Transcripts For CSPAN3 Telecommunications Policy Conference

In one minute, if everyone will take their seats, please. You become so quiet when i say that, that i shouldnt even wait the full minute. Thats fantastic. So we are going to get started now. Again, i think that was a terrific session to get the conference started talking about regulation more generally. Although, i knew there would be. As i said in my welcome that i think throughout the day were going to hear a lot about Net Neutrality or restoring Internet Freedom or the open internet proceeding, whatever name interview you prefer to call that proceeding by. And we did hear a little bit during the previous session. So i just call this the allstars panel. Im not sure i came up with another name. I dont think there is necessarily a better one because we do have a group of all stars here and were going to be digging in, im certain, to Communications Law and policy issues. So what i want to do is just do brief introductions, as i said at the beginning you have everyone here has the brochure where we have the full bios there. The brochure is also on the website. For those of you in our cspan audience, i want to welcome you. Were very pleased that cspan is covering the conference today. So what im going to do is just introduce alphabetically our panelists. And im actually going to ask them to speak in that order. Thats probably as good as any other order. Again, once again, Meredith Baker here, finds herself in that fortunate spot, if she considers it so. I am going to give you the brief version of their bio, maybe Say Something personal about each one possibly and, you know, again, they have a lot more that you can read about in the official brochure. So our first speaker is Meredith Baker. She joined ctia as its president and ceo in june 2014. She previously served in the Bush Administration as the acting assistant secretary of commerce for communications and information, as well as the acting administrator of ntia, the National Telecommunications and information administration. Now, while at ntia, she did a lot of important things, of course. But one thing that meredith did that now perhaps may be forgotten, but its very important, she really is the person that facilitated and led the transition at that period to the Digital Television format. And, you know, it was so easy going that it that, you know, it made it seem as if it might not have been as difficult and as much work as went into it as did. But that was very important. Of course, there were a lot of people that preceding meredith to make that happen, but i always recall that because it was very important at the time. The other thing ill say about meredith that i always like to point out in case she forgets is that she, upon becoming a commissioner, gave her maiden address at a Free State Foundation down freconference, s nice enough, but she had to come back from south america and go 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. So i appreciate that. So next, after meredith, weve got david cohen, as almost all of you know, david is Senior Executive Vice President at Comcast Corporation and hes the companys chief diversity officer. He has a broad portfolio of responsibilities, including corporate communications, government regulatory affairs, public affairs, legal affairs, Corporate Administration and community investment. I dont know what you do during the rest of your day, but by the way, when david was in law school, actually, he was known as chief Justice David cohen. He and my brother were actually in law school together. Not at duke, for the record. No, not at duke. But everyone makes mistakes. But david was chief justice. Now, my brother actually didnt tell me that. Thats on wikipedia, so you can take it for what its worth. But anyway, it says that he was known as chief Justice David cohen because of his intellect and because of his work ethic. You know, his responsibilities tell you something about his work ethic, but also i do know from my brother, because they were partners in a law firm together, that 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, but that goes to his work ethic. So david were glad to have you with us as well. Next is kim keenen. This is the first time that kim has been with us. Kim is ceo of the Multicultural Media Telecom and Internet Council otherwise known as mmtc. Kim, i guess, 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 of the naacp. But what i want to say to kim is that over the years weve always, well for many of our conferences, weve had one of your predecessors from mmtc with us. And, you know, even before the name was even before the name was changed. Thankfully, the acronym remained the same. Yes. But ive always thought it was important for our purposes here to have the perspective of mmtc. So im glad that youre with us here today as well. So next weve got blare levin. Blare is a senior fellow with the metropolitan policy program at the Brookings Institution and he serves as director of gigu. You know, i mentioned that howard shelanski, when i introduced him this morning, i said that his position is often referred to as the regulatory czar. Blare, as you know, was head of the National Broad band plan, in developing it. I know he always points out it was a team effort, which i know it was. But he was a leader and some of us thought of him at that time as the broadband czar. The only other thing id say about blare is that were old friends. I mean, were both old. But were also friends. Were also friends. And, you know, i know that once and weve got different views about a lot of the issues were going to discuss. Mostly carolina and duke. But we have a lot of common views as well. And i know sometimes we say to ourselves just dreaming that if we were the communication czars and were writing a new Communications Act or something that maybe he and i could do it together and come up with a halfway decent act. But, so, im glad youre with us today. And then last but not least of course, down there is bob quinn. Bob is Senior Executive Vice President , external and legislative affairs at at t. Hes responsible for at ts Public Policy organization and chairman of at t foundation. Hes been with at t for, you know, for a long time. He steps into the shoes of jim zakoni, who we had the pleasure of having with us on many occasions, and it is a pleasure that youre here as well, bob. So now what were going to do, the way were going to conduct this session is ive asked each of these three excuse me, each of our panelists to 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 thats fairly broad. And regardless of what i would have directed them, they you know, sometimes they talk about what they want to. But i am going to enforce this three minute limit. And thats going to give us a basis, im absolutely certain, to have a Good Exchange back and forth. I know ive got questions. We are going to try to save some time for questions from the audience and have an informative and i think interesting discussion here with these allstars. So, mrs. Baker, why dont you start us off. Thank you, randy. It is a pleasure to be here with this esteemed panel on this auspicious day at this great event. It is my birthday, so im only going to answer questions that i want to [ applause ] so i think were going to hear a lot about Net Neutrality and privacy, so im not going to start there. I think were closer than a lot of people think we are. But im going to start off with my opening remarks in a different place. I dont know how many of you saw this article in the wall street journal. It was about, i dont know, ten days or so ago and its talking about the Consumer Price index falling, surprisingly last year from april to april. And nearly half of that decline was traced to wireless telephone services. So think about that. A slowdown of inflation was caused by smartphone price decline. Our consumer bills went down 12. 9 because of competition last year. I think thats remarkable for two reasons. I think that the size of the Wireless Industry to effect the economy is interesting and important. And i also think the fact that the power of competition to save americans money is also important. Now, that power of competition is also driving the market in wireless to do the next thing, which is 5g. Weve heard a lot about 5g networks, so what i want to do is talk about what 5g is, about what impact 5g is going to have on our lives and then talk about what policies we need to have to get there. Sorry about the odd view over here. Okay. What is 5g . I think weve heard the speed is going to be remarkable. It is 100 times the speeds we have today. Thats Home Broadband speeds. The scale is going to be connecting everything, everywhere. I kind of had an ahhah moment when i looked at intels prototype car. Now, we talk a lot about vehicle to vehicle. But were really not talking vehicle to vehicle. Were talking about vehicle to neighborhood. And thats a lot of data that our 4g network could not handle. So that is the reason why another reason why were building these 5g networks. But the really transformative thing i think about 5g is the realtime effect of it. There is virtually no lag time in 5g. And what that can do in its applications in health care, with remote surgeries or in transportation, energy savings, education, i like to say i think were only limited by our imagination by what 5g can do. What is it going to impact . It is going to bring three million new jobs. That means one in every 100 americans is going to be employed by our industries and thats not even talking about the verticals. It is going to add 5 500 billio to our economy. If we get the policy right. So what do we need to do to get the policies right . In the last 30 years, the wire lts industry built 150,000 towers. We need to double that in small cells growth for the next few years. And to do that, to build these new networks for 5g, we need n rules, and that includes siting. And when i talk about siting, im talking about at every level we need to have access. We need to have affordable access, and we need to streamline the process. Were going to need more spectrum. There is nothing in the pipeline right now. We are going to need low, mid and high band spectrum and it needs to be internationally har mom niced. Its going to be 275 billion. We need policies that incent that. This is a global race. And the consequences of us losing are jobs that will effect our entire economy. There are trials all over the world. We won the race in 4g and we need to in 5g. Okay. Thank you, meredith. David, please. Great. Thanks very much, randy. And it is a pleasure to be here. And i always appreciate it when you ask us to distill the complex Communications Policy issues that you wrestle with on a day in and day out basis to three minutes. You would never hold yourself to that standard, but maybe between maybe between the five of us in 15 minutes we can hope to cover some of the breadth of Communications Policy issues that i think are on the top of the pile, if you will. Youve got about two minutes and thirty seconds left now. I got it. So im going to focus on two higherlevel policies. I think i look at our current internet ecosystem. I think its the envy of the world. I dont think there is any country, any continent anywhere else in the plan net that has been able to develop the internet ecosystem we have in the United States and i think it is pretty easy to understand why. It is because of a consistent, light regulatory touch that has been developed by democratic and republican administrations up until the last five years or so. And so the number one priority, i think, for our company, for our industry and i think for everyone on this panel and meredith already eluded to it is to figure out how we keep the United States on the leading edge of innovation and investment for the internet ecosystem. The private sector has invested oneandahalf trillion dollars under that light regulatory touch to build out this network. That is twice the per capita rate that existed in europe. And we have developed open and Accessible Networks and an open and accessible internet. And i think it is absolutely crucial that we develop policies that will facilitate continued investment and continued innovation in that space. It is very hard to look at any fcc decision or action, any fcc within the window of a news s k cycle or two within a year or two. But in the end the legacy of the last five years of the Obama Administration will be an unexplained, unnecessary retrenchment on a policy that indisputably was working when it moved to reclassify broadband under title 2 and absolutely undercut the United States advantage for innovation and investment. And i think it is why our number one priority is to support the chairman of the fcc in unraveling that reclassification of broadband. Not in unraveling Net Neutrality rules. No matter how many times the opponents of his actions say it, it doesnt make it true. Getting rid of title 2 does not mean getting rid of Net Neutrality. The claire man couldnt have been clearer. Our industries couldnt have been clearer, and im not going to be any clearer today than to say you can support Net Neutrality rules, but you dont have to do that under title 2 with all of the baggage that comes with title 2. Which brings me to my second overall priority, which is once we have this internet ecosystem that is the envy of the world, we have to make sure it is available to everyone. And thats thats what thats what universal broad band deployment and adoption is all about. I applaud the chairmans focus on this. And whether its through a combination of further buildout of networks or technology, we need to figure out a way to get broadband to all of america. But lets remember the numbers also matter here. There are about four times as Many Americans who dont have access to the internet today who have broadband built out in front of their homes already as there are americans who dont have broadband plan because the broadband plan has not been built out to them. So we should never lose focus of the extent federal dollars and programs are going to be poured into that. We need to keep our eye on the ball of what were trying to accomplish, which is to sign more people up for the internet. Which means those dollars should be devoted to unserved areas, not to socalled underserved areas, or well end up with lots of federal dollars going into a bucket where you cant even quantify how many additional americans were signed up to the internet as a result of 6 billion of federal funds being extended. You have to focus on the adoption. And these are great opportunities for Public Private partnerships, a combination of federal programs like extension of lifeline to broadband and private sector programs like many of merediths companies have, like at t has, like comcast has to be able to provide broadband to lownew mexico populations across the United States. So i think if we keep our eye on those two overarching policies, we can make a lot of progress in the next year or two. David, thank you very much. So now well turn to kim. Okay. So im going to pick up where david left off because thats what we do every day. I think it really people really need to hear that there are people who have broadband in front of their home, but they dont have broadband, that there are communities, that there are tribal lands and places in West Virginia and, you know, this is an american issue. We spend so much time dividing ourselves and slicing ourselves, but if you have kids who live in a community where there is broadband around the corner or broadband at the library or broadband at the fast food place, but they dont have access, theyre not just left behind, theyre left in another place because they dont have an opportunity to be part of a digital economy. We care a lot about ownership and diversity in this space, but we also care about making sure that every american is connected. And we spend so much time. You know, all of this is lost. You have all these people saying, you know, youre giving away something for free. Youre going to have a wall garden and theyre only going to have a little bit of the internet. The truth is if you let somebody in your garden, theyre coming to your house. And we need to be focussed on that. Never lose sight of the fact that we have americans that dont have this. I had the opportunity to go to brussels for the conference, and we do have a system thats the envy on the world. We have to keep our eye on that because we have to make sure that every american has this opportunity. Why . Because in 2020, there is going to be millions. It used to be a million. But now it is millions of jobs in the digital space. Tele health is going to be education. If you got a kid and theyre not using the internet to do their homework, i dont know who theyre going to compete with in the future because you have to have this opportunity. Thats our n