Agenda

We are seeing a shift into a digital world. Internet access is increasingly becoming a requirement to participate in education, health care and the workforce. More and more, national companies are embracing the idea of virtual reality, and on the city level, we’re seeing growth in the use of social media and digital engagement more than ever before. We even consume our news mostly online. And, while this is an exciting and fast-paced shift, we MUST make sure that we are not leaving people behind as we grow.

In January, I was in Raleigh, North Carolina, where we’re investing $3 billion to connect the entire state for affordable high-speed Internet to end—by the end of the decade.  And we’re doing it in all 50 states. It’s critical for children to be able to do their homework, small businesses to be able to sell their products, folks to have access to telemedicine when they’re driving—without driving to see their doctors if they live in the countryside.

President Biden is fighting to lower costs for American families and has made lowering costs his top domestic priority.

Spectrum is a hot topic in Washington these days, as lawmakers, lobbyists, regulators and others look for advantage ahead of the release of an implementation plan for the Biden administration's national spectrum strategy. The latest: A new bill from two top Republican Senators would require the government to reallocate at least 600MHz of midband spectrum for commercial use within three years.

Senators Ted Cruz (R-TX) and John Thune (R-SD) unveiled legislation to expand commercial access to mid-band spectrum. Ahead of the expiration of the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) spectrum auction authority in March 2022, Sens.