Speech

Emergency communications systems of all kinds shouldn’t be designed so that a single point of failure leads to a catastrophic result. Nothing and no one is perfect. Our emergency communications systems need to be designed to take account of these realities by having appropriate safeguards and redundancies.That’s why I’d like to briefly outline two areas in which the FCC wants to work with the NG911 Institute and others in the public safety community. The first involves best practices.

I rise today to talk about the truth, and its relationship to democracy. For without truth, and a principled fidelity to truth and to shared facts, our democracy will not last. 2017 was a year which saw the truth – objective, empirical, evidence-based truth -- more battered and abused than any other in the history of our country, at the hands of the most powerful figure in our government. It was a year which saw the White House enshrine “alternative facts” into the American lexicon, as justification for what used to be known simply as good old-fashioned falsehoods.

Let me lay out some of the priorities that I'll be pursuing over the next year at NTIA. For those of you who know me, you know that spectrum policy is a passion of mine, so it's no surprise that it will be a major focus this year. The next generation of wireless connectivity is poised to unlock fantastic innovations and life-changing technologies, and America has been leading the way when it comes to developing 5G. We must do everything we can this year and beyond to accelerate America's 5G leadership.

Today I want to discuss Federal Communications Commission Chairman Pai’s belief that we are on the cusp of a new era of partnership between the FCC and rural electric cooperatives. Specifically: our hope that electric coops will become a bigger part of closing the digital divide and delivering online opportunity to rural Americans who have been bypassed by the broadband revolution. And how the FCC can work with you all to bring about this change. 

This is an exciting time to lead NTIA, which plays a vital role in many important areas of telecommunications, including managing federal spectrum use, promoting investments in broadband infrastructure, and developing policies that improve cybersecurity, Internet governance and more. There is much to celebrate when it comes to the Internet, but there are real problems we need to tackle. Many Americans, especially in rural areas, still can't access broadband at the speeds needed to meaningfully participate in the modern economy.

Thank you to the International Institute of Communications (IIC) for the opportunity to be here for the last Telecommunications and Media Forum of the year.

For the past year, we have been very active as we modernize our rules and remove burdensome regulations that deter innovation and investment. Our goal is simple: to extend what I call “digital opportunity” to every American. In my view, every American who wants high-speed Internet access should be able to get it. 

Two-thirds of Americans over 65 use the Internet. Half have a home broadband connection. And two-fifths have a smartphone. These numbers reflect progress. But they also reflect a connectivity gap. Compared to the overall population, older adults’ Internet usage is 23 percentage points lower, home subscriptions are 22 points lower, and smartphone adoption is 35 points lower. Since I became Chairman, we’ve been focused on updating our rules to ensure that high-speed infrastructure is built and maintained everywhere.

Is social media a net benefit to American society? Given the increasingly important role that social media plays in our daily lives, this is a question that all of us, including groups like the Media Institute, need to grapple with. Now, I will tell you up front that I don’t have an answer. And I won’t touch on particular policy issues, like social media’s role in elections. What I have in mind is something broader. With that, let me suggest two trends that I believe have lowered our discourse—and how social media has enabled each. First: Everything nowadays is political.

After the painful and demoralizing 2015 decision to insert government regulations into the middle of the greatest man-made invention of our time, I was never quite sure that this day would come. The Commission had no enforceable net neutrality rules prior to December 2010. That unregulated regime resulted in the creation of Google in 1998, Facebook in 2004, YouTube in 2005, and Twitter in 2006. There is also no concrete evidence of network or consumer harm.  

Reversing the 2015 [Title II] decision—this massive regulatory overreach—has my full support.