Jonathans belter is the president and ceo of a trade association called u. S. Telethon. He is our guest on the communicators. Could you represent . I represent americas broadband providers, companies both large and small who are coming from every part of the nation, almost every state and we are all found by a simple set of principles. We want to be able to deliver the best quality, highest Speed Broadband to all americans regardless of where they are. Theres work to do because there are still americans who dont have broadband. We are aligned to make sure we can provide ubiquitous access for all americans. Was the companies you represent. This month i was able to fly out to alaska. I flew down to western new mexico and both were focused on Rural Communities and extending nextgeneration Broadband Services to them. All the way up to companies that are national in scope and at t and verizon and century link and consolidated frontier, windstream, its a consortium of companies who are very different with different Business Models but are bound together by a singular vision to get more broadband out to more americans and to do so with my policy. Before we Start Talking about some of those policies, give us a sense of your background. Its a little bit eclectic, is in it. I will take that as a compliment, thank you. I have been in the business of technology for a good part of my career. Ive Led Companies both in Silicon Valley and in europe, building Media Products for consumers. Ive also had the opportunity to serve in government. I served on the National Security council at the pentagon as the associate director of the knighted States Information Agency and i also had the opportunity to read and launch another policy focused Organization Called mobile future which is based here in washington per week recently moved to washington d. C. From california where my family has lived for the past 13 years and we are very excited to be here. To help us talk about some of these issues we want to introduce you to kyle daily. He is a tech reporter. Thank you. I wanted to start off, you mentioned that the groups you represented, companies have a lot of work to do, can you talk a little bit about that . You hear a lot about 5g networks, these ultrafast, ultradense wireless Broadband Networks, can you talk about how we get to that stage . To make sure. The essential ingredient to moving forward, not only extending more broadband more americans, but also ensuring our Global Competitiveness is this Wonderful Technology called broadband. Our companies are committed to continued to make the investment, to provide the fiber of the infrastructure, the networks, get more Broadband Connectivity to more americans. Takes a lot of work. It takes the right amount of investment, it takes the right types of Business Model but it also takes the right types of smart 21st century forwardlooking policy frameworks that can actually accelerate in advance and extend the innovation and investment required to move forward to recognize the opportunities for 5g nextgeneration framework. Can you talk about those frameworks . What are just a handful of things you really would like to see out of congress and the administration and the fcc. Sure. Let me start with the promise of new infrastructure investment. President trump, by taking office set a moonshot goal that we should actually be investing up to a trillion dollars to revitalize and reinvent Americas National infrastructure. Increasingly, we all understand, and it is bipartisan understanding, that broadband is an essential input not only to the American Economic future but our productivity and also deeply meaningful for so many reasons to our families and communities. We will work really hard on a bipartisan basis with congress, the white house, the fcc to ensure when the plan is put in place it prioritizes broadband. That we have a broadband first approach when we are thinking about any policymaking and any investment. That has two sides. One is money, making sure the right amount of money is proportion to broadband investment as part of a trillion dollar pot, but also that we can move forward in a parallel direction to streamline the regulation, make sure we can move more broadband more quickly to more americans by moving away from the regulatory overhang compliance and obstacles that, unfortunately have made it more difficult for our providers to invest and do the hard work of delivering broadband to the customer. We are hearing from the white house that they seem to be easing off a little bit from making broadband a funding priority in the infrastructure package. I was recently at an event here in washington d. C. Where the Telecom Advisor to the president said that they are more focused, as i think about infrastructure and getting something from congress on stuff like siding, making it easier for Companies Like those you represent to actually put equipment and facilities out there and maybe not so much on actually carving out money within that trillion dollar pie for broadband. Do you think that is something you might still be able to get out of congress and out of the white house . First of all, ive got a say her colleagues at the white house, colleagues at the fcc are just tremendous Public Servants who are doing great work. They are aligned together in the idea that we really have to close the Digital Divide in our nation, particularly americans who live in the role part of our country so they can benefit from the broadbands benefits. That has two parts. One deals with those issues that grace mentioned, rightofway, siting, making sure we have clocks to speed up permissions, permitting, licensing, theres all kind of procedural steps that we can take as part of an infrastructure plan. In parallel, on the other side of the coin, we also have to be serious about ensuring the right kind of dollars can flow to American Communities to provide more broadband. Those dollars have been flowing consecutive through fccs universal funds. We believe that direct grants and that provide broadband to those areas where its economically challenging, if not impossible to deliver it is an obligation. We are sinning up to those applications. Im really confident we will be able to work with the white house and with congress to structure a holistic plan to make sure we can actually ultimately close the Digital Divide in our nation. Donovan, a report put out by your trade Association Shows private broadband investment has kind of leveled off over the past several years. Why is that . Its actually troubling. We have been expensing, in the last two decades, a wonderful increase in the amount of investment that our company, broadband providers have been making in our nations network. By our members here. Although, two years ago, when the last fcc decided to impose 1934 utility style regulation in creating framework for an internet, we began to see, in a very troubling way, that that slope of investment had actually begun to go down. In the past two years we have seen it decrease about two and half billion dollars from about 78. 4 billion in 2014 to 76 billion today. That is an alarm bell that has broken many of us up to the realization that we need to go back to smart policies that will allow us to bend the curb on that investment slope to create more abundance and austerity when it comes to our nations broadband infrastructure, and if we can put in the right types of policies, move forward with lighter touch approaches, our companies will be in scented to do more to invest in our nations broadband infrastructure. We have work to do to get that done, but the steps that are being taken today by the administration, by the federal medications commission, by an increasing community of folks that realize we need to move forward, not backward in the internet future is a positive sign. We are going to try to work hard to advance those efforts. When you look at that 76 billiondollar investment, where does that money go . It goes to many different parts of the Broadband Network that we increasingly rely on. It goes to investing in upgrading and maintaining the wire line infrastructure that connects our nation to the wireless infrastructure, that relies on the fiber that composes our wireline world, it goes to managing these vast networks, it goes to ensuring that we actually have the deployment capacity, the work teams, folks that are climbing the poles, digging the trenches, doing the hard work everyday of attaching and connecting our nation to this dispensable called broadband. I did want to return a little bit, the 2015 regulations that you referred to would be the fccs open Internet Order classifying broadband as a Telecom Service and instituting a number of Net Neutrality rules. There have been some groups that favored those rules that have disputed some of the findings like you guys had about broadband investment, they say that its not entirely clear that theres a direct correlation to the Internet Order and that its not looking at the whole picture, its not looking at the other side of it, the investment from google and amazon and sort of the companies on the other side of those networks so how would you respond. First of all, u. S. Telecom, for 21 years has been reducing what is probably considered the Gold Standard of analysis, of how much u. S. Broadbased providers are investing in u. S. Broadband networks. Other groups have come up with their own numbers that have included things like 3 billion for smart phones that are bought by a wireless carrier and 10 billion for another carrier in mexico, Video Services neither of which are actually covered by the title to regulation. It is very clear, if you did an apples to apples comparison and took out those inputs, their numbers would reflect exactly what our numbers clearly if you look at the investment, they have been going down. Its great that certain Internet Companies are making investments in things like data farms, cloud infrastructure, products and services, and they should continue to do so. Their total investment is affection, globally, of what u. S. Telecom members actually invest in our network. Its got nothing to do with the actual investment that goes into maintaining and building American Network infrastructure, the broadband investment, but all investment should be encouraged and we should have smart policies that in sent more, not less investment. Its all a great thing and we are determined to make sure that our companies have the confidence in the line of sight to make those investments and an even more aggressive way going forward. Speaking about Net Neutrality, not just in terms of investment but in terms of principles of an open internet, obviously efforts that the current fcc is undertaking to reverse that classification to ease back some of those rules, its got a lot of people concerned, would your industry be willing to offer any sort of hard commitment to upholding some of the principles that people are really worried could be eroded . Important point is that we need to take a step back from that fear, we live in a very contentious environment and a very contentious political moment. The fact is that broadband providers have made an ironclad commitment to maintain Net Neutrality protections for the customers, no blocking, no throttling, transparency print those commitments existed before the imposition of title to an Net Neutrality protections and commitments to them will exist after the reclassification back to title i. So this debate isnt about Net Neutrality. Its about whether our companies are very clear about maintaining their commitment to protect the principles of Net Neutrality and to advance those principles. Really its about whether we want to have our most Important Technology advance of our lifetimes, maybe of our history, the internet, governed by regulators, using 1934 error rules, and era of the outhouse, not of the smart house to guide us forward, using the idea that the internet should be treated as a public utility. I have met many Internet Users around the country in this work. Some have great things to say about their internet usage, some have bad things to say about their internet service, but i havent met a single Internet User who wants their service to look more like their gas company or their water company. Jonathan, what percentage of the u. S. Population does not have access to broadband. Is a very small but meaningful and important community, about 13 million americans. Most of them live in Rural Communities, most of those communities can put broadband to tremendous use printing jobs, connecting to services that would be difficult to get to in healthcare and Public Safety and education. We have to all collectively roll up our sleeves and find the right policy frameworks to make sure that those 13 million americans can have access to the benefits of broadband, but that will take smart and wise policy. It also will take policies that in sent more investment on the part of broadband providers and commitments by the federal government to make sure that we can have the resources and the right types of regulatory and policy infrastructure to get there. What percentage of americans dont have a choice among broadband providers . Almost none. Its extraordinarily to think that we all use networks that right now are called 4g, lte. Virtually every american has access to that and it was extraordinary to see the ramp up period was only 18 months to get there nationally. 96 of americans have a choice of at least three wireless carriers, almost 90 of americans have a choice between at least two wireline providers for the competition, as we move forward with more investment and we moved to this 5g network faster, more Ubiquitous Networks is only going to increase. That competition will potentially not only catalyze more choice but also give consumers a range of new products and services and opportunities to do things online that we cant even imagine today. When you get into a situation like we are currently in her google and amazon are having a smart device spat, does that affect the entire ecosystem of the internet . Well it is in important point. We in the broadband provider community, we are singled out by the lef last fcc to have special rules apply only to us. The movement now, in the fcc is to establish a new set of Net Neutrality protections that will actually encompass all of the entire internet ecosystem including Companies Like google and amazon. Our broadband providers in our nation have been very clear about their commitment to maintaining Net Neutrality protections regardless of whether there are rules are not set by government. They have and they will. I cant say the same for some of our biggest Internet Companies. Its a bit ironic but its time for them to catch up and is time to move forward with smart holistic Net Neutrality protections that will integrate not only broadband providers but as importantly, the entire scope of companies that interact with consumers via the internet including the biggest amongst the internet giants out there. How would you initiate Something Like that being enacted. Will they put out guidance and we will consider this anti competitive, are you looking for legislation. Right now the fcc is in the process of establishing a reclassification of broadband as a title i Information Service and in so doing the new cop on the beat will be our nations premier Consumer Protection agency, the federal. [inaudible] which has not only the resources but the expertise to ensure Consumer Protections across all parts of the internet ecosystem, not just broadband providers. In addition to the fcc, there are, they are not alone. Theres the body of antitrust law that we have, the court system, we have 50 attorneys general that have consumers back in providing broad general Consumer Protections to them as well. Ultimately, however, the work of ensuring that neutrality protections, of developing a thoughtful and consistent National Policy framework for the most important phenomenon we call the internet is the responsibility, i would even say the obligation of congress to undertake. We have work to do to push that blog up the hill, but i am confident, just as we were able to do in 1996 in a bipartisan way where democrats and republicans came together, the common voice and common cause to develop a National Policy framework that now, 21 years later we can do the same thing. It is time. Consumers expect and require and deserve nothing less. Is that the vision of the bill that would