background on each case. the landmark cases companion book, a link to the national constitution center's interactive constitution and the landmark cases podcast at c-span.org/landmark cases. >> next a conversation on telecommunication policy and net neutrality. we hear from federal communications commission chair ajit pai as well as the heads of the national communication and tell of it-- administration and the white house budget office of information and regulatory affairs. >> good morning and thank you for your good work. for this opportunity to kick off today's events. the only thing people hate more than a long video is anyone who makes them wait to hear from david redl, so i plan to keep this short. the theme is connecting all of america and those in this room

probably know it's also been the prevailing scene of my chairmanship. on my first full day as chairman i said capping-- i have tried to run my mouth, but to be on the run. i have logged over 4000 miles on the road to visit the people in places bypassed by the digital revolution and highlight the story. the most effective thing the fcc can do to connect more americans to better broadband is to remove regulatory barriers to network investment. as someone put it, we need to fire up the weed wacker and remove those google's holding back investment, innovation and job creation. that's exactly what we have done over the past 14 months. we have scrapped heavy-handed utility style title ii regulation and restores the framework that led to $1.5 trillion in network

investment and us leadership in the global digital economy. modern artist are rules and for some of you special access to ease unnecessary rate regulation and increase incentives to infrastructure. we have launched initiatives to get rid of roadblocks to the deployment wire and wireless infrastructure and i will talk more about this later. we have removed obstacles for companies looking to use next-generation satellite through improved speed and capacity of satellite broadband. i am proud of what we have accomplished to extend a digital opportunities to our fellow americans. i have no intention of slowing down. looking ahead, i thought it would focus on today's conference advancing the gigabits in the 5g future. the beauty of our next-generation wireless network is gigabit speed and 5g can be one in the same. 5g promises wireless fiber fast conductivity to unleash the

internet of things and unlock innovation against-- but what can be imagined. some analysts project 5g will require at least a 100 fold increase in the number of small cells deployed in the united states, but there is a snag. many of the fcc rules were designed for 200 cell towers. we will have to make it easier to employ these new networks. we took a step on that front last week. we adopted an order making clear that the fcc does not need a federal preservation and environmental review for every single small cell. a review by the censure estimates it will create savings of 1.5-- $1.56 billion generated to 17000 new jobs in speed the employment of next-generation networks. this will not be the last order to come out of the wireless of the structure proceedings. special thanks to commissioner

carr who is leading the push to get the infrastructure 5g ready. spectrum will also be critical to our 5g future and we are busy on this front, also. big-ticket item for 2018 will be option 28 gigahertz band an almost immediate we thereafter by an option of a 24 gigahertz band. to set the foundation for these options i circulated to my fellow commissioners a public notice the-- seeking input on option procedures. we will vote on that notice in april. that's not all we're doing. we continue to make progress on airways above 24 gigahertz in the spectrum frontier proceeding and last month we raised our eyes to the spectrum horizon looking to open up spectrum above 95 gigahertz for commercial use. mid- band the spectrum will be critical for 5g and this is why we are partnered with ntia administrator to review the four

gigahertz band and why i asked commissioner o'reilly on the five gigahertz band. we take a close look at making available the three .-dot seven to three .-dot seven gigahertz for industrial use and i hope to propose next steps on that the coming months. we take another look at unlicensed spectrum lock-- opportunity below a gigahertz with a focus on studying opportunities in the six gigahertz band and elsewhere. if that's not enough fcc shoptalk the good news is commissioner o'reilly and car will join you this afternoon. let me just close by thinking the free state foundation wants more for elevating the policy discussion on communication issues. the goal is clear. connecting everyone bringing the benefits of the internet age to all americans and meeting that goal will not be easy, but events like this help to steer's in the right direction. thank you and thank you to

everyone taking part in this discussion about the future of our digital economy. have a great conference. [applause]. >> okay, well, thanks to chairman pie for those remarks. i'm grateful to him. originally he was scheduled to be here, but then the conflict arose. by the way, i think most of you know, but for those of you who may not come i think he was the person that talked about taking a lead wacker to the regulation over at the fcc. you know, i don't know whether you want to refer to it as a weed wacker or what, but to my mind chairman ajit pai has a good job and has gotten off to a

fast start in terms of looking at regulations that may not any longer serve the public interest in light of the changing circumstances, so thank you, chairman ajit pai. so, now it's my pleasure-- i know administrator david redl is here in the room and i'm going to ask him to come up. in there you are. just have a seat. it's really a great pleasure for me to introduce david redl. i'm going to say this now. you know, we have the complete bios of all their speakers in the space bar sure and that includes david bio, so with his permission and everyone else's

today i'm not going to go through the whole bio, but just to give you the very basics and for david most important thing is he's the assistant secretary for communications and information at the department, chris, a position he assumed in november of last year and not bastille he also has the dual role of administrator of the national telecommunication information administration, which is the executive branches principal advisor. prior to assuming this job, david as many of you know, it's my-- if not most was the chief counsel at the house committee on energy and commerce and what

i will say about that, just to put it in one sentence is that i think all of us have an understanding of how having served in that role for many years-- how many years? i was right. almost seven years. probably was not another job in washington that could have prepared him any better for the job he has now, so with that, join me in welcoming david redl. [applause]. >> thanks, randy. i'm proud to be here speaking today and i would like to thank you for single handedly keeping the #life. it's been sometime since we've use that on capitol hill some glad to see it's still kicking.

i've always appreciated free state many years of work. the value you have been bringing the intelligent debate to some of these issues, so thank you for having. today's theme is timely and fits well with our goal was to expand spectrum, support development of 5g and connect all americans to the internet. this administration has make clear connecting all americans especially those in rural americans is a major priority. we know too many americans still lack access to reliable, affordable broadband service and at ntia we are working on this problem to help communities gain access to technology, promote economic development and no leash american innovation. are broadband program supports community leaders need to expand broadband connectivity. we work together to identify resources and provide assistance and help more than 250 communities develop

public-private partnership to meet their needs. our state broadband leader network helps facilitate information sharing among representatives for more than 20 states. we just concluded a successful summit in tennessee where we work together with the tennessee economic annulment authority and brought more than 200 state local officials to share best ideas for improving conductivity. we are also standing conductivity by ensuring there is enough spectrum to meet our nation's 5g needs. one of the four missions is striking a balance between the demand for spectrum by commercial users and the needs of federal agencies in their mission. thanks to the hard work of our policy and planning steering group. ntia was recently able to announce to 35 megahertz as a candidate for reallocation commercial services. we still have a lot of work to do to see this will be viable to

go to auction, but we have to work out to figure out whether or not we can support our government incumbents which is final to national security. could be an important band for us because it is adjacent to the three .-dot five gigahertz band broadband radio service spectrum and could fuel the nation's 5g leadership. dod plans to cement a proposal under the spectrum pipeline act to carry out a study to determine the reallocation for wireless services without harming operations. we hope the results of this hard work-- hard work will be a win-win to continue growth while also maintaining defense department systems. the pipeline act and spectrum fund are two of the sternest tools we have two looked for commercial uses, but we won every tool possible to ensure we are making the most of our

nation's scarce spectrum resources. clearing out bands is our priority. the law says that our priority and we will continue to look to find bands to clear, but we know there are other bands were clearing out is not an option and to that and ntia works to develop spectrum management approaches. for example, the president's budget includes proposal to authorize ntia to administer leases to federal spectrum. this could be a valuable tool in areas where clearing is not an option, but potential uses could be made inefficient use of the band. it's a high-level proposal and many details need to be sorted out, but it has great potential of an additional tool for the federal government to use. we would look find ways to incentivize agencies to use spectrum to help us identify them, whether upgraded technology or capability could

serve as an incentive or whether agencies could become beneficiaries of the services provided by commercial users in the band. which would also have to sort out how to fund the resources needed to administer the program , but the ideas. we are happy to see congress is interested in approaches as well ray band acta into law last week included a provision for agencies to relinquish more spectrum and requires a study on sharing. beside no he is a personal friend of mine and i have worked with cozy with him and i am pleased to see that spectrum that adorns his name will have a major impact on the next generations conductivity and i appreciate the blog free state published this week highlighting it, schmitz. as we look further we rely heavily on the telecommunication

sciences. as i mentioned before, the candidate and dod will study is adjacent to the cprs band at three .-dot five gigahertz. ids is helping bring three .-dot five to life. the heart of this innovative spectrum band are two systems, spectrum access and the environmental capability to allow commercial users to coexist with navy radar systems collaborating with all stakeholders to certify these systems are ready because they are necessary to bring the band to market. the dod study, and fcc recent announcement as you heard the chairman only two in his video have the potential to make as much as 750 megahertz continuous mid- band spectrum available to meet our nation's needs. big deal. we are also welcoming the fcc vote approving the order to use

regulation to impede wireless infrastructure-- infrastructure. it's consistent with ntia's commitment to remove obstacles to allow 5g to flourish. ntia is looking to improve federal coronation and reduce barriers to broadband deployment , another priority for this menstruation. efforts coordinated through the broadband interagency working group which we cochair. at present, our efforts in the big as we call it are focused on three words. align the key recommendations of the president's task force on agriculture and rural prosperity , extending broadband was the number one recommendation. the first area focus is the working group known as federal permitting. we are looking at these requirements on federal land in

an effort to streamline permitting efforts and establish consistency across agencies. the second area of federal funding a broadband and as many of you know federal government has desperate project to support broadband support and we have looked identifying these programs and recommending enhancement to coronation across the us government. several agencies were passed with broadband responsibility in the cisco 18 spending bill and we look forward to working with them including a new loan and grant program as well as the commerce department economic administration which has been asked to prioritize unserved areas in its broadband project. of the third and final area of the working group to look at is leveraging federal assets for broadband deployment. in january president trump issued a memo instructing a plan to increase access to tar facilities and other if the structure aspects to potentially lower the cost of build outs and encourage american of the structure deployment in rural

america. the task force also recommended assessing the current state of nationwide access including if the structure gaps and opportunities for more efficient deployment. we know one of the best ways to solve the digital divide is to better understand it. ntia has been a leader in collecting and now icing data on broadband adoption using the data to develop policy. we have decades of experience and allies in broadband in the us and high quality data policy research that's essential to create a holistic view to the current state of broadband deployment. to do so we need accurate reliable data analysis to inform private sector decisions, reduce regulatory barriers and coordinate federal programs that fund broadband structure. we need to aggregate existing information with multiple data outlets across the us using ideas to harness the plan coverage that may not be available from sec 477 data. last week i misappropriated

funds to work with the fcc and the state to update the broadband map with more diverse data sources to produce a more accurate assessment of broadband and provide tools for policymakers to target funds allocated to bring broadband to those parts of the country that lag behind. the broadband usa group has been the last few years continuing to cultivate our state broadband leader network including officials within state, local and county government who spend their time thinking about how to improving broadband in their communities. states have been willing to take on the challenge of maintaining maps and getting the data. through ongoing meetings including a recent summit in tennessee state community leaders had a chance to learn what works and what failed. whether it's solving a local conductivity issue or developing new approaches to spectrum

development ntia host to contribute to advances in her 5g future. everyone here today has a perspective that can enrich ntia's view. my door is open. we value the approach that each of you take your queen value your feedback we think the best way for us to produce good policy is to have a strong connection to working with private connector and civil society on real, concrete and valuable solutions. we want to hear from you. we know it's important. please don't be shy about coming to us. i want to thank randy for 12 years of great work at free state foundation, 10 years of this wonderful event and thank you for having me here today and i look forward to questions. [applause]. >> david, thank you again for those remarks, which we appreciate and thanks for

mentioning the blog that was-- that the free state foundation did on raybon's acts. it is very important as administrator david redl pointed out, but i think all of us our pleased to-- that the bill has his name attached to it. i think i should point out, of course, and most of you know this that david, of course, played a big role in bringing that measure forward in developing it, so he of course deserves a lot of credit for that.

david has agreed to take a few questions, so the way we will do this is if you have a question, i want you to identify yourself, please. try and ask a question, if possible and i will help you do that if you have trouble with it, but rather than a long statement. we have a microphone, and await you to wait until you are recognized and we will have a few questions. so, rick, where you raise in your hand? okay. >> lynn stanton. do you have any thoughts yet on where you will look for the sources of data that are funded through the bill last week? >> my team is in the process of digging through and figuring out

what we can do to best and most efficiently use the seven and a half million. as you have probably seen in the press, the budget originally asked for $50 million to achieve the goals. congress provided seven and a half, so we are now figuring out how to use the seven and a half million dollars in a way that produces the best tool for policymakers to make good decisions. don't have an answer yet. we are working on it. >> okay. the gentleman. >> i'm working for the european union delegation in washington. david, you have very well spelled out what the plans for your work are. i wonder if you find the time to look at what industry maybe should be doing or expectation for the industry side. >> with respect to the issues we

talked about today on spectrum that we are in close contact with our colleagues in the private sector on spectrum and in the government had all times. we have three different advisory committees, one on the commercial side, two on the government side to make sure we are in constant dialogue with both industry and our government users as we develop good policy. on five g.i. think we are all going to the same thing. 5g is a term that is everything for everyone and we are trying to figure out how best to meet america's need to make sure as we go forward in this next generation wireless infrastructure that we are maximizing the value to the american citizens particularly in rural america, insuring we have secure communications. the president made clear that secure communications is part of a national security strategy particularly with respect to 5g

and making sure america is a leader in wireless. we have been a world leader in 4g of gt and we went to maintain that leadership as we go forward into a 5g world. we continue to talk to our colleagues in the private sector >> okay. we have time for maybe one more question, if we have one. looks like all the way over on the side. >> thank you. patricia powell, switching gears a bit, but still in your wheelhouse. the chairman of the fcc announced just or say a proposal to deny funds to carriers that have had chinese equipment in their network and i have not yet seen that proposed order, but traditionally national security is an executive branch function. if that proposal passes what will be the role of ntia in court and 80 national security the fcc if it does pass? >> fcc proposal is and why copyright now. we look forward to working with

our colleagues to see what they produce and ntia role will be to work across the us government both women the department, wrist where we have expertise on these issues, but also across the us government to figure out a government response in a coordination with our colleagues. thank you, patricia. >> i think we will now think administrator david redl. i want to present him with a small token of appreciation. i guess the emphasis is on small this time. david, in the past sometimes and you may have seen this we have presented seekers with maybe larger tokens and i found out there is a concern often, do they exceed some governmental limits in terms of the ethical requirements or whatnot of course, i want to be sensitive to that.

i will present you with this beautiful ballpoint pen. [laughter] it is emblazoned with free state foundation on it and, you know, i'm almost embarrassed to say it, but i guarantee this-- we secure it at largely through the sharp eye of my wife, lori, but its value is under a dollar, so i hope you can keep it and use it in good health and most of all thanks for being here. [applause]. >> giving a bureaucrat a pen seems somehow appropriate, so i appreciate it. [applause]. >> now, for those of you standing, it is great to see such a large crowd. we do have seats are good there are seats up fronts, so i hope you will find a seat.

i'm now going to call on my colleague senior fellow seth cooper to come up along with his panel and we will route-- move right into the next panel now. and right after this panel we will move right into the second all-star panel no later than 10:45 a.m. [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations]

[inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] >> good morning and welcome everyone to the tent at free stake conference annual telecom conference. our panel, the first all-star panel for today is solutions for connecting america and closing digital divide. again, i would like to welcome the audience. welcome the audience on c-span2 who decided to forgo morning cartoons to tune into the latest and future issues of digital communication policy. so, we have for as i mentioned all-star panel as with us today.

i will introduce them briefly. john jones is the senior vice president of public policy and government relations with centurylink where he's responsible for representing centrally policy tab key-- advocacy position including the fcc, congress, state regulatory bodies and other agencies and industry groups. he has a 24 year tenure with the company that is now centurylink reaching back through century tell. prior to that he was a director and adjunct communication faculty member at the university of monroe for a dozen years and also a member of the board of directors for us telecom and we are glad to have john here today and we also have with us tom howard, senior vice president and general counsel. he has held that position since 2015 prior to which he was a us deputy chief technology officer

for telecommunications and the white house office of science and technology from 2011 until 2014 and he was chief of staff at ntia from april 2009, august 2011. worked in industry and law practice as well and senior legal advisor to fcc chairman's. we are glad to have him because he's a recent addition to our panel. it won't be reflected in the bio , but we are delighted to have tom power here. we received word late sunday night that michael powell would be unable to attend because of an unavoidable last-minute schedule conflicts so we are delighted to have james assey here with us today who is executive vice president at ntia internet and television association, second most senior executive involved in all aspects of their work prior to that he was a longtime member of

the u.s. senate committee on commerce science and transportation. most recently including serving as senior democratic counsel to the committee. he has worked in law practice as well and talk communications law as an adjunct faculty member, georgetown university law school. welcome back, james. i would also like to welcome back the cold turner lee who is a fellow at brookings. doctor nicole turner lee contributor to brookings tech tank and previously vice president and chief research and policy officer at the multicultural media telecom council and in that role she led the design implementation of their research policy and advocacy agenda. prior to that, she was vice president and first director of media technology institute at the center-- joint center for political economic studies and so we are delighted to have you back as well, nicole are just a

little bit about the format for this all-star panel. each panelist will kick things off with a opening remark going about five minutes and we ask you to keep that to five minutes or the free state foundation panel buzzer will go off. after that time we will give the panelists, if they wish, a moment or two to respond to anything they hear. following that, we will have some question time here on the panel. i will direct some questions to our all-star panelists and following that we will open it up to the audience for questions, so as we go along if you have any kind of question that comes to mind please hang onto it and we will hopefully get to you for our focus in tv land. we don't have the operator standing bari to take your questions, but for those who follow on twitter, we have a twitter handle #fs-- a novel--

[inaudible] for opening remarks i will first start with james assey. >> the curse of the a. >> actual, it's because you are closest to me. >> thank you, seth. thank you, randy. it's a pleasure to be here with everyone and i extend michael's apologies. i know he would have loved to have been here today to talk to you. i think the topic we at least will start on was focusing on connecting america and closing the digital divide. let me briefly start where i was like two starts when we discuss how we fill in the gaps in the holes we have and that is to really take tremendous stock of what we have seen over the last decade, decade and a half, two decades with respect to the

cable industry we threw and certainly we are not alone, but through a lot of private capital investment and a lot of industry , we have built down networks that can provide access to 94% of america's households and that's not a insubstantial, schmidt particularly when you consider the demands that consumers put on the internet and that continues to grow by the 10 balance year after year after year. of that's also not to diminish the importance of closing that last, that 6% who cannot yet get access to broadband or even closing the adoption gap of those people who could get it but have not yet with the rest of society and using the internet as fully and as they should. when we look at kind of what we need to do to kind of close that

6%, i think, you have already heard i think this morning from the assistant secretary some new developments in congress. certainly, a lot of focus on what we can do to close the gap. i think one of the things or one of the overlays we put on any tennis strategy is to really recognize technology neutrality and the need to design policy that reflect on and respect the fact that we have a multiplicity of different broadband platforms available to us. who would've thought that cable technology has evolved where it is today and wireless technology has evolved to where it is today and satellite technology continues to evolve and there is no really one-size-fits-all in a country that is as diverse as the united states with the different types of geometric-- geographical challenges we have

in a country this large, so i think we have to recognize that as we develop policies we need to come up with ones that are focused on the multiplicity of pathways for the consumer to provide them with internet service. i think another thing we have hopefully learned from passing stakes is to really and we focus on the public necessity portion of connecting america and really focus attention on the other-- unserved parts of america that did not have broadband and make sure the scarce resources we have available are not going to basically layer over places we already have built broadband through private capital and i am encouraged by recent language in the optimists optimist appropriations bill with respect to the new pilot program that is really aimed, i think, at ensuring the dollars go to where

they are needed so that we can assess whether these programs are working on not and hopefully make that holds smaller and smaller. similarly, i think i go back to when it comes to regulatory reform, again, i think we all acknowledge the fact that more friction we can take out of the system, the better because it will enable private capital to go further. i think we just need to be cognizant of the fact that we have different technology platforms and policy really needs to be built so it's evenhandedly with all the different multiplicity of infrastructure we have out there , so that is the writ large approach that i think we need to continue to focus on and i think recent signs are encouraging. >> thank you james. we will go to john jones from centurylink. >> i appreciate the opportunity to be here today and it is a timely and good topic to cover

and also what seems to be somewhat of a renewed focus on broadband speed and available the marketplace. many of you know the history of centurylink so i can talk from different perspectives as we have gone through several iterations of the company including a small rural telephone company and broadband provider and some more world markets in the country and now with the acquisition of level three, major internet provider globally, so i will try to believe that together. i thought it would be good to first talk about a bit about acknowledging what's going on in the industry that-- networks are combining a hybrid of both fiber and spectrum and those-- most networks are that means we have focus in terms of enablement on spectrum in fiber and both are expensive and have their own challenges for deployment, but when combined they do a great job of building advanced

networks and providing advance services for others. the real issue is the question is spectrum may substitute for fiber-- fiber and if you look at it from the standpoint of do they need each other to be successful, so those two combined will begin the enablement process by the nature of the technology of 5g if we have to build fiber closer specially enroll markets to get the 5g out there, fiber will be a major enabler of 5g going forward in most of the markets out there. one question we have to ask ourselves as a primarily rural provider is what is the future program will america and before when we were a small company, we reached about a mid- 98 to: 90% threshold enablement, so small markets and that was our strong suit. a few acquisitions later that percentage dropped significantly

with the acquisition of quest, but we have still been a leading provider of broadband in those markets, so i guess our view is that at least from our network perspective is that any market that had a reasonable hint of profitability or economic basis to deploy we pre-much have done those. what is left though to deploy to will be the most challenging markets regardless of platform. the cost will be high in challenges will be great and so we are looking for ways to get there and i think what the white house is done, congress has done in the fcc has done in terms of providing additional funding to those markets is positive and we appreciate the focus their, but despite the large amount of money that-- in terms of the services and the funding i think we all know in this room that it won't be enough money to do the total job people are looking to

take place. so, that's one issue. the other is i had the pleasure of serving on jonathan's subcommittee on barriers and that committee did a great job of coming together in identifying and coming to agreement on what the barriers to entry were in a lot of it was federal lands and permitting and anything done there will speed to market is really the emphasis they are, but it does little to address the cost issue. it's a great movement forward is getting that moving forward. one thing our company is looking for is hybrid solutions and we are to point where in the big square states like wyoming or dakota those ranchers and others are difficult for us to reach. some have trouble, so hybrid solutions are looking more killing to our company and if you look at what satellite has

done recently with the speeds that are better and affordability is a better and so when you look at that in the partnerships there that are possible, i think, it's a solution for providers to come together and meaningful partnerships to seek with those solutions are and then fixed wireless is another opportunity and that is where 5g comes in again and we are looking also at ways we can not only handle backlog of 5g, but provide a fixed wireless solution in those markets. of the last thing i want to touch on is i think consumer demand when talking about providers, but consumers are big factor for us. we are in an environment where we are chasing increased speed demands and we have all been chasing speeds for a long time, but we are also facing a technology agnostic fairly sophisticated consumer element now that maybe wasn't here are a

few go and what they are looking for regardless of the platform used i don't think they really care if it's wi-fi or small cell or wired at line. they are looking for positive internet experience at the end of the day and that is our job to provide that and that also goes into the heart of network security, privacy and other issues that they went into providing this is where i will touch on the open internet is that we see from an enterprise standpoint and consumer standpoint that some of the more volatile and emotional turns out there are dealing with net neutrality such as prioritization actually will become increasingly more of a customer demand issue and the evolve and keep telling us more and more what they need out of the network and our job is to respond to that demand. that is one thing that the

chairman's order does do is to allow providers like this the flexibility to respond without fear of enforcement action or anything else out there that was in the 2015 orders, so from the standpoint customer choice and the flexibility of providers to address that choice we think the order goes a long way in providing stability and predict ability for that network experience. >> thank you, john. >> thank you, seth, and thank you for having me here today. i don't think it will shock anyone that the wireless industry is focused primarily on 5g these days. we see it as transformative for the wireless experience across industries and across society because of what 5g can deliver. it's capable of 100 times the bandwidth of existing wireless technologies. we will connected millions more devices and one of the most significant factors about 5g is basically speed at which this

can hop from one point to the next and that enables applications that are real-time or near real-time and it needs to be real-time to be useful, so we will see a huge change in healthcare and transportation and we can just go across the board when it comes to different industries. this ripple effect will have a huge effect on the economy. we expect to see $500 billion in contributions according to a report by center that we commissioned and that will be supported by 3 million new jobs and the wireless carriers alone work-- are excepted to contribute to it it's had a $5 million in capital expenditures and that is just the carriers, but it's much broader than the carriers are what we think of as wireless. it is throughout the economy, and this is something that we have gotten pretty good at in this country in terms of wireless. the us has been a leader going back decades.

cell phone was invented here. smartphone was invented here. american companies dominate the market for operating systems, the inch inside your smart phone. you go to the top stores, those are dominated by american innovations. we have built out 4g across this country, racing past most other countries and we see much greater demand and usage of 4g in this country per capita than most other countries and we reached about 90% of the countries with 4g and the vast majority of those people have access to at least three carriers, so we have to keep that momentum going. other countries see what we are doing and they went to rival less when it comes to 5g. we see trials in cities all over the world. it's really important that we keep the success story alive in the us and for the wireless industry the two pillars we build a long, when his spectrum that airways over which data travels and one is of the

structure and in some cases p pillars. where do we install and how do we install the small cells that will carry this data and had we do it efficiently? we have heard chairman ajit pai and the administrator talk about that for us on spectrum we have seen good momentum last week congress essentially reconfirmed the sec authority to move it forward. heard chairman ajit pai this morning talk about two of the higher band, spectrum bands and wants to see go to auction starting later this year, which is great. need to keep that going with other bands that the fcc has identified for auction. we need to get those auctions as scheduled as well and the high band, mid- band and her discussions of the range and that's really important internationally. of those bands getting a lot of attention and it's important that we harmonize as much as we came around the world. that helps with scale.

it helps with people making the devices and making the chips to reduce their cost, which you can have faster and more efficient deployment. we are looking for more activity there on the spectrum fund. we heard earlier again from chairman ajit pai in the administrator on the action taken last week on citing and streamlining the siting process. every time he want to install an antenna, there is overlay of regulation, at the federal level, state level, local level in terms of getting the siting and getting the approval for that. the challenge has been as chairman ajit pai said a lot of the rules were written in the wireless context when we thought a big towers, 200-foot towers and antennas and associated equipment that went along with that. they were not written to think of small cells and the associated equipment that comes with that, so last week the fcc

took a step to streamline the review process at the federal level especially for small cells. we have been looking-- work at the state local level to accelerate the process they are. obviously, local governments will always have a role to play here when it comes to siting and it's important that we respect that role. they have costs they incur in terms of reimbursing those costs is a fair ask of the industry, but we need more uniformity and we need to make sure the delays we have seen in siting process will be eliminated. we need to make sure the process that is imposed in terms of overseeing this is not disproportionate in comparison to the cost that they incur, so we have estimated that will need about 800,000 small cells by 26-- 2026. i would say siting and spectrum

are the two things you will hear from the wireless industry for the foreseeable future. >> thank you, tom. and now doctor nicole turner lee >> last, but certainly not least so, what to thank randy for having me here and i went to thank my distinguished panelists for inviting me into the conversation. i'm going to talk a bit about people and what the conversation is about in terms of connecting americans. my perspective of what we look at when we close but abide. what we know today that internet usage is rapidly increasing. that the fact. as many of those in this room who were in the debate 10 years ago remember the time when we were in single digit broadband adoption and penetration and as james said we see more and more people getting online because

the of the structure is becoming more readily available. out of that positive trajectory, there are still about 11% of americans who don't have access. they tend to be older americans. pew reports 30% of people over the age of 65 to not have internet access and they tend to have less than a high school diploma at 35%. they are liberal as we all have come to settle on that fact pew recently reported in march about 22% of the people who were not in a rural residents and they are poor. that's 19%. despite these obstacles and many of you have heard me say this, they are still americans and deserved to be connected in a way that's meaningful with a risk of becoming virtually invisible and for those of us that invisibility has consequences over the long-run if we we don't get this right. many of you know i'm a sociologist, big fan of michael harrington's book and when he

talked about the war on poverty he stated we in the us have understated the amount of people that were disconnected from the economic mainstream institution took i would argue today and argue in the book i have coming out of brookings that we still have that same problem when we look at digital connect this-- visual connectedness. i want to keep pressing as we move towards a more ambiguous access is that the cost of not being online is greater today than it's ever been before. of there's a cost to digital exclusion. if you close your eyes and imagine yourself without your device in your pocket without your ability to engage in various functions, you would feel disadvantaged just like the 11% of non- internet users that feel that way today. what does that mean? i will leave us with some-- i think panelists adequately picked up on infrastructure. i would like to say this, the

digital divide is no longer binary, so it's not an issue of the haves and have-nots. i will keep to time, i promise. the me first say i think it's important to accelerate broadband access to the underserved, whether it's through the acceleration of the 5g technology which we know what books are-- bolster the capacity of people to get things done any meaningful way. that will require more work and spectrum management etc., but i also think we cannot count out that the billet-- ability to do that same job. we have got to get internet access into communities in any way possible, so i don't see us in the marketplace picking winners and losers. ics trying to figure out ways to accelerate access where people live and i think most of the panelists have suggested that it's not a one size fits all solution. i also think it's important that

we call attention to the fact that the lifeline-- [inaudible] the commission right now is working under the guise of where there is some sort of time stop when it comes to lifeline. you go back to those 11% of people that are not online, what it means to be low income in this country is something we should not assume to understand nor should we assume we should place barriers on people's ability to get access to opportunity. streamlining and cutting into the lifeline program will have a detrimental effect on closing the digital divide especially if the program starts with the assumption that people are trying to arts-- outsmart the benefit. i actually share that in my support that brookings that looking at this issue and what that means for low income americans who are becoming digitally marginalized. finally, i think it's important

and i think one panelist already said that to close the digital divide we have to remember today's technology is not tomorrow's solution and we have to come up with regulatory certainty that expansion, good public policy that supports spectrum allocation while at the same time recognizing the internet of today is not going to be what we regulate tomorrow. ..

what does the medicine look like in ten years. how will artificial intelligence help young people become educated if we regulated the internet the same way we regulate the telegraph or telephone. it's more than just infrastructure. it is not a one-size-fits-all solution. it's actually a comprehensive approach to how we want to ensure more people get access to the benefits of being online. >> think you. if i could turn back to you on the issue of infrastructure, what can the 115th congress do going forward? you mentioned reauthorization of the fcc. what can they do on the issue of infrastructure and making 5g infrastructure less costly. what could speed up and accelerate the process?

>> there are a number of efforts pending on the hill and bipartisan efforts, i should say. this is one area where both sides of the aisle get the picture. there are number bills i could choose from so i think i might have to pick on one of my children. at the risk of offending different sponsors of different bills who are hopefully not watching c-span2 this morning. i think the efforts they have undertaken on infrastructure is probably the most effective vehicle that i've seen right now. it would do a couple of things. in terms of making more uniform the rules across the country so when you apply to site and intent not or tower right away you know what the rules are.

you can put timelines and deadlines on local governments to act on those requests with the length of time depending on the nature of the installation. it would also ensure that the localities are paid their cost that they incur in overseeing this process and those costs would have to be disclosed publicly and would have to be neutral so that you don't have different players with different costs. i would say that is an effort we are strongly behind. >> nicole, if i could turn to you, i believe earlier this month you spoke to a group regarding 5g cell deployment and engaging local stakeholders. if you could give a bigger picture or fill us in and round out that aspect. >> ice spoken to several panels about 5g part i believe in the power of 5g. i think it will expand the effective utilization for low income and underserved communities.

the ability to do, as i mentioned more remote medicine, better and improved educational opportunities among young people, it's a immeasurable. when it comes to rolling out 5g within communities, you don't want to be that city that's not really working to get it in your community. i would hate to go to arlington and not be able to access 5g just by crossing over to it different city line. i think as we go forward, what we've urged people, what i've urged in my stations is let's embrace the process and figure out how to work together and collaborate. i built, and i have to admit this because i been saying it all across town the first small cell network when i was in chicago working for. [inaudible] we used duct tape and routers. it was a very hard issue to solve when you try to propagate

against concrete buildings on the west side of chicago. i get it with regard to technical architecture. it will take a team working together to make sure we can roll out at a pace equal, seamless and allows people that opportunity. we can't wait. low income people, do we want them at a rate where kids are trying to get homework via 3g speeds. i don't think so. we have to figure out how to make the process friendly enough where there's cooperation and collaboration. we are starting to see that the recent panel we held as well as historic landmarks, the road city representatives in that convening and i can tell you the thing that got them the most excited about was workforce. the ability to engage in put their people to work as well.

>> james do you see anything congress can do going forward in terms of cable infrastructure that will be necessary for gigabit fiber and even necessary for 5g. do you see any promising vehicle on that front? >> i take some encouragement from what they just recently have done. i know a lot of this discussion focuses on 5g, but i don't want us to forget about other technologies. i think the point that john made initially which is all of these networks are going to start looking a lot like everybody else and we are all going to be using a mix of technology. people, consumers will make the choices based upon the services they want and infrastructure providers will provide the flavors of technology that people want. consumers are pretty indifferent

to the type of technology. they just want the thing they want to get to work. one of the recently passed is congress recognition that we do need a balanced approach when it comes to spectrum with respect to license and what we make available to meet the needs of 5g and the to meet the needs of the wireless. the fact that 80% of that traffic is going over wi-fi, that's a pretty strong amount of work. that workload will only increase over time as it well for licensed wireless as well. they are not to try to argue that this is in either oa either or, it's a both type of approach and the problem as we all know with spectrum is you can't turn

on a dime. you have to go through a process of planning and deal with incumbent users and try to plan out the long-range strategy over time. i think it's critically important that an tia and other parts of the federal government really take that long term view and put out what is our national plan with respect to licensed wireless and unlicensed wireless. legislatively, things they can do, obviously with the amount pt is really a down payment as john suggests, the places where it's currently on economic reserve, it will take significant resources to get broadband to them. i think congress will continue to play an important role in oversight in making sure that the funds it provides are used for the intended purpose.

i do think, if we want to look at places for us to relook at broadband policy, i would say one place that might be fertile territory would be the rules with respect to pole attachments to speed up the process by which there is an orderly effort to add new line's and also to deal with something congress didn't deal with back in 1996 when exempted co-op polls from the federal scheme that we have for polls. i think those would be two places to start. >> in sticking with the issue of spectrum and licensed versus unlicensed, what kind of rules of thumb or principal do you take in approaching how to decide what kind of spectrum bands get allocated to one kind of use or the other whether it's licensed or unlicensed?

>> think it really depends. it depends on the propagation characteristics, the, who's in that band, what other uses are we going to have to contend with, the fact of the matter is i think we all recognize that the consumer demand for connecting via the wide variety of devices that we increasingly have in our homes and on our person just continues to increase so in some sense there's always going to be a desire for more spectrum, but there is no one-size-fits-all. we need lower bands spectrum, higher band of spectrum. we've seen the fcc do some very important things with respect to the waistbands for particular types of uses, but it is going to be a constant challenge for

us and for the regulatory agency to figure that out. ultimately, consumers will drive the demand for these services and hopefully that will give us some sense of where we need to find space to allow things like gigabit wi-fi to grow. >> does anyone have anything they want to add or respond to that. >> i agree with a lot that was said. we need more of wi-fi and license and unlicensed. they both add considerable value across the board, looking around this room i can tell you wi-fi is pretty good or people are praying a lot, maybe some of both, but the fcc, i think over the years they have taken a number of steps to try to get this out. it's a challenge for the regulator because they are

trying to make predictions based on where they think the technology will go and where consumer demand or development will go, which you kind of want to be in the hands of the consumer and the entrepreneurs on the private side. on the other hand, you want the government thinking ahead, there is that quote that's skating toward where the puck will be, not where it is. the fcc isn't playing hockey. they are the referee. it's always a challenge. we certainly learned a lot of things about where the sweet spot for some of these are, clearly when you're at home where the hotel or the office, an environment like this where you can control a lot of use that's going on, one of the characters is that you're not protected from interference so you do risk challenges there as

you put more and more demands. on the other hand, for licensed spectrum, certainly for mobility is a big plus in the more uncontrolled environment when it can spike up and down. it's better suited for licensed because the carrier can exclude others and may have exclusive use and control the quality of service being offered. that can be very important especially as we move into 5g. the fcc gets great credit for the way they manage this over the years and as james said, it will just keep growing on both sides and both will hopefully continue to be developed in a way that meets consumer demand. >> for the topic of this panel, it's a also important to leverage where are the appropriate context to play

around with unlicensed spectrum and due experimentation that may actually lend itself to closing the digital divide in ways we may not identify through large-scale rollouts. >> all right. let's move on to universal service. john, maybe i will turn to you first. we've got the phase two option we've got the can connect america option. we have things coming up this year. are we all set going forward, are there rule changes that need to be made or are you confident things can reach these rural areas for how that set up? >> i think the fcc does a very good job with the auction process. the way we are looking at it from us provider standpoint, we have limited opportunity and we

declined two states during the cast to process and my understanding is that same funding will track in the auction so it's still the same amount of funding so i'm not sure how much relief it's actually going to give a bitter. one is wyoming and the other is mississippi. i'm not sure how much that will help, but i think they're both good gap fillers from the standpoint of seeing an incremental need and addressing it but there's still a lot more to do and were interested to see if there will be other mechanisms out there for us. >> very quickly, you mentioned the role utility service and having encouraging language in the legislation about avoiding overlays with government funding networks to be built on top of places where consumers are already served.

does that continue to be an issue on universal service in these things going forward? do you find the same kind of encouragement on that front? >> i think we are encouraged by the direction that has been taken which is obviously there are probably things around the edges we would quibble with but it seems like we are finally focused on judging the effectiveness of the funds we are providing based upon how many new homes are we signing up. that type of accountability, i won't say it's been a seachange, but it's been an encouraging development. we see it replicated in many states which are really following a more focused approach to funding they may provide to allow existing characters and communities that

don't have access to broadband. they're giving us a new measuring stick for how we are actually accomplishing the task we set out to do. there's obviously lots of historical evidence where we've seen that funds have not been used for their intended purpose and gone to places where broadband already exists. i view the changes that have been made at the fcc to be really encouraging. i view the models that states are following to focus line extensions and get funding targeted to underserved areas to be a follow on to that. a further follow-on is congress insistence that when we are going to spend publics money through this new pilot program, that we ensure that at least 90% of the funding for any grant go to supply broadband to households that are underserved.

>> sticking with universal service but moving it back over to lifeline, nicole, in your remarks you talked about the proposal the fcc has of having a self enforcing budget or a hard cap. that same proposal would limit lifeline subsidy support to facility based providers. what is your position regarding this aspect of the proposal to limit lifeline support of facility based. >> i will summarize this is my mommy would say, if it ain't broke, don't try to fix it. it's challenging because i think some of the assumptions that are in the lifeline proposal right now i'm a particularly the limitations based providers sort of regress some of the work that was done over the past couple years to ensure more competition in the marketplace. you now have a situation where we may have constrained competition that presupposes some hypotheticals around you

where, in the beginning of this debate on lifeline reform a couple years ago the conversation was the low use of lifeline in terms of capture rate versus high use. i think it's important to sit back and look at the implications. i would argue that some of the lifeline reforms are still driven by a partisanship approach to the waste, fraud and abuse which is not true. there was actually conversation about waste being reduced so the geo report was based on old data. i think it's important that we allow them to put in the national verifier to reduce some of the redundancy, until you actually do some of that stuff, it's very hard to go back in a program that is the only potential lover for people to get online. we don't want to find yourself in a situation, particularly when we talk about closing the digital divide. it is about deployment, it is about infrastructure but it's about people standing at the heart of what were trying to

solve and it's critically important that the program and congress reevaluate how we are approaching this program. it's not a social service agency. they are an enabler to get people access. the prior proposal had areas in their that were going to facilitate the ability of people to have social mobility by leveraging the benefit. we shouldn't make assumptions, again, about how the poor live in this world when we are not poor. i would say to others, i'm a big proponent of people i think it's important that we really look at some of the subliminal messages that are in that order that would potentially restrict, and i want to point this over to james but the uptick in affordability to people in urban areas, it will have a affect on people who live in rural communities and urban who are people of color, disabled or isolated.

i think we need to continue to discuss but i would really question to put in hypothetical numbers that may not actually be the measure of success for that program. >> nicole, i'll stick with you for one more minute. if we were to install a backbone to the commissioners office and you were to address the issues of digital exclusion, i imagine you would've text on touched on the spectrum or anything else that you recommend to address digital exclusion now that we are into the chairmanship. >> i participated in a marginal way, not on the main committee but i think the church chairman is moving in the right direction of putting the gap stop in place where we actually inhibit, we stopped those barriers that have traditionally kept people off-line. people have more choices. the people who get online the

way they want too, how they want to and in more meaningful ways than they could before. i tell my kids, i can't beat you at an interactive game but i can get you on atari. technology has changed. however, we are in a space where disruption is going to upset the apple cart. the regulatory conditions that we talk about today, when you look at machine learning and those areas, the cost will come through big data analytics and other things. we have to be careful as we balance this conversation that the digital economy and the sharing economy are making up large portions of our gdp. the future work is dependent on the ability of people to be involved. the digital divide amplifies barriers when you live in communities where you don't have access to interface with new tools of technology. it's. you want to talk about a cost to america to actually not build 5g, not billed ubiquitous

access, not get into rural communities. the cost to all of us will certainly be that they will be left behind. again, i kind of left you all, i'm like mayor marathon runner that all of us are starting to go to, regulation has to catch up with where the disruption is actually taking us versus us actually sitting back and trying to figure it out. the pipe has to be bigger because the needs have become bigger. >> okay, dealing with the subject of moving on in terms of regulation, john, century link and through earlier incarnatio incarnations, they have a long track history and dealing with section ten for to get rid of legacy telephone regulations that still apply and are still on the books and this year we will also have section 11 by annual review. do you see any candidates in terms of old legacy rules that

could still be taken off the books are modified or reduced within the next year? is there anything that's a real contender. >> i think it's fairly simple from our standpoint, if you look at the rules, most have lost 70% of their market share across the board from a voice and broadband standpoint and we still have rules that are pretty far back in time so any forbearance from rules on how the industry is converging in so many ways and something i touched on earlier, any rules that keep our segment of the industry in a wide open environment of competition would be at the highest level what we would ask for. >> traffic. i want to touch on the issue of net neutrality and the issue of

legislation. could you describe john, what would be the essential elements of a legislative compromise on this issue? what would be the bare minimum. >> i'll go back even to the question you asked james. that piece of legislation, sending the net neutrality rules in motion with a lot of clarity would be a good legislation to remove barriers and uncertainty. that's just one piece of legislation. in terms of everyone understanding that blocking is something that needs to not happen, any legislation would probably have to deal with blocking. i do think they will try to keep up with demanding issues to continue to meet evolving needs.

the blocking is one thing. there will be clarity among the rules. we are now in a world of peering and unfortunately you get back to compensation for use of the network. the commission did not deal with issues that can be negotiated fully or between carriers and there will be some of that out there as we move into that environment. >> tom do you have anything to

add? >> we have a hard time agreeing on the details whether the uniform net neutrality and what it would look like state-by-state. >> there is some high-caliber power on this panel including you and james. we've seen executive orders on legislation, will those succeed? what should be the response and the next step in addressing these at the state level? >> look, i think it all fundamentally goes back to this

is really not a question of ability, this is a question of will and when we look at the online ecosystem of which isps are certainly a part of, but not the only part of, i think we have the ability to set consistent standards and norms of behavior, that consumers want. short of going on the rooftops and shouting from the top of our lungs that the isp industry is interested in resolving this issue in a context that will promote continued investment in networks that we all agree need to continue to grow and thrive, it becomes a vexing problem. it's like you're searching for a dance partner here but the fact of the matter is, to your question as far as it makes no sense to have one state have one

interpretation of a rule and another state have a different interpretation of a rule because no isp builds its network that way. to the extent we want to have this conversation, we want to engage and welcome rules of the road that will discipline not just isp but other online participants that might engage in practices that we would worry about as consumers, we ought to have that conversation and we ought to have that conversation at the federal level and it's always darkest before the dawn, but i remain hopeful that at some point we will get around to realizing that this is a problem that is fixable and we can fix it. >> i'm not a lawyer, but i have questions for debate. i want to echo, and without taking a position on where it stands, i definitely think congress needs to pass legislation. they need to come to the table and have us conversation of

where we go from here at this point. picking up on some of the comments that were made earlier, what affected my thinking about this is some of the caveats we need to think of in legislation. if we are talking about autonomous vehicles and other real-time applications, but we may want to go through and talk about what does that mean in terms of balancing innovation and regulatory states. james is also quite right that the internet has transformed without a start and stop button and all these industries are converging in a way that we have to be sensitive to the fact that a conversation that started nearly a decade ago is not going to be relevant in the future if we do not figure out the intricacies of how the internet

actually works and consumers as somebody said are really telling us how it works but were not paying attention to that. i think that will be really important for us to move on some of these other issues. >> traffic. >> we will open this up to the audience print we have about five minutes for any questions. is there anyone here who has questions, we have microphones coming around and i see tom right there. >> good morning. great panel. i wanted, when congress established first met and provided spectrum and allocated funds, the expectation was that there would be some built out, this would spur buildout of wireless networks. several years later, is there any evidence that this is happening where do you see this as part of the solution to closing the gap in rule america? >> we need the at&t representative appear. >> i'm not familiar with the details, that was honestly part of the goal to get the sharing

of the spectrum between the public safety community and the private sector, at&t is in the middle of that and we are working closely with the folks at commerce. i think it is still a wait and see, hopefully i can bring a lot of benefits because, particularly in rural area where the spectrum will be less needed on a day-to-day basis, there should be access that can be made available for consumers and businesses in those areas. >> all right. we have another question in the audience. i see rick over there. >> thank you. hopefully we are allowed to ask the moderator question. you asked about state preemption and you have written about state preemption's so i would be curious if you could tell the audience your view of whether

the state net neutrality efforts will survive legal challenge. >> they are all over the place. all right. tough panel. some states governors have signed executive orders saying their states want to business with internet service providers unless they agree to run their networks the same way they would have under the fcc title to rules that were repealed. that narrow issue is one i have written on in particular, it is our conclusion or my conclusion that these are highly problematic under the supreme court market participant doctrine because broadband internet access services are available to every customer, there usually kind of take it or leave it deals where you can go

to one provider that serves my neighborhood or i can choose to sign up for their service or not i can go to whatever the alternative, the competitor and choose it or not. that's not something i get to do to tell my provider how to reengineer their network in order to serve me. the supreme court has a document that is very sensitive to the fact that yes state governments, local governments can act like a participant in the market and buy or sell from whom they want too, but they have to act in a manner consistent with other participants in the market. i think it certainly runs in it to difficulty in that way and there is a lot more wrinkles on this issue. we may be writing on the more, in particular my colleague has written in one of his series on maintaining the line for matters there because the fcc does have a provision in the restoring

internet freedom order that says if you, if any state or local government seeks to reinstitute the rules that are being repealed they will be preempted. i think there is a dormant commerce clause as well, that is more complex and yucky and i don't think about those things since law school days but i would actually consider that a very potent argument that would recognize these are inherently interstate, they don't respect state border and the data flows around where it goes and are not engineered a state lines. that's the moderator's answer and since i have the microphone no one can challenge me on that, partly because my bosses here to transition off onto what's next. however think everyone here on the panel. [applause] >> the first thing i want to say is you only get one question to the moderator. the chamfer conference.

we just had it. i want to ask our next all-star panel's to come up right now and we will transition right into that panel. there are a few muffins over on the side and a little bit of breakfast left if you are hungry you can grab that now.

[inaudible conversation] [inaudible conversation] we are going to start in two minutes. i will make sure my stopwatch is working.

within two minutes i will ask everyone to sit down again please. >> okay. we are going to get started so if the people to my right over

there will grab your food and then take a seat please, it's really helpful when everyone will take a seat. i want to remind you all to tweet away, we appreciate that and i'll just mentioned one more, maybe it will be the last time but we've got a few of our books out there, # calm, act, update. i appreciated david reynold reminding everyone that was the # for the beginning of the effort to re-examine the medications act which, one day i bet will happen, i'm sure. okay. i am delighted that we've got another round of all-stars here and they are truly all-stars so in-line with my convention and

what he announced this morning, i will give you just a brief introduction so you've got their bios in front of you and then i'm going to ask them to speak for five minutes we will go down the line alphabetically, i will hold them to the five minutes and after the initial presentations, i've got some questions and i want them to react to each other. i know they won't be bashful about that and then we will save a little time for your questions as well. our first panelist today is jeffrey campbell. jeff is vice president of the americas of global government affairs for cisco. jeff, i hope i got that right. he leads government affairs activities for cisco in the western hemisphere. i'm just going to say this about

him, jeff and i have known each other for a long time going back several decades. i can say without any fear of contradiction that jeff is one of the most knowledgeable people here in washington and probably in the country about communications matters. he has been added a long time and always has done it well. next we will hear from david cohen. david is senior executive vice president of comcast and a company he is chief diversity officer. he has a broad portfolio of responsibilities including corporate medications, government regulatory affairs, public affairs, legal affairs,

corporate administration and community investment. he also serves as a senior counselor to the ceo. whenever i go to david's portfolio, it makes me wonder whether several thousand employees of comcast might be able to eliminate just because of everything david is doing there. some of you remember when he was here last year, i had discovered back in law school he was called the chief judge, i think i have that right so for any of those tough legal questions that i've asked you not to direct the moderator at this time, i may send them over to david. okay. next i am pleased that we have with us kathleen. she is senior vice president and deputy general counsel, public

policy and government affairs at verizon, she has responsibility for verizon's public policy, federal and state, legislative and regulatory affairs and i trust and privacy and strategic alliances. she actually, it makes me think she is verizon's david : with that broad portfolio she has. welcome kathy. then, last but not least as nicole reminded us in the left panel, she did her own last but not least but i'm doing it for her chris, christopher lewis is vice president of public knowledge and he leads the organization's advocacy on capitol hill and with other government entities. prior to joining public knowledge in 2012, chris served as the fcc as deputy director of

the office of legislative affairs and he advised the fcc chairman on legislative and political strategy. chris and i were doing a program together a couple months ago, it happened to be on c-span and we discovered sitting there in the green room that chris's father was actually an assistant basketball coach at duke university. some of you know i have a particular fondness for duke university. that was back when bucky was the coach so even though there are times where chris and i don't always agree on things like net neutrality or other issues like that, we have that duke connection. by god, can any of you believe that shot by greyson allens that

was in and out of the basket twice and then rolled off. i'm still not fully recovered from that, but we will go on. okay. we will start with jeff, please try to limit your remarks to five minutes and jeff you can take off. >> thank you randy. so, it's 2018. here we are talking about net neutrality again. i've been talking about this issue since about 2002. as i recall, back then, randy, i didn't have any gray hair, i don't know about you, but. >> of course not but we've gone a long time on this issue and we've gone around in circles and awful lot and i would like to think that we've learned a few things along the way, but i'm

not really sure about that. i think there are couple things we have learned along the way, one is that television community engine comedians probably shouldn't run telecommunications policy. another is that slogans often win the way in washington. but to go back, i want to go back to 2002 for a second because i think it helps set the table for discussing where we are today and where do we go from here. that is in an era when almost nobody was talking about this issue, a few people sat down and thought about it for a little while and i'm not sure we were the smartest people in the world, but we did think about it and think about what the real problem is about what can and cannot happen on this interesting new medium of the internet. we thought there was some elemental principles that ought to out there, that people ought to operate by. they went.com located. without people shouldn't block

traffic, that's lawful traffic, we thought people shouldn't throttle traffic because that's blocking in and world will were all going for more speed all the time. one of my to come comcast accounts just recently got sped up and i'm very happy about that. also, people ought to be able to choose what they want to run on their internet, what applications they want to run and what they want to do. lastly, as consumers, people ought to know what it is they are buying. they are to be told how their service operates, what happens with it, what are the parameters that might affect what they want to do with their internet connection spread we sort of wrote this all down and typed it up and send it off to the fcc and michael thought it was a good idea and we kinda thought it was like wrapped up with a bow. isn't that nice, were all done, let's go away. we've had a lot of things happen

in the meantime, but i would suggest if you think about where we are today in the grand universe of this debate, some of the fundamentals, the ones i just talked about are very much indisputable. what we are really fighting about were arguing about increasingly in this debate is two things. one is questions of law, who should regulate and how should they regulate? i would say they are the most interesting parts of this debate because as long as someone is doing it correctly we will be okay. secondly we don't bait on the cutting edge of technology, issues of prioritizing traffic, new services, whether people can pay for it or they can pay for it, whether some services should get up and not others and what i can do to competition in the marketplace.

i would argue, in those cases, we need to look at two important things. one, we want to make sure competition is preserved in the marketplace and we have a lot of laws on the book to do that if we need more we should discuss that. second, we don't want to get into a world of restricting technology and banning types of usage is essentially the same thing as banning technologies. i think that something else we've learned over time in this debate. and so, just to sort of wrap up these five minutes, i think we might be at a good inflection point where we can attempt to bank the agreements, whether that's legislatively or regulatory early, but really get down to all the things that 99% of people who have discussed this issue all agree on, try to

compromise on the remaining issues, recognizing that we don't want to foreclose the future because there will always be future opportunities to regulate and legislate in the future if necessary, but we don't want to do things that in fringe on technology choices and opportunities for business models and consumers to access things that they want to choose. i would pause that congress is the best place to do this, but that is sometimes a very slow process. we will see. if we go back to basics, i think we will all find there's an awful lot of commonality on this debate and maybe one day we won't have to have a panel on this at this conference. >> i guess i would welcome that day, although it is fine. i should have said earlier the title of this panel in the brochure is solutions for getting past net neutrality and advancing the gigabit future in 5g future. i do want to talk about that on this panel as opposed to the earlier panel where we didn't do as much.

david, you are next. >> thank you randy and congratulations on your tenth conference. that's pretty impressive and again, i think you've picked the right topic to draw a full room and drop panels of people to talk about it. i've got three basic points i will make in five minutes. they are all premised on the fact that state-of-the-art networks are truly the foundation of our digital economy and i believe of america's future and how we make sure we preserve, grow our state-of-the-art networks in the united states and maximize innovation is ultimately the answer to the title you established for this panel. my first of three points is, make no mistake about it, we have world-class broadband networks in the united states

and we got them through the leadership of isps. we've invested $1.6 trillion in building out these networks and without the investment in private sector investment, without the private broadband providers we would not have state-of-the-art networks and i would also say that without continuing investment in innovation, the isps were not going to maintain our leadership position in the world of having state-of-the-art and best in class broadband networks. thanks to those networks we have been able to deliver fastest broadband speeds for many of us we are doing that through 3.1, at comcast we are now offering gigabit speeds in 80% of our footprint and by the end of this year we will be offering them in one 100% of our footprint. coming soon to a comcast network near you, we are already working

on the next generation which is full duplex symmetrical multi- gig speeds going up and down up to ten gig and that is all through a privately supported risk capital network we are building. for us it's more than speed. we launched rx five service which is the fastest and most powerful, advanced, wireless gateway in the home that gives you unprecedented control over your wi-fi service. it's commercials are not just jokes, they actually work, you can turn your wi-fi off and make your kids talk to you during dinner. that's how we are enhancing family values. the integrity of the family unit. that is .1. point to is the importance of finding public policy that supports private sector investment in the network.

i think having a climate that encourages private sector investment is essential. the temporary misguided classification of isps ha as puc utilities threaten that cycle. i would note that those who disagree with that statement have never run a business, never made private sector business decisions or investment decisions, there is unanimity on the corporate sector, whether it's in the broadband space or otherwise that having a light regulatory touch is essential to encouraging private sector investment and if you compare the regulatory environments for broadband and the u.s. versus the regulatory environment in europe, there is a reason why the level of private sector investment. person is literally double the size in the u.s. as it is in

europe. the restoration of this light touch regulatory framework which has worked in the past and will work in the future is one of the major accomplishments of 2017. as jeffrey said and i want to make clear again and unfortunately you can't say this enough times because no one's listening but the solution here is bipartisan legislation that installs once and for all durable, enforceable net neutrality rules that will once and for all take this issue off the table. the regulatory, the game of regulatory ping-pong, going back and forth as to who is in control of the fcc is arguably worse than having title ii classification because the uncertainty that that presents is the absolute worst environment to be able to make

investment decisions. the third, my third point and i know randy and i apologize it slightly off point but it belongs more in the first panel, but for me and for comcast and for most isps, this is just a fundamental article of faith which is that we have to do more than faster and faster internet. we have to make sure that every american has access to the internet and that has a deployment dimension and an adoption dimension and i raise it because i think getting all americans in connected is fundamental of digital democracy in the united states, and we won't win the argument if we are leaving 25 or 30% of americans behind. and one point we can expand on is something i'm passionate about, i say it front of every

audience, but if you go by the dialogue in washington around universal broadband adoption, you would think we are dealing with a problem that is predominantly, if not exclusively, a matter of getting broadband buildout to rule american and indian reservations and places that don't have broadband. we have a deployment problem in the united states but it covers 8% of our population. we also have an adoption problem and that is impacting 27% of america. we have more than three times as many americans not the scribing to broadband at home even when it's built out front of their homes as we do not subscribing because it hasn't been built out in front of their homes.

i'm not saying we should ignore rural america, we should absolutely pursue public policy, private sector incentives, partnerships with the public technology because we may never get broadband to every corner of america, but please, please let's not forget the three times as many people who are not subscribing to broadband even though it's running in front of their home. we have to have a public policy and the private sector commitment that is equally focused on broadband adoption issues as well as on broadband deployment issues. >> on that note, thank you david. really, it is your last point is part of what we want to discuss

and is the theme of this conference which is connecting all of america. it all relates together. kathy. you are next. >> thank you randy. thank you for inviting me. this is actually my first panel. not my first panel on net neutrality, but maybe the last as we talked about before, but it's funny, i was, i was going to keep my remarks brief because i think our discussion will be interesting and allow interesting issues but i was, starred in a similar way to the way jeff did when i was thinking about what i was going to say today, i was thinking back to 2003 which is roughly when this debate started which also coincided with the beginning of my career at verizon and what struck me is how much has changed since then. we had a little discussion in our office about what kind of mobile wireless service you had in 2003, you basically had a

flip phone, if you were even that advanced and you basically had like 140 kilobits. second of speed on your phone. that's when we started talking about these concepts and these principles of openness that have changed somewhat over the years. there is still commonality about what's important and what should be permanent for consumers. : : : we have this economy we are existing and now we are we all have very complex relationships with each other.

regulators are looking at different perspectives. it is important to see how much change has occurred. and in terms of broadband and certain networks but on the mobile sign really what we are poised to see right now we talk about 5g and transformation relate to the economy that will come and innovation that will come from 5g. so how do we get there? we need to get past net neutrality.there is no question about that. there are many critical important issues that they are working on right now. and that will bring us there we have the past the issue. as david said i think the only real way to do that is to have legislation that puts in place, permanent protections for consumers. they are legally durable, it makes them across energy that allows for innovation and from 2003 to where we are today. i think that the path there is probably a little unclear right

now but it is critical. i don't think we can lose sight of that and i think there's a lot of will and motivation on all sides of the debate.no matter what private company talk to. there is a sense of imperative to get to a solution to some of these problems. i'm hoping that we can get there. >> thank you. and now we're going to turn to chris. i want to emphasize i am very pleased that chris is here. he is obviously, he and his organization public knowledge they have a view on some of these things that's why it is important for him to be here. many of your bids are conferences and we always value having a divergence and diversity express. in my view is that when you get educated in the way that you learn. so chris. take it away. >> thank you for having me.

i feel like a tar heel in the stadium. i will do the best i can. i do appreciate you having you here because the only way we resolve this issue is really what this, is about. and getting past net neutrality is likely to ensure that we have net neutrality and the only way we do that from a policy standpoint is to get stakeholders together to agree that we have achieved that. unfortunately, over the years if you look at the history and just start to get to so history of net neutrality, going back to chairman powell and his freedoms and effort and subsequent germans efforts to enforce net neutrality at the fcc. every time we tried to do so, we see an isp challenge the ability or the power of the fcc to protect open internet.

i think we think about what we can test this issue on a policy basis we have to have folks that agreed to what net neutrality is. and there is broad consensus about what that is. and there is a debate and then we need to, we have net neutrality, we have strong rules and protections that we had, under the 2015 order, that can be held in court like the rules in the 2015 that are popular and allow for investment in that isp and by folks on the edge like the 2015 roasted. when we have that, and as you can tell it the 2015 rules. then we can talk about the other important issues that were brought up. agree and what net neutrality

is. these rules that protect proactively against isps blocking and fondling content that protect against schemes that allow for them to now getting bigger and bigger and merging with companies to have a content preferred that they own over other competitive content cables against those things are the core net neutrality and that is why, when protecting net neutrality was challenged by isp's and in the past, the powell freedoms, the most in 2010. it is why we end up with a title ii framework because that is what the court appointed to be upheld under the current law. folks on the panel are asking for legislation. now that they've successfully eliminated the only rules that were able to be upheld under current law. it can be done.

there are different ways to get there. i would suggest that the easiest way is the current resolution has been introduced to restore the 2015 goals. since we found that they were strong, worked for the industry, worked for consumers, were popular and upheld in court. that is one way and probably the simplest and fastest way to restore net neutrality protections and move past it. if folks wanted to put forward other types of legislation it would need to protect the same think that the 2015 roles protected. that is what consumers expect. that is why you see so many folks in the fcc with these records syc state legislators responding to the constituents doing all sorts of things. that should have been handled by the fcc on a federal level. we need to remember that what those bright line rules are? what color protections are.

what legislation would have to do that. also preserve the ability for the fcc to have technology changes too quickly for congress to keep up with every innovation. in such a allow for innovation on all parts of the internet, both the network level with the isp's and with providers. it is important that we have regulatory networks in the interest of everyone. i think it was a radical decision by the fcc to decide that they no longer work in the practice of protecting consumers over broadband and wanted to take it to the federal trade commission. it needs to be restored. also be done through legislation. but what we don't want to see is legislation that gives us narrow net neutrality protections in exchange for losing all of the other protections important to the federal communications commission and things like privacy that have been a long

tradition. things i protecting against cost and price gouging. preserving universal service and protecting what we have seen from some providers in the last few years. protecting competition so that independent voices can be heard and can seek out other competitive tools and competitive platforms online. and then make sure that the network is reliable. that we do not dial that or downgrade to the protections and expectations that networks are reliable and that when services go down or changed or even when they're upgraded that we don't lose some of the things that people expect that the networks can do. we can do this if we work together and agree that these are fundamental principles of communications networks. >> okay. thank you chris. i was right about there being a diversity of opinion. and that is what we want. now, you know we are going to

stay with the net neutrality issue a little while and then move on to some other things. and i did hear that kathy said that the path i think this is a direct quote. the path is a little unclear at this point in terms of how to move forward on the hill. but she favored legislation. then i did hear chris say first he made a pitch for the congressional review act resolution. you know but just assuming for the sake of argument that it is not going to be, it is a nonstarter among our other panelists here that we are trying to actually resolve this issue right here today while we are together. i want to try this.

the isp's to say that they are in favor would you not object to certain elements. that are fallen into that net neutrality. blocking, degrading the most of the major isp's of including those represented here will say that. and then we will talk about prioritization but i guess my question presents that he went to see the rules reinstated but just explain, i'm going to have maybe one of you were to have you explain why, if you are -- too many or some of the facets of net neutrality, that chris favors, what was in your mind, so wrong with the 2015 rules? just explain that so we get

that on the table and then we will move forward. >> i am happy to take a shot at that. we, speaking for comcast and for the industry, we didn't have objections to most of the substance. in the 2015 order. we did have objections to certain things that were added into the substance that had never in the history of the debate of net neutrality been part of that neutrality until tom wheeler and president obama came around and decided to make them part of net neutrality. so the general conduct standard being the most obvious thing made up out of this that really has nothing to do with net neutrality and in its history. and interconnection is another possibility. more complicated question may not be as fundamentally it was topically central to the debate. but the big issue was the source of authority relied upon

by tom wheeler to impose the rules. and that was classified broadband. in the telecommunications act which the industry and i believe almost every serious economists looking at this would uniformly raise your hand and say, classifying broadband is a public utility or classifying isp's as a public utility and using title ii as the source of authority to impose these rules is addition incentive to investment and it is hanging over your head because of the hundreds of other things that can be done to isp's because they are then classified under title ii. and by the way, we are not new to this discussion. i mean, when tom wheeler was considering rules, we were on capitol hill saying, let's legislate.after tom wheeler did his rules, we were on capitol hill saying, legislate.

the authority issue that has been exposed in court proceedings, this is not constitutional authority. it is not biblical authority. it is not written in the 10 commandments. it is statutory authority! which means congress has the ability to fix it. and henry waxman came close in 2010 and all that we have been consistently saying is, let congress do his job. they should create a new title, for broadband. they can impose and by the way, chris, we are fine with specific rules, defined rules, with fcc jurisdiction. no problem with that. and i think there is a consensus among most reasonable legislators, among the industry that it is time to put these rules in place and move on.

and when you are talking, you said that this is beyond the point where it is about the rules itself, it is about and he said, some people say it is about law. i don't think it is about law. i think he said there were two things. i'm not sure you got to the second thing. i would say what this has become is all about politics. this is all political game of football right now. that is why nothing is happening. >> okay now chris, i will give you a chance to come back in a moment. i want to stick with david and then after david, kathleen can add to this issue like. i read, i'm just going to quote - from communication is daily. i know one of their esteemed reporters is here if i get it wrong he will look it up.

but i know i have this right. you just recently i think within the past week, and i forget where it was. maybe it was the media institute. they reported quote - cohen also sought net neutrality legislation to end the game a regulatory ping-pong indicating his company might be open to no paid prioritization as long as they could do specialized services. a spokeswoman noted he was not making any formal proposals. end quote. here is my question. i think it is clear that the prong of net neutrality is more of a sticking point than any other is you know -- this question of paid prioritization. at least that is my, what i believe.

maybe you can clarify for us, and maybe your spokeswoman is not here to add to this. what would forward this comcast you know because ultimately, people have to put their cards on the table here. what is your bottom line and what do you mean? is explain to the audience, what your position is on paid prioritization and what, whether specialized services might help you resolve that and if so, how? >> happy to do that. it is in a proposal. it is not up to me or kathy to make a proposal and quite frankly, in the world of politics, and more than any proposal i make is dead on arrival. because i am making the proposal. but it is part of my point that if rational people would sit down and talk about this, it

can even resolve what has become one third rail around bipartisan, net neutrality legislation which is so-called paid prioritization. and so what i said, we've had a lot of discussions within the industry. we have had discussions with tech companies. we had discussions with cisco of the world. how about if we agree to a prohibition on paid prioritization and we have a limited exception created in some way for this concept of specialized services which i think was first defined in julius jankowski 2010 order and inform of which was in tom wheeler is 2015 order. there is a recognition that something might come along that is not anticompetitive, it is proconsumer, is a specialized

service available, not to every user of the internet. that would be in consumer interest and in the public interest. and so, what i said actually the aca conference was that ed is an example of how i truly believe that if people would sit down and talk about this and stop playing politics and stop engaging in political rhetoric and saying what are the issues where we agree? and where are the issues that we do not agree? you can get to agreement even on something as contentious as paid prioritization. and i believe that that is the case. it just requires legislators sitting on the table and having a conversation about it. i would note for the record that greg walden draft net neutrality legislation which he has floated and has yet to have

any democrat willing to sit down with him and discuss it, contains an out and out prohibition on privatization but not with any specialized services exception. that legislative language is simply prohibits paid prioritization. that is my evidence. but there is a willingness to talk about this if reasonable legislators would sit down at the table and say, what do we need to be able to reach a consensus on legislation? >> actually sounds like news. some of us. thank you for that. what i want to do is ask kathy if she would like to respond at this point. and then jeff, will come back to chris and then as we go along we will speeded up, speed of the answers little to make sure that we get in to a couple of areas other than that. >> we have been clear in our discussions with stakeholders and more importantly without customers exactly what we will

do or not do and what we would support or not support in legislation when it comes to paid prioritization. if you guard to the verizon.com website you'll see on broadband commitments that spell out quickly our committed openness and what we said we will or won't do in the constipated carbonization. we don't use that term in our commitments because it is not a term that shockingly is outside of dc. most people don't have any idea what it means. they know what they are concerned about. they know they worried about the fast and slow lanes. we've been clear from the beginning what is important to the consumers and we committed to them what we will and will not do. i think that can carry over will have discussions about legislation that david points out congress comes up with language, not companies. we are willing to be part of any debate over that kind of language that clearly will be probably part of what ever kind of legislative package eventually takes shape. and again, that is something we have been open about years and we will be part of that debate. >> okay now i go to jeff.

then back to chris for his response. >> paid prioritization is for prioritization in general is one of the most misunderstood issues out there. i wish the press would stop writing this. the internet has no lanes. do not exist. it either goes or doesn't go. it moves at the speed of electrons or the speed of light. and when there is congestion, you either drop packets randomly we drop them intelligently by using some sort of prioritization scheme. i would say there are a lot of benefits to intelligently deciding what traffic has better quality of service than other things. i will give you two examples. one of which is crucial and one of which is mundane but very important. the first is i guarantee that all of the people who get paid per decision are hugely in favor of paid prioritization the minute we start having remote surgery occurring across

electronic networks. you want those packets to be prioritized. wanted to get through and you want everything to work right. there is a benefit to doing that. it is not an inherently bad thing it is good technology. the second example i will give is one that would limit all the time. my boss loves video now and always wants video. whether i'm sitting in the office or not. or face time. sometimes, it comes through beautifully. sometimes it doesn't come through beautifully. sometimes i think in the video off before we lose the connection. that is the kind of experience where you have real time live communication with audio and video going on where and quality of service can make a difference if the service is good or not. it is valuable to have an incentive for the people on the interim structure to create the capability to make a better experience for consumers. now, the people who benefit from that should pay for it.

they should pay for it and they will incentive the investment in the network of the only issue we have to worry about is whether it is used for competitive purposes. and so rather than banning the technology, because that is what a ban of this is. we should talk about whether the technology is being used for good or for bad. and if it is being used anti-competitively we can write rules or we can use the existing law or both to address those situations. but there are a lot of benefits that can come from the use of prioritization quality of service technology. i think that it would be a real estate for our country to walk away from that. because the rest of the world is not walking away from it. >> okay, chris. take a couple of minutes and respond if you like and then move on. >> this is the right topic to be discussing. because it is the thing of it i hear the most. push back on the hill when i

see legislation that we quite frankly cannot get behind. the walden bill was mentioned, which had banned on blocking and throttling but it took away any latitude for the fcc to do anything outside of those narrow rules. so when you do that there are all sorts of other protections that the previous panel had mentioned and some had mentioned that they will be of the business of protecting consumers on broadband so that is one concern. the current bill does not have a ban on prioritization. that has gotten attention this year and is congress. on the specifics of what prioritization is, and specialist services. it is important to remember that in restoring the 2015 rules through the cra or turning them into law and legislation which i think this group would prefer.

do it either way but if you do it, remember 2015 rules had an allowance for reasonable network management which is just what jeff was describing. it is really for a network to say that things in real time need to be managed properly by the isp. and that was -- if you're using face time or some sort of video real-time chat, the network can allow that. but the rules did not allow for is to send a specific surface. perhaps one that is not owned by the isp. were get degraded or slowed down or i think the distinction that you just made was right. urbanization is not fast and slow lanes it is one. and i use this metaphorically. i understand that you're talking of the architecture of the internet but we use the term lanes average people understand we are talking about prioritization what it is and putting traffic in a land is a

simple way of doing it. you can prioritize by not having a data count against -- or other forms of usage based process. and the criticism led to comcast changing their policy. because there was a threat of enforcement from the fcc. so the situation we are in right now we don't have rules is really a predicament and we need to restore those who have this allowance that i think jeff was describing where isp's commissions network management decisions. but when it comes out to harmful discrimination, you have the latitude to make specific rules to deal with those as business practices developed and change. >> okay, thanks. chris, i will stick with you to start this next discussion. i want to talk about privacy

regulation and that is what we might call part of this. again will check and focused gaze fairly tightly. some have maintained that the commissions december 2017 order leaves isp's subscribers are protected with regard to privacy protections because the ftc cannot adequately do the job and the fcc is not protecting the privacy. i think that you and your colleagues have been part of that persuasion a bit. and now, just in the past week we have all this controversy about facebook. we learn more about the practices and how they do or don't protect data. and this is part of the

equation. fairly briefly just tell us what you're thinking now in terms of protecting data, either isp subscribers or also you know, facebook users and google users and how that job should be done. and that will go down the -- >> we were in favor of when the 2015 goals will created the fact that they need to create specific rules appropriate for isp to protect privacy. and what that left us with as and the rhetoric that we saw during that fight to repeal those rules was that folks wanted to have an even playing field. we have that now and when you look at what's happening on facebook that is dangerous. because when you have self-regulatory scheme which is

how the ftc works, where they have very little, real enough power to create rules on privacy but they can enforce after the fact when there has been something violated against a specific privacy principles that accompany has laid out for itself. when a company like facebook we can also see this with a isp. there focused on innovation. we also think about the unintended consequences that come with development of the technology. so take a social network for example. senator moran described a listing on facebook and like i said is the dark underbelly of social networks because they have responsibility played in the network and understand how you manage the data and how you collect the data if you collect the data and whose data you're collecting and who has access. by running a social network you have responsibility to protect

that. and we have seen that not protected in this case with facebook. the same goes for isp's. they run a different business. they are not in the business of social network there in the business of communication networks. so what are the expectations for privacy for communications networks that should be with proactive rules? that is what we saw with the fcc and i think we want to see that in both instances with all layers of the internet. >> okay i will give kathy and then david a chance to touch on this issue then i will ask jeff an entirely different question. >> i think it's important, while support that federal framework for privacy regulation that applies across the board and to all companies that compete against each other equally. having sectors specific regulation. if there's anything the past month or past year shows us that it doesn't make any sense we need federal legislation

that also sets a uniform policy across the country. one of the thing missing is different states in different localities putting regulations in place that are not the same across the country that just confuse consumers and end up being focusing on one sector rather than another. we would support that i think now with revelations that have come to light, we probably seem more likely some sort of legislative effort at least a method consumers, that would be a good thing. >> david? >> i'm going to be short and said i agree with kathy. >> can i write that down? >> that is a resurrection. not being sarcastic but welcome to the crowd, we have been here for two or three years. in saying that we should have a uniform privacy regime that applies the entire internet. and you cannot do that through the fcc or the ftc. you've got to do with their legislation and there may be an

opportunity here and that is how you look at the facebook situation. to create some momentum around legislation that protects consumers interest in the internet and net neutrality, privacy, data security and maybe an opportunity since i do think the primary problem here is political, to bring democrats and republicans together. each of who may have their own interest in this broader space to create a significant piece of legislation to protect consumer rights on the internet. >> just to be clear, i think we talked about uniform protections, i think we will comprehensive protections. in some instances, certain types of information perhaps. for certain sectors more sensitive than others. that is all we have sector specific regulations for privacy in healthcare and banking and traditionally in

communications networks.i think we want to respect the uniform needed to protect privacy but there's nothing wrong with doing it through different agencies and you're right, congress can do this they did before. they did in setting up this hub model at some level.and then and ftc that has brought jurisdiction but we couldn't have narrow authority or power. >> thank you. sometimes when i'm listening it reminds me of that basketball you know the shot rolling it look like it's going and rolls around again and then it might pop out. okay i want to switch gears for a minute and maybe third jeff a curveball. i think it is important. there is a lot of discussion now going on about the administrations trade policies and tariff policies.

as you know from the introduction of jeff earlier, is global responsibilities, cisco is one of our nations technology leaders. if you have just a minute or two or take just a minute or two, if you have a reaction to any of this, i am sure we would like to hear it. >> this is a tougher question in the privacy question may be. >> that's why i asked it. >> i think, you know, we are very committed to free trade and committed to open markets. it is a two-way street. you have to have all countries and everybody working together in a global trading system that creates a level playing field both for competitors but also across the country and there are often challenges many of them have been identified by the administration in some of

the issues in section 301 report. i think the area that i have the greatest concern is the use of blunt force weapons to try to deal with this problem. tariffs are very crude ways of dealing with problems in the international trading system that need to be addressed and will often tend to penalize people who are not at fault for the problems that are there. and consumers is at the end of the day tariffs are taxes and it gets passed on to consumers. and they don't actually sell the specific problems that they're trying to adjust going forward here. and so i think, i would suggest that a stronger way of dealing with these issues is trying to work directly with the areas that are relevant concern. whether we have intellectual

property laws, whether companies are being pressured or forced into doing things that don't want to do in order to gain market access and places that they should have market access. i think we need a more nuanced approach heading towards a goal of creating open markets and level playing field rather than managing markets by tariffs or by market access agreement for we have tried the many times in the past. famously with lotto that didn't work particularly well and i do not think it will work particularly well in this instance. those would be my thoughts. we have yet to see the full implications of these decisions will be.>> thank you. i want to end up with this question to the panel because i said earlier, after david's remarks, it is not all about net neutrality. the theme of the conference.

it is enacting all of america. i am going to just ask you about the fcc lifeline proposals. some of you in the room no maybe many of you, i have said this earlier. we are proud premarket advocates. we think we are consistent. and i have always actually been a longtime advocate myself of a lifeline program that is effective and works. of course we don't want abuse but to me, that has been, it is a safety net program. if done properly, it is important in achieving the goal of connecting all americans. in this case, low income persons. so the commission has

proposals. i've commented question them but specifically with regard to the lifeline proposals and whether the requirement that the only facility based providers and participate and receive the support. maybe kathy and chris would like to be the most likely candidates. >> will participate in the proceeding. i think our focus has always been on the national database and making sure that it is up and running. it was really important for and a lot of reasons. not only help eliminate some of the ways but made it streamlined and made it easy to participate. that is what we have been focusing on with our engagement of the commission. similar to it the doctors and before. >> okay chris, you're going to get the last word here. >> on my plan i also agree with

doctor lee. it is important that we do not let the pressure port -- to lead to false decisions that limit a program that is essential safety net. i think like you said randy. where it leads to the lifeline program. it will be hurtful to the folks that need it. for it leads to dialing back the availability of companies that may offer service or even where it needs to not move into a path or you can have standalone broadband. funded by the lifeline program to match the direction that the industry is going with this convergence. i think it is something that we be concerned about that you can do that and you can look at ways -- i agree with what kathy said. >> hold your applause, if you will for just a moment. i will tell you what will

happen next. as soon as this panel is dismissed here, we have the next speaker who i am pleased to introduce in just a moment. but after the administrator speaks, then as any of you know that wall over there is going to magically open up. we have got a really nice buffet there, i'm trying to explain to kathy and my wife and myself that this is not really a wedding. but it doesn't have to be done like that but it is an nice buffet. if he did not register and you shut up anyway, maybe as a courtesy to move to the end of the line. [laughter] and make sure there's enough food for everyone. now, i want you to join me in

thanking this panel, it was great. we appreciate it. [applause] stay in your seats. we will have one more speaker before lunch. [inaudible conversations] >> [inaudible conversations]

[inaudible conversations] >> great! good to see you. okay. i am going to ask everyone to take their seats again and we're going to try and stay on schedule. we start our lunch. if everyone will take their seats i would appreciate it. then as you know of course, during the lunch session, we got the conversation with

commissioners car and o'reilly, the fcc commissioners. i know that will be an exciting and interesting educational part of the program. it is now my pleasure to introduce to you, -- i hope i am pronouncing your name right. she is administrator of the office of information and regulatory affairs. that is the omb office focused on regulatory review. i hope the administrator does not mind me saying this but traditionally that position has been referred to also as the regular administration regulatory -- because of what

has within the administration in terms of overseeing regulation. the administrator has a distinguished background on the faculty of george mason university law school. and really, as one of the leading scholars in administrative law. i will let you get the rest of her bio from the program but i will say this. as many of you know, i have been involved in the administrative area myself. now for many decades and self i am familiar with the work of naomi and what she has done and how she has contributed to the

scholarship. it is exciting to have you here today to talk about the administrations regulatory policy. thank you. [applause] >> thank you so much for that nice introduction and to a free state foundation for allowing me to join you for the conference. i understand actually that i now and the only thing between you and oneself i will try not to be too long-winded about this. in my remarks about telecommunications, i wanted to take a step back from some of the more specific to focus more generally on regulatory reform and how some of the efforts of the administration are connected to economic growth and the rule of law and

individual liberty. the first year of the administration. a little more than a unit agencies have really been working hard to identify problems with existing regulatory framework and they've eliminated or streamlined regulatory burdens that are duplicative or outdated. or just simply ineffective. a little more than a year ago president trump issued executive orders which really ushered in a shift in the regulatory landscape by calling for the reduction of two regulations for each new one and a zero regulatory for agencies. that executive order and a number of others really focused the agency on the drag of accumulative regulations. in previous administrations with the democratic or republican racing regulatory burden continue to increase. we have shifted that all around. just after the end of the fiscal year last year we eliminated 22 regulatory actions for each new one. in accordance my offices even

frankly quite conservative tactless is received over $8 billion in regulatory costs. this coming year agencies are working on even more far-reaching reforms and committed to reducing regulatory cost even further. from our perspective we consider these reforms to be very important in promoting economic growth and prosperity. things i know very important to this organization. we believe that lifting excessive government regulation can stimulate the economy and in the past few months i think losing a lot of economists and commentators even "the new york times" to the point where there's a length between economic growth and a slowdown regulation. i think it is in part because administrations really investing in regulatory policy that looks first department market solutions and it wants to lead individuals, farmers, business is as free as possible to work hard to innovate and create the technology of the

future. one of the most important practical effects i think of our -- a change in the environment. a frequently from businesses and individuals they no longer worried about arbitrary or substantial new costly regulations. ensuing of the individuals and companies can proceed with confidence that we are not going to spring on new regulatory requirements that will impede their growth. this is in the area of emerging technology and other areas where the success of the ventures will depend at least in part, on a regulatory system that is not in the way of progress. we start with the basic idea that the government should be picking winners and losers through regulation. we do not want to regulate in a way that raises technological development stifles innovation

through government prescription.this year we are focused on deeper cost-cutting reform efforts. particularly around the topic of emerging technology. was recently in florida for the space capsule a number of people spoke about the regulatory burdens that are impeding the development of space exploration. similarly at this conference many are working to improve productivity and invest in future of telecommunications. with respect to telecommunications and regulations in particular in a few different ways, we reviewed the regulatory actions which is in the commerce department then the utility service which is then in the sda, department of agriculture. we don't formally review rules from the fcc because it is an independent agency. but we do work with the fcc in a number of ways. for example regulatory actions we must review and approve

their information collections. under the paperwork reduction act one of the things it does is review all of the forms that agencies put out on the public so we work with agencies to make sure that they're minimizing the reporting and disclosure requirements on the public. i think it's also interesting that the chairman was a law school classmate of mine is working on creating this office of economic analysis. we anticipate that the office will feel like a long-standing economic principle used in regulatory review. we want to make sure that part of the process, the agencies regulate only if there's an actual problem. as part of good regulatory practices we want agencies to identify and consider alternative regulatory approaches and analyze the cost and benefits of those

alternatives. we also work with many agencies to work make sure they have a robust and fair analysis of cost and benefits of the rules. taking into account the public comments and stakeholder input. i think this will be really important for the fcc to improve the economic analysis of the regulatory process. and one of the things we do with many of the agencies independent and executive branches, is serve as a resource or advancing the market-based regulatory reform. i just want to mention as an administration we are focused on pulling back regulatory burdens but we really are trying to do this in a very responsible and beneficial way. we are not in the business of dismantling important health and safety regulations and we are proceeding with deregulation carefully. we apply the same cost-benefit standards to regulatory and

deregulatory actions. which means in essence that the deregulatory action, the benefits have to outweigh the cost. we are only deregulating where that result is to the public. also it's interesting sometimes people are said to me that isn't this deregulation just about helping these businesses? i think from my perspective often times is regulatory frameworks are put in place by business or powerful interest groups and they in turn create barriers to entry for smaller businesses. they limit competition and of course as a result they raised substantially the cost of services for all of us. so we really focused on lifting burdens that are no longer working. and let me say little bit of about why i think some of these reforms also so important. to the rule of law. we are very concerned that regulatory policy in general is following clear legal

principles which allows the 11 the public of notice of their regulatory obligation and provide a clear and stable framework for planning. i think we do this in a few different ways. one of the first questions we ask an agency working to regulate or really deregulate is to make sure that what they're doing is consistent with law. and so we work with agencies to make sure that they are interpreting statutes to mean what they say. and we want to respect the lawmaking power of congress by not expanding the authority of the executive branch. many of the statutes are very open ended. but we want to make sure that agencies are not acting so they have a blank check from congress to make law. even when an agency has legal authority, one of the things we are focused on a great deal is the fair notice and due process. something we have been working on with the white house counsel

office. once erasure agencies are not imposing new requirements and we are trying to really work to change the regulatory culture so that when an agency issues guidance and fact and they are not using a backdoor to impose new regulatory requirements, without the type of administrative process and accountability that is necessary for a legitimate regulatory system. many agencies have taken and are working on an elaborate project to identify and catalog all of the guidance documents. it is much harder than it even sounds. some agency officials have said we don't even have any idea what guidance we have or how many dennis documents we have. we don't know where they all are. so it seems like for public notice, it is a good idea at least the public knows what guidance documents are still being applied to their respective businesses. i also think from my

perspective there are structural constitutional law, regulatory reform also promotes constitutional government. i think the centralized review process that a wire imposes provide for greater accountability for regulatory policies that in turn promote democratic values. we ensure that agencies are promoting presidential priorities and regulatory policies as consistent methods and emphasis across the government. of course, in this particular administration, one of our primary focus is has been on reducing the overall regulatory burden. that is an initiative that we want to work with all the agencies on. and finally, the connection region regulatory reform and individual. i think reform economic growth, i think it promotes rule of law values. but perhaps most important listing many of these unnecessary burdens results in greater individual --

government regulation sometimes can serve important goals. but congress has already ensure that we live in a highly regulated society. we want to make sure that when the government is now acting that it serves a purpose we do not want regulation to be a solution in search of a problem. there are so many regulations that are duplicative or outdated. and please keep pile on peers are getting the government out of the way and lifting regulatory burden restores more freedom to individuals and families and businesses. we believe the more lawful fair and limited regulatory system allows the economy to grow and innovation to flourish. helps all americans by trusting them to make decisions that will result in greater prosperity and happiness and less alliance on the government. telecommunications and elsewhere, we are plummeting regulatory policy for the american people based in freedom and free market. thank you very much for your attention.

[applause] >> thank you so much naomi. that was terrific and you know, in years past, we often had someone here to talk more generally about regulatory policy in addition to the telecom focus. even some of your predecessors in your position. so it is wonderful to have you here. we have time for just maybe one or two questions before we break for lunch. and we administrative graciously agreed but i will ask you this. i think probably this can be quick. when we were putting together your bio and by the way, i should have mentioned that

naomi -- could have gone on but i confess that one got to the senate that said a former -- i had one of the proofreaders say it must be wrong because you never heard of that and you just mentioned that. i think i have an idea about what that might mean but maybe, and just tell us, why that is called structural constitutional law? >> sure. i guess to distinguish it from some of the other constitutional law courts the structural constitutional, the structure of the constitution relates to thinking about how to have the structure of the constitution. set forth the powers of the three branches of the government. we focus on article 1, legislative power, executive powers and of course, article 3

the judicial power and how they interact with each other. it is something i think i have been very interested in.i worked in all three branches of government. i think one of the most important things is to make sure that there is balance between the three branches and they are all exercising their respective powers but within their boundaries. >> right. okay. i'm going to ask whether there are any questions for the administrator? i have a microphone. we have microphones here. in the audience. it's we have any questions? it's i'm going to ask one more than. and we will break up. you initially mentioned the two-for-one effort that president trump announced very early on. and i remember it wasn't too long ago, a couple of months ago i think there was the white

house ceremony in which there were some recounting of what it can accomplish. ...

[inaudible] one of the things the idea of slowing down new regulatory burdens and to think of how they are held back and has worked on how this regulatory burden or regulations and all the informatio