. 5 billion over a threeyear period. The third level, i will look at this, the variety of studies that attempt to look at this in a more sophisticated fashion than the free press and Internet Association studies. That can be whether the ford study or free state study, all of which conclude there has been a significant reduction in Capital Expenditures as opposed and Capital Investment as a result of the reclassification of broadband under title ii. Randolph thank you, david. I am going to ask blair referred to earlier his connections with wall street. I know he thinks about things in economic terms as well as others. If you want to jump in and respond to these two, you can do that. And then meredith, with the he we will give you a short time. Blair i am an empiricist. I can only reflect the rooms i have been in. We wrote our first wall street piece on Net Neutrality in 2002. It has been a long time and sometimes one does not learn new butgs, that i would say i would say in the last five years, when i have been in wall street, it has not been an issue. Sorry. You can look at the piece that craig moffett, a wellrespected panelist who by the way opposes title ii he wrote a very good piece on why he is upgrading verizon and at t from sell to neutral. The words Net Neutrality does not appear. Mergers appears. The competitive marketplace appears, but if you look at the comments on quarterly calls, i dont think anybody has said you ought to short equipment people because there has been a lack of investment. I am sure dave and bob are accurately reflecting those discussions internally. But from the investor perspective, what drives investment, what drives their excitement, 5g is an interesting issue. I dont think any investor i have talked to thinks it is that dramatically affected by what is primarily a legal question about how you ground your Net Neutrality rules. So bob made a very important point. When verizon did fisos, they did it in a traditional way and the cities responded in a traditional way, saying you are a monopoly and we will take as much money as we can. One of the great things about google fiber is to change how cities think about things. One is about, are you better off raising nontax revenues from a source that may or may not mind, such as a phone or Cable Company . Or are you better off having the foundation for growth in an information economy . Every city i have talked to has decided it is better to do the latter. The second thing, they have understood this is not about regulation, it is about management. Remember, cities are the monopolist Construction Managers for large projects. They had to make a lot of changes. You look at the 30 page agreement between kansas city and google, a lot of things are very different. Jim cicconi, bobs predecessor, he said lets do a gig city somewhere. We in fact did something with at t North Carolina and they have forward and done a lot of things. I think there has been a significant change in cities. That drove investment. What google is doing drove investment. I think bob and david would agree with that. Whether that continues to do so is a different question. But competition drives an awful lot of investment. Consumer behavior and interest , once we have this, if they have an inhome care high fidelity twoway video that allows people in their 80s and 90s to be able to avoid going to the doctor every week, you are going to see a lot of take up of higher levels. I would Say Something randolph im going to stop you. Not because of the comment, but because we have got a lot of questions. Blair if i can just make one comment, if we have gigs everywhere, the debate about Net Neutrality becomes a lot less. The incentives to use scarce bandwidth to discriminate kind of go away. Randolph thank you. Meredith, if you have a comment. Why dont you add it here. Meredith just briefly. I think the cti annual survey has been a reliable source for reporting numbers for quite a while. The annual survey showed a 17 drop in investment. Companies make investments for multiple reasons, but to say that something as intrusive as title ii doesnt ienter into doesnt enter into their decisions is incredible. We need to have the right broadband policies to incent investment. Randolph kim, you have a comment . Paying kim light touch regulation got us to where we are today. It was not something that happened that stopped that continuation. The fact of the matter is, when companies started giving free data away, people said they should give it all away. What happened was when one Company Started giving unlimited data as a plan, all the copies all the companies started doing it. I remember saying, if one of them does it, the others are going to do it. That is a benefit for consumers. When you get your bill and you go over the data limit, this was huge. It is continuing to evolve, and we dont know where it is going to go. Rather than cutting it off before it can get to people who cant afford to pay, there are a lot of people out there that dont live like that. It is important we think about how it is interrupting the ability of this industry to go where it really could go and make a difference for every american. Randolph no one has ever challenged unlimited data as being violative of title ii. Kim they investigated it for a year. Zero rating and unlimited are two different things. Frankly, unlimited makes zero rating a nonissue. Randolph we might continue that discussion later. I do want to get in a number of things. Im going to move on. I think blair referred to his First Encounter with Net Neutrality in 2002. I dated mine to 2004. It has been a long time, and hopefully we will get to a point sometime soon i dont want to say in our lifetimes, because i am thinking much sooner than that, where maybe this issue will be resolved in a proper way. Toward that end, i want to ask this question and listen carefully, because i want to focus on this question. Lets say hypothetically you are negotiating a compromise with the other side, whomever the other side might be at the time. With the current rules as the starting point. What would you consider the elements of the current regime that must be eliminated from your perspective, that must be eliminated, in order to reach such a compromise . Maybe that will get us a little further down the road and understanding what lies ahead and the way we ought to think about it. Because we are all thinking about it in terms of the comments that are going to have to be filed. I know you guys have been thinking about it, and this is your opportunity to tell your staff how those comments should be written. Who wants to go first echo who wants to go first . David i want to use this as an excuse to what i think this proceeding is about. I think it is about reclassifying broadband under title i and not title ii. I think there is a body of evidence we are going to cite. The ancillary issues are, what should strong, legally enforceable Net Neutrality rules look like . We have all said and repeatedly say we are for strong, legally enforceable Net Neutrality rules. I am taking it an opposite way, but i will do it quickly. I think there is a broad consensus among all parties on all sides of this question that strong, legally enforceable neutrality rules include no blocking, no throttling, no discrimination, and full transparency. Those are the four Core Principles. Open internet principles, Net Neutrality rules. There is a smaller set of issues about which there is potential disagreement. One is paid prioritization. Thei actually think formulation on paid prioritization is a workable starting point for a discussion about how you deal with paid privatization. I remind everyone that at the time that rule was put out, there was no uproar and revolution of the treatment of paid privatization. That is a reasonable place to start. I think the number one issue i would identify, in the tom wheeler fcc formulation that has to disappear is the socalled general conduct standard which is basically an importation into Net Neutrality. There is was never a general conduct standard in any formulation of Net Neutrality rules before tom wheeler came along and this rule came out. The way i would describe the general conduct standard, it is a catchall that says any practice that any isp engages in or potentially edge provider, even if it does not violate the principles of Net Neutrality, could be subject to challenge under the general conduct standard. I actually think it is a doubleedged sword because in one type of fcc, you could use the general conduct standard to attack zero rating rules. And another type of fcc, you could use the general conduct standard to say a decision to throttle internet usage, once a particular customer reaches a particular level, is something we are going to authorize under the general conduct standard. Depending on your politics of the fcc, the general conduct standard can be used either direction in the Net Neutrality debate. Since the purpose of this is to end once and for all the game of regulatory pingpong we have all been engaged in depending on the administration for the last decade or more, maybe since 2002 or 2004, having someone like a general conduct standard just perpetuates the game of regulatory pingpong. I think those are the six basic areas, including the two areas where theres contention. I really think around the four Core Principles of Net Neutrality, there is general agreement. Randolph now we can see why even in law school, david cohen was called mr. Chief justice. That was a good baseline to lay out these elements of Net Neutrality. By the way, david, in the wheeler commissions order, i thought this was kind of puzzling. The order refers to that good conduct rule as a socalled catchall. Right in the order. It was interesting to me. What i want to do, i want to see whether we can get to the bottom line of what would be acceptable say, hooray,er to this is something i can live with. Who wants to go next . Bob, go ahead. Bob i was not a volunteer, by the way. I was volunteered. I think david has it exactly right. I think the general conduct standard, if you go back to the press conference after then chairman wheeler passed the open Internet Order im going to butcher it, i dont have the exact quote in front of me, but i think he was asked the question what conduct prohibited to read his general answer was, i dont know yet. Any time you pass a rule, and that is the answer, i think you have a problem. What howard was talking about on the prior panel. I think that was the issue we had with the general conduct standard. We saw it in action shortly after the rules came out. We had cool we had calls to use the standard to go after usage allowances. We never knew where it was going to go. You never knew what services it was going to attack. If you think about the free data services, these are commercial services, there is no billing arrangement, they are commercial that are offered to ared to a thirdparty to pay the usage on somebodys bill. Then you have the calls to eliminate the services. I think there is a relationship between what happened to unlimited data and zero rated services. I was not in the rooms that made the decision to say, we are going to go all out with this unlimited data, but there is an to be made that some of these moves were made as a result of the fact that free data was in the marketplace. I think david has laid out the argument really strongly against why the general conduct standard was a problem. I think he gets a 100 right on paid prioritization. I think in an age when we are talking about Autonomous Cars coming into the world, we are talking about using the internet for health applications, i think the idea you have a flat out ban on endtoend quality of service management, that that guarantees a specific level of service, i think it is silly to have that. We dont know where the internet is going, but i look at 5g, i look at the latency, how low the latency on 5g is going to be, and there is a world of innovation that could happen in that space. I would not go so far as to say there is a presumption against it, but the ability to bring those types of services to market, and whether you formulate it as it can be it cannot be anticompetitive, there has to be consumer consent, i think there is all kinds of things you can do in that space that will still allow for the kind of innovation you are going to see when we Start Building these networks and start seeing the capabilities they offer people. Randolph thank you, bob. Meredith, what is your bottom line when it comes to this proceeding . Meredith we all seem to want the same thing. We want to go where we can on the internet and incent worldclass broadband. I remember marty cooper coming to see me. He is the inventor of the cell phone. I dont know if you guys know him, he is a short little elf santa claus looking man. He said, we are at the model t state of the internet. I think that is true. As bob said, we want to be able to evolve this where we need to maintain global leadership. I am optimistic we are closer than we think to coming up with basic rules we can live with and hopeful we can get congress to enact the roles so we can stop the pingpong david talked so eloquently about. Randolph kim, do you want to make a comment . Kim i agree we should have federal legislation. I think if it is so clear what the rules are, it would just be simpler to have them do what they are supposed to do, and it has been very bipartisan all along. That is the thing. People kept saying, it is this administration or that administration. But the things people have upon on the internet date back to the Clinton Administration, the bush administration. People need to look back and see how they were able to have bipartisan agreement on this very great thing they all created. Randolph before turning to the next issue, im going to ask blair, im going to ask him to hypothetically put himself in the position of the other side i referred to in my statement. Just for the moment. And you have heard the comments thus far. If you are just looking at it, i will ask you to reflect on your personal experience, because i am trying to have here a diversity of perspectives. I want to keep this short and then move on. But what would you consider as sort of the element that would have to be in a change from the existing regime in order for you to consider it to be a good regime, and then we will move on. Blair i have a big problem opining on it when i dont know who my client is. [laughter] blair i actually mean this in a very serious way. One of my favorite moments is when tom looked at a Public Interest advocates and said, we invest billions of dollars, you invest paper. I think that is a legitimate point. Since i only invest paper, im reluctant to say. I will simply say not so much as my own of you, but i think analytically, what the panel has said is fundamentally right. There is a disagreement on the rules. The problem on legislation is this area, and it is an important philosophical area. You saw it in howards comment and the other comments. Do you keep a safety valve catchall of regulation if things change ahead of time so you can act if there is bad behavior, or say, if something comes up, we still have to change the rules then . There is a legitimate philosophical difference. I go in different ways on these things. I would go back to something i implied earlier. What i think about today could be changed dramatically if, say for example, davids company buys charter and tmobile and sprint merge, then those two companies merge, then bobs company buys viacom and cbs, and verizon and disney and netflix get together my point of view on Net Neutrality might change. Let me tell you what else might change. Rupert murdoch, the wall street journal, and sinclair broadcast. My point is this is a difficult thing, but the problem in the legislation it goes to the four things. Theres consensus on the things david said, but it goes to the question of the residual power of government in a illdefined and changing world. That is a hard canyon to get over. Less than a minute. I agree with blair. My biggest pushback is Net Neutrality is not the only issue where congress would legislate and an Administrative Agency would be responsible for enforcing. The way legislation and regulation has worked in this country for 100 years is congress does the best it can to legislate, and if something needs to be fixed, you go back to congress. Thats what we are doing now. Ive never heard of a catchall country for 100 years is that basically gives the regulating agency the authority to override what congress has legislated under the guise of future proofing to statutory the statutory standards. Weve got 100yearold system of legislate, regulate, and when you need to fix it, come back to congress. Thats all that im advocating for that we use in this particular space. Randolph ok. Speaking of congress again, i want to turn to the privacy issue for a moment. Alanskishowing ski sh this morning said, if i heard him correctly, said he thought that the fccs order, privacy order, was illadvised, and that privacy regulation should reside over at the ftc, which has the institutional expertise to handle privacy regulation. On a uniform basis. Heres my question. I know without asking a lot of you, maybe most of you on this panel agree with that sentiment. But my question is this. Marsha blackburn just a few days ago introduced a bill, i think its called the browser act, it deals with privacy. One thing it does would have the effect of doing is relocating the authority to regulate privacy with the ftc for the internet players. Lets assume you think thats a good thing. But another thing that the bill does is that it requires opt in rather than opt out for activities that are assumed to be sensitive, like web browsing, app usage, history, things that the ftc has not considered sensitive enough to require opt in. I think that perhaps several of you, im not sure, you can let us now, but previously i think you may have had objections to requiring opt in for that kind of information. Thats what i want to focus on. Not the equality of treatment, but specifically on whether you agree with the opt in requirement in chairman blackburns proposed bill. Lets break it down and talk about where that all came from. Where i believe all of that came from in chairwoman blackburns bill was, i thought, a Disinformation Campaign that happened after congress did the cra and President Trump signed it into law, eliminating the privacy order the fcc had enacted. The Disinformation Campaign came out basically saying that congress had just passed a law, in essence, that would allow isps to go out and share or sell personal consumer information, including web browsing, to the highest bidder. Of course, thats not what happened at all. That story was spread by policymakers, it was spread by legislators, it appeared on a billboard in chairwoman blackburns district in tennessee that she had betrayed her constituents on that. And what this bill is, in essence, its the same bill that was really the fcc order, only it doesnt just apply to the isps. It applies to everyone. Our position in the fcc docket was, you cant put us under a different set of rules on privacy than youve put the rest of the industry. Thats exactly what the fcc ordered it. The fcc order declared web browsing information to be sensitive data. They declared it to be sensitive data, and required us to get opt in. Her bill in essence, applies it. Her bill, in essence, codifies it. My main concern with everything was always that we have to be treated the same. We have to have the same set of rules. We should be regulated from a privacy perspective by the same regulator thats regulating overthetop surfaces. We are getting into the world where we are competing with the googles and apples of the world. Look at text messaging. If we have to operate under a different Business Model with a different set of rules, and cant operate with the same types of Business Models these guys have, its a problem. We supported what chairman blackburn put out there, because what shes doing is she is enunciating a policy that is designed to create the level Playing Field that is our primary thing, and its the first draft of the bill. We will see where it all goes. But at the end of the day, im only concerned about the parity. Randolph i wish i had a lot more time, so we will have the same group back. Crisply toyou fairly get into this opt in issue and blackburns issue. , but i have toat endorse what bob said about level Playing Field. Hes right and shes right. I want to add one thing, creating a single federal standards so we dont have 50 state regulations with 50 different privacy regimes around the country. I agree with bob. I think what chairman blackburn was doing was putting in legislation with the fcc. I think it is an appropriate inquiry whether all web browsing history should be Sensitive Information or whether web browsing history on particular topics, like personal finances, your kids, and things that the ftc had previously deemed to be Sensitive Information. Im going to say that i agree with bob. This is a draft of the legislation. We will see how it plays out. But i think the discussion of whether all web browsing history belongs in the Sensitive Information category, or whether just certain web browsing history belongs in that category will be something that there could be a discussion about during the consideration of her bill. The groups that were out doing back flips over the fcc taking that position with respect to the isps are either silent or opposing chairwoman blackburns bill on the same topic when she takes that rule and applies it to the entire industry, which i find it which i find remarkable that companies or organizations that are supposedly privacy organizations are wholly supportive of what shes doing. I think you have to ask questions of those organizations, why . Kim when i went to brussels , to the conference about privacy and access, the largest collectors of this data are not kim when i went to brussels isps. Im not going to name names, but we know there are we know they are edge providers. Thats their product. They monetize it. If youre going to have these rules, they have to apply the same to everyone. Every time i talk to people on the other side, they say, isps are low hanging fruit, we have to start somewhere. But if we star in a place thats not a place collecting the most data, is that the best place . Thats why the legislation is so important. She was brave to say, if its what we want to have as privacy rules, we need to have it for everyone. Randolph ok. It sounds like this is an issue on which the proverbial level Playing Field is of supreme importance. And thats fair enough. I want to turn to just a couple more issues. We are going to run over just a little bit. That will be fine, because we are having such a great discussion here. [laughter] randolph we really are. This, as i said earlier, we had to reschedule the conference because of the snow day that wasnt even so much snow, and i wish i had added a couple more hours. But we have what we have here. Meredith talked about 5g and its promise and the anticipated benefits. It is important to paint that picture. She also talked about some of the impediments from the local governments that may have an impact on the deployment of the infrastructure, to coin a phrase , that supports 5g. Do, meredith,u to really, without necessarily reciting all the specifics of these impediments, but just tell us, because im going to ask commissioner pai about this during lunch, tell us how you think about balance. Obviously, the localities have legitimate interest in these questions of sightings, and the processes, the review and so forth. But on the other hand, there are federal imperatives. How do you think about balancing those interests, which both have merit in your own mind . Meredith i think what we are trying to have people do is to pick their head up and stop looking at the immediate revenue source, and see it as a longterm revenue savings. A smart city will bring so many improvements to our lives. But to get there, we are going to have to cite hundreds of thousands of small cells. As i mentioned, when you are citing something the size of a small pizza box as opposed to a big, tall tower, there should be different rules. We are looking at every level of government for this. We are not trying for preemption. What we really do need is greater access to streetlights and poles, and we need that to the costbased fees, and we need these procedures to be streamlined. We have been working with a lot of states. I might have gotten this number wrong, because im not sure if the governor of texas signed or not, but we have almost 10 states right now passing legislation, and thats important for us. We are in 2017. We are planning on rolling the networks out. We are about Industrial Areas by the end of next year, having real consumer growth out there by 2020. That is not very long from now. We need action, and we need it now. We are looking to congress, the fcc, and state and local governments. Its going to take all of that. Randolph ok. Im going to give you an opportunity here to make some real news for our reporters here. I saw in the budget act that was just released that in the fccs budget, theres a line that suggests theres going to be another option by 2027. I know that sounds like a long time, i hope im here to see that one, but i know theres a lot of planning that goes into this. Theres a long lead time. I get that. All i want you to do is tell us when that option is going to take place. Thats one year. And tell us which band. And thats it. Meredith im not going to answer that question. Randolph ok. I know how to get a short answer when i want to. Meredith i wish i could answer that. I am being flippant, but its a really serious question. We need to have a pipeline. We need to know when these i when these will take place. We had a 600 megahertz auction, we had success. These can be winwin situations and we need to figure out where the next one is going to be. We have to get a pipeline ready. We will have five times more data by the decades end, and thats an old number. Randolph i think your copanelists here and most thats an old number. People iny people in the room know from , history how much it takes from conception to the actual auction. I will ask one more question and give you instructions for lunch. This question is to chief Justice Cohen over here. We have not talked about video regulation. There is so much more we can talk about. That is an area that at the Free State Foundation for many years, its been my view that going way back, and because i can remember that a lot of regulations on the books were put in place several decades ago, if not longer, they just dont fit with the Current Media environment very well. And i think its my view that there is a First Amendment overlay to a lot of these regulations that ought to be important to be considered. You, thewant to ask changes that are taking place in the video amazing. Weve got netflix and all the other otcs. I think netflix has more subscribers now than any other video purveyor, perhaps. A lot perhaps. A lot of videos consumed on the mobile devices that merediths companies enable. Thats changing as well. Perha. A lot of videos consumed on the so my question is, you are obviously at a position at comcast where you have the cable and broadcast properties. Just talk to us briefly about how that environment has changed, and most importantly for this session today, how that impacts your view about the Regulatory Environment and the urgency or not, if any changes, that ought to take place. David for all the reasons you suggest, you dont hear a lot about regulation of video these days. There are a lot of people who think that the video business is a melting ice cube. We actually dont at comcast. We are very pleased with our video business. But blair talked earlier, commenting on merediths comments, that competition is the ultimate surrogate for everything. 99 of americans can now obtain multichannel Video Service from at least three multichannel video providers. 59 of americans now subscribe to online video distributors. You dramatically understate the impact of netflix. Netflixs u. S. Subscribers are now almost 50 million, which means they are more than twice as large as we are, twice as large as at t as we are. As at t and we are. We would be the largest multichannel video provider. If you put at t and comcast together, we are not as big as netflix. We still have this jungle of video regulations that were put in place in a completely different time, in a completely different environment, and consistent with the Trump Administration and with the shairman of the fccs view that we should be looking at our entire Regulatory Framework and figuring out what is necessary to protect the American Consumer and provide choice. I think theres a spate of video regulations that could fall by the board that makes our regulatory life easier and not impacting consumers, consumer choice, or Consumer Protection in any way whatsoever. Randolph i happen to agree. I think theres a First Amendment overlay to a lot of those regulations. David by the way, im sitting next to kim, and she wouldnt forgive me if i didnt say this, but within this environment i would also say diverse and independent programmers are thriving, and their opportunities to get on air through netflix, online video distributors, traditional cable providers, through satellite, theres never been a more robust environment for diversity and independent programmers as well. Kim we need to keep it going. David no one wants to stop it happening, but im taking off im ticking off an argument that sometimes people make. We dont need this take it off video regulations to protect the rights of independent and minority programmers. Randolph ok, well as i said, we really could go on for a long time. I think this has been a terrific panel. We have learned so much. Theres more to keep talking about. Im sure we will in the future. Dont move, but just join me now in thanking this panel. [applause] randolph we have to move on, because we have chairman pai with the lunch conversation starting in a half an hour. Heres what we are going to do. Those doors are opening to my left there. Weve got a really nice buffet there. You know, this crowd is really fantastic. I appreciate it. I have to say, i think some of you in the crowd probably didnt register. [laughter] randolph you dont have to raise your hands. We are going to enforce that thing about if you dont register, you cant attend. The last conference, we did. We had to enforce it. Heres all im going to say. For those of you who didnt register, we want you to enjoy this lunch as well. But when you go through that line over there and you know who , you are, maybe take a little less. [laughter] randolph take a little less of those portions. Right now, we are going to start the lunch. Go through the line, and please come back to your seats and have lunch. Before you finish your lunch, we are probably going to start our conversation with chairman pai. Thank you very much. [captions Copyright National cable satellite corp. 2017] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. Visit ncicap. Org] next, your calls and comments on washington journal. With arthurkers brooks. After that, we will show you fromdent trumps speech thursday in which he announced he was withdrawing the u. S. From the paris Climate Change agreement. Tonight on q a. Structureas a logical created. Those roles 90 years ago still govern the way we actually allow resources to be used in our economy today. Clemson University Professor and former chief economist at book,cc talks about his which looks at the history and politics of the u. S. Communications policy. When we went to this political system for allocating spectrum rights, within a couple of years, the regulators at the commission are renewing licenses, but very carefully stationsat propaganda will not be allowed. In fact, early on, 1929, in that period, you had left wing stations, if i can use that political term, owned by the wcfo in chicago, and a labor union, Eugene V Debs organization. Purposes, they wanted to espouse their opinions. These were propaganda stations. When that they were renewed, they were told to be careful about accessing their opinions. Tonight at 8 00 eastern on cspans q a q. This morning, a radio talkshow host talks about progressive or resistance against President Trumps agenda. Then Terry Jeffrey discusses President Trumps agenda and congress. Then, charlie ries talks about the upcoming british elections. As always, we will take your calls and you can join the conversation on facebook and twitter. Host good morning. For the third time in three months, great mea britain is dealing with an active terrorism. Prime mr. Theresa may said, enough is enough. These are some of the scenes described as eight minutes of fear as three attackers struck pedestrians on the London Bridge been stabbed randomly in the area known as liberal market the borough market. The death toll stands at seven, nearly 50 injured, and the three attackers killed by police. This comes three days before british electors go to the polls. President trump saying its another reason for a tougher u. S. Travel ban. Weil