Speech

I met with small and rural broadband providers that told me that the Commission’s paperwork and reporting obligations alone now consume 23 weeks of work per year or five months of full-time labor. I heard from a small wireless provider that they have to take one of the few people they employ off of a customer service job or marketing effort and sit them in a room to complete FCC paperwork. These small businesses are not corporate behemoths. They do not have, and simply cannot afford, an army of regulatory lawyers.

More can be done to address the Homework Gap. Carriers across the country are pitching in by making available low-cost broadband service. Libraries everywhere from Maine to Missouri are loaning out wireless hotspots—and letting students borrow connectivity for schoolwork. Rural school districts are putting Wi-Fi on buses and turning ride time into connected time for homework. Communities are mapping out where free online access is available for student use. These efforts deserve applause. More importantly, they deserve expansion.

Nearly one year ago, during the Broadband Deployment Advisory Committee’s (BDAC) inaugural meeting, I urged this Committee to consider the needs and the capacity of low-income communities as you develop policy recommendations. I also reminded the Committee that all municipalities, areas, and communities are not created equal. It was thus my hope that the BDAC’s consensus-based approach would incorporate the concerns expressed by local government representatives of this Committee.

Today happens to be the one-year anniversary of the President appointing me the Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission. That marker meshes well with today’s proceedings, for a couple of reasons. First, the Broadband Deployment Advisory Committee’s (BDAC) work is critical to my top policy priority as FCC Chairman—closing the digital divide. A second reason why this one-year anniversary means something is that the BDAC reflects a core tenet of my policymaking approach: that the decisions we make inside this building must reflect input and fresh ideas from outside these walls.

By 2020, North Carolina can claim the title of the state with the most gigabit communities. Thanks to the work of the North Carolina Next Generation Network (NC NGN) project, itself an outgrowth of the Gig.U project, as well as other efforts, competitive gigabit networks are being built out by Google, AT&T, in a number of its major cities including Raleigh, Durham, Chapel Hill, Charlotte, Greensboro, and Winston-Salem, as well as a number of its smaller communities, such as Carrboro, Pembroke and Holly Springs. But such deployments are not reaching everywhere in the state.

It is time for the Federal Communications Commission to commit to hearings and a report making clear what worked, what didn’t and what steps we can take to improve our communications vulnerabilities in the wake of Hurricanes Maria, Harvey, and Irma. After all, there’s precedent for this approach. It’s exactly what was done in the wake of Hurricane Katrina and Superstorm Sandy. I know we learned from those events and as a result our communications systems are stronger and more resilient. I bet, there are lessons, too, to be learned here.

In recent weeks, we’ve seen broadcasters play a critical role in helping keep the American people safe. The purpose of today’s forum is to make sure broadcasters are best positioned to continue meeting this awesome responsibility. For my part, I’d like to briefly highlight some of the relevant issues we’re working on at the FCC. Those issues include (1) resiliency; (2) alerting; and (3) Next Generation TV. 

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.

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.