Test. Test. Test. Test. Test. Test. We have really good arms in aa and aaa. I agree we need to work on the supply chain. President trump signed an executive order on may 15th of this year to declare it a National Emergency to supply to protect our Domestic Communications technology and that will soon be followed by binding regulations later this year. I think we 100 agree with the idea of virtualization will be very important to allow the breakup of the propriety lockins that many providers have today. It could be very competitive with regard to some of the current providers. On the mid band point, under the tmobile sprint merger, theyre required to cover 97 of the u. S. Population and six years cover 99 of the u. S. Population. Theyre going to proceed on the 3. 5 gigahertz midband spectrum next summer. But the millimeter wave is going to be so important who are going to require throughput. Thats the kind of beauty of that technology, it doesnt go as far, but it has the greatest amount of Data Transmission available. By the end of this fall were going to have a plan to move forward on the c band which is also mid band. So we certainly need to keep moving forward with this, but we have sufficient plans to ensure that we have mid band available in the blend of low band, mid band and highband spectrum that we need. Do these ideas find favor with you . We also represent the administration at the fcc proceedings and we the administration believes that you need low, mid, and high band in order to be most effective with the 5g deployment. We have a report due to Congress Next year. As secretary strayer mentioned, we are theres a auction next june which is bid band and one this december on high band. We are hitting those important notes. Also mentioned supply chain, giving the secretary of commerce the enermergency authorities. So we are currently putting together the regulations on that as well and were all in agreement that softwaredefined networks is going to be a game changer for us. Thanks. And just do you agree with anything that she said . I agree with everything she said, supply chain, security, as well as securing the internet of things. Thanks. All of us could tell you stories about how some of our students, our schools, our businesses are struggling in rural parts of our states. We could all tell you stories for lack of access to the internet and i would ask of you, if you would, having said that, what is the commission . You talked about this a little bit already, what is the commission doing to ensure the internet is accessible to all communities and 5g is not another advancement that leaves the Rural Communities even farther behind. We need to do more. We have a Digital Divide in this country. We have 12 million kids who cant do their homework because they dont have some of them arent complaining. Its a window into this challenge we have. We got to fix it. I think we would start with better mapping. I know that senator peters has a bill just on this subject. Right now fcc maps overstate where broad band is and is not in this country. Go to every Rural Community and theyll tell you, they dont have service. Were never going to know where to share our resources if we dont get the maps right. What other support can Government Agencies provide to help advance Internet Access . I think by refocusing now on midband spectrum, we could make a meaningful difference in 5g. It requires fewer towers. Its more economic to deploy in Rural Communities and if we want Rural America to see 5g, we have to focus on that sooner rather than later. Thanks. Mr. Chairman, albert einsteins wife, she was asked if she understood her husbands theory of relatively, and she said i understand the words, but not the sentences. And i want to say a hearing is helpful to me in understanding the sentences too. Thank you all. Thank you for having this hearing. I apologize, i had another commitment so i didnt get to hear all the testimony. But i did have a chance to review it, and to me this is about our competitiveness as a country and we have all the ingredients for a major problem here. One is the importance of 5g. The other is a china that i would say has become almost a Techno National country. This includes subsidies, but it also includes tech transfer and all tenants driving companies out of business and at the same time we have a loss of production here of 5g hardware and you talked a lot about the supply chain this afternoon this morning and i think thats part of the issue here. So in terms of being a driver for 21st century competitiveness, 5g seems to me is very worrisome. We started an Artificial Intelligence caucus in the congress. Were trying to avoid getting a decade behind on Artificial Intelligence. I think we have on 5g. This hearing is timely and important. Commissioner, i was listening to some of your responses, and by the way, i totally agree with you on the maps. In rural iowa we have some areas under the fcc map are said to have broad band capability and they do not. Certainly not for the school children, but also not for a lot of our small businesses. They are being told its going to be a long time and a big expense. On the issue of Chinese Technology being at the center of the 5g future, i think we cant concede that. We have to figure out how to deal with that. There are some nonchinese 5g hardware providers im told, but theres no provider of that hardware in the United States, is that correct . Thats correct. What policies do you believe we should adopt to promote the reshoring of this production . And do you believe the United States can rely on some of these nonchinese suppliers as an alternative . Thank you for the question. First im confident that were going to figure a way to make sure that the United States succeeds. But heres some important data points at the turn of the millennium, there are 13 big Network Providers around the world. By the time the 4g revolution started, there are seven. Now we have three or four and i think we have to be honest about the fact that were allowing consolidation to take place and by doing that, were reducing the number of providers that equipment manufacturers to sell to. Thats a problem. So i think our way out is to instead focus on where were best which involves software and so what we need to do now is what youve heard from some of my colleagues is we have to look at the Radio Access Network. That would mean using off the shelf hardware, but its intelligence would come from u. S. Sources and software. And i think thats where we need to focus our energies and i would like to see the fcc develop some test beds and policies to encourage that to happen. Can that be done with the current consolidation or are these supply chains limited because of the fewer buyers, customers. I think weve harmed ourselves with the current state of consolidation. Under these circumstances, what we have to do now is go to what we do best is software. Let me touch quickly on standards. This is a topic that may or may not have come up here today. Probably not because it seems a little little, i have raised this issue before because i think it relates to whats happening on the international front. China has increased their membership in these bodies substantially. We dont. It doesnt mean that china is going to hijack all of these bodies, but it does mean that your interests are not going to be well represented unless we put more emphasis on it. Secretary strayer, since you used to work for this committee and also the Foreign Relations committee, well focus on you on this one. In general, what do you believe the government can do to Incentive Participation in their bodies and specifically do you believe that by making it easier to grant visas for foreign individuals to come to this country that we could have more of these standards, conferences in the United States because we dont typically have them here anymore and can we incentivize more of these conferences to be happening here and get more u. S. Involvement . Thanks for that question and i want to break up the standards making bodies between those that are held by governments. We have more than 120 u. S. Government officials and private sector delegates representing us in egypt. Were taking aggressive posture in all of these standards making bodies. We are vigilant about whats going on there. We have noticed that the chinese have come in in Larger Forces there. We think theres been a pretty successful distribution of patents coming to u. S. Companies and western companies generally. We work with our partners to ensure were having the right policy outcomes in all of those conferences. I think its important that we think about how we can encourage the private sector to participate fully in standards bodies. Standards they see a value in them. Some Companies Run the market with the latest technology. There has to be a reason theyre participating in the standards body itself because it takes a lot of resources from their own internal research and Development Efforts to participate in these which can take years to bear fruit. We can think about policies on that front. How about the conferences . My question was in part about these visa and is the fact that we arent having the conferences here in this country and that puts us as a disadvantage. We are looking at hosting a broad band conference next year. Were analyzing that. One of the issues is that we have National Security reviews for people coming to our conferences. And the world wants to participate in our conferences including countries that we have substantial concerns about the officials and activities of their governments. When is the last time we had a conference in the United States . I know we had an i. T. Conference about 20 years ago. And that just one narrow sliver. We host all kinds of meetings all the time on a smaller delegation level, all of the western hemisphere comes here to washington would it be helpful to have some of the conferences here on standard setting . Yes. But im not sure its impeded by the visa issue. It is impeded by the visa issues . I dont know that it is. Youre telling me this. We can look were told that it is and also on the private sector side, we have an issue of american participation that we have to address. I hope youll be doing that in your role. Thank you. Thank you, senator. I want to go back to mid band. Are there bureaucratic roadblocks preventing that . Are we moving too slow on it . Thank you, senator. I think we are moving too slow. Theres 16 other country that is have broad midband spectrum to market. The Administration Made the easy choice which was to focus on fairly unoccupied band waves first and push them to market through auction, but i think thats a strategic mistake. The reason im asking a couple months ago, we were sensing a roadblock, i met with chairman pi, the roadblock is no longer there. Are there other roadblocks that people maybe arent willing to testify to at the table today. Our air waves are a resource. Were not making more and every one of us is using our device more eveoften, were connecting more things. The challenge comes in how you manage the incumbent that is are in those air waves today. And how you incentivize them to relocate so we can move commercial operations. Its a difficult challenge and i want to make sure there arent equities or roadblocks preventing us to overcome these challenges because its a top priority. I think part of the problem is our process is flawed. They tell us to start knocking on the doors of federal actors that have access to spectrum and we go back and forth and it takes years. We should build a structural incentive for them to be efficient so when they relinquish them, we see gain. Its a difficult anybody else want to way in on this. Im happy to outline some of the work on reallocating spectrum. I sent a letter to all of our spectrum federal partners asking them to assess their current needs. We delivered a repurposing report that documented all the work that weve done and nti has worked with the department of defense on dynamic spectrum sharing i dont care to hear what you did. Whats preventing you from moving faster . Im trying to figure out, whats preventing us from moving faster when this is a top priority . I want to point out one thing, you may be aware of the sprint tmobile merger. Thats been approved by the federal government but not approved by the lawsuit by the states attorneys generals. Thats been slowing that process down. Lawyers if you look at midband spectrum, thats going to cover with mid band, theyll cover a three quarters of that. I dont want to dwell on this, but im going to encourage after this to meet with me, meet with staff, if there are roadblocks, i want to know about them so we can utilize our capacity to try to knock those things down. This is a top priority. Senator romney was making a lot of quite a few comments about how far behind we are. I thought it was interesting in the brief, a report basically in 2018 said that when looking at spectrum availability, licensing and deployment of 5g, china ranks highest in scoring with south korea and the u. S. And japan not far behind. In april 2019 report, they said that u. S. Has made progress and pulled even with china. So, again, i dont want to if i dont want to overstate if were lagging. We should be ahead. Is that an accurate assessment . Is it as dire as senator romney was pointing out . Youre moving there, do you want to answer that . I want to go back to the points the panel has made, this is a blip, this is an anomaly. If we can unlock the open Radio Access Network piece, the vendor base in the United States, the Innovation Base is going to explode and, again, this is going to be a conversation were going to think let me you said if we can unlock what do we need to do to unlock that . Whats the roadblock on unblocking that . There are incentives that need to be put in place, some of the work that im doing with my agency at Idaho National labs, theres a bunch of testing and opportunity development. Thats a small slice of it there. Does that have to be funded by the government . Some of it should be funded by the federal government. But others, again, the private sector is going to search into the market if we can make it compelling. Achieving true inter onability is going to be critical. You can start putting bits and pieces of different vendors together, thats true interoperability. What were talking about here with Virtualized Networks is cloud. Thats all it is. Its dumb metal with software writing on top. We own that space. Lets make it an economic in the event for us to get in there. What im asking, not this setting, is break this down so its understandable if there are things that congress can do that this committee can do, you would target oversight letters to break down barriers or a piece of legislation that would provide funding to an agency to do this through government. We need to know that. I got an idea. Good. By the way, i agree completely with everything that chris just said at the end of the table. I think the fcc set up something called innovation zones and new york city and Salt Lake City will be issuing licenses for 5g. We should see how we can use those zones to start creating test beds for more activity with open Radio Access Networks. And certainly with this committees help, i hope my colleagues would agree. Again, this is coming from somebody whos not a fan of government. Again, we are in a competition with a command and control economy that is subsidizing and making it very difficult to compete. Its breaking down the marketplace. We have to recognize that reality. We need to understand what we need to do in a very complex environment. Youre going to have a homework assignment after this hearing. Thats one of the benefits of coming before this committee. Do you have some more questions . Commissioner, i want to say, i appreciate your passion on expanding broad band access everywhere. Ive seen firsthand in my state that access to broad band is as critical as clean water and electricity. We have to look at it that way to make sure everybody in this country, no matter who they are have access to that and remember that a lot of rusral areas don have 4g right now. I appreciate your comments on the mid band as well as the mapping and we have to continue to work in that area. But my question to you is the fcc proposal would bar Communication Companies from using support they testify from the universal service fund to purchase equipment or services from companies that pose a security threat. So my question to you, why is this proposal only focused on Service Providers using funds when the fcc has jurisdiction over the entire wireless industry. My understanding based on the executive order, the department of commerce has an obligation to look at this issue more broadly and the fcc has focused on its distribution of 4. 5 billion a year and making sure those funds dont go towards insecurity equipment. But i believe under the executive order, the broader choices in the economy fall to the department of commerce and they were supposed to have rules i think by this month. Anybody else care to comment . On may 15th of this year, the president issued an executive order giving the secretary Emergency Authority to make determinations against transactions into our ecosystem through information, communications, technology and services. It gave him immediate authority. He could act today if necessary, but we are currently working through the regulations which lays out th