Pai: FCC Had to Break 'a Lot of Eggs' to Make Progress on 5G

Former FCC Chairman Ajit Pai said getting the U.S. on track on 5G required a willingness to rock the boat and overcome inertia. In an interview posted Monday with American Enterprise Institute's Shane Tews, Pai also defended his regime’s work opening the C band despite airline industry opposition. “It’s always easier for the chairman or chairwoman not to rock the boat, not to push a certain spectrum band because another agency or company will get upset,” Pai said. “I told my team from day one, I was determined to spend every last ounce of my political capital. I was going to make sure that the U.S. had a leading position in spectrum policy and wireless infrastructure,” he said. “We broke a lot of eggs -- no doubt about it.” Because of the FCC’s “boat-rocking, you have 5G deployed widely across the United States,” Pai said: “Phones are coming out that are 5G enabled. New services are coming out. New business models are emerging on the basis of 5G.” Pai joked that in the face of all the problems air travelers faced, the FAA decided to zero in on 5G, noting radar altimeters, the source of safety concerns, operate 200 MHz away from the C band. As the FCC explored opening the band, it invited input from NTIA. “We invited the FAA and the airline industry to also tell us if they think there’s going to be interference with these altimeters. We asked them to let us know, but they never did.” The FCC “addressed the issues, pressed onward, and held the auction,” he said: “If you want to beat China and all these other countries on 5G, then you’ve got to put the building blocks -- including spectrum -- in place.” Pai expressed some skepticism of the current federal spending programs on infrastructure. “The good side is that the amount of money that’s being allocated through these various programs you mentioned is substantial,” he said. “In my current role as an investor, it’s fundamentally changed the unit economics for serving some of these rural areas where otherwise you would never have a business case for building broadband.” Among the problems is trying to coordinate multiple federal programs among different federal programs, he said: “Let’s say the U.S. Department of Agriculture awarded a grant to some company to deploy in a particular area. Well, what if they haven’t deployed? What if they’ll never deploy? Should the Department of Commerce then come in and fund somebody else to do it? Making all these kids play in the sandbox, so to speak, is exceptionally complex.”