FCC Auction Authority, BEAD Oversight Likely Priorities When Congress Resumes

ASPEN, Colo. -- House and Senate priorities when they're back in session in September include reauthorizing the FCC's spectrum auction authority, agency oversight and filling FCC and FTC commissioner openings, legislative aides said Monday at Technology Policy Institute's Aspen Forum. Panels and speakers also discussed the inevitability of further media consolidation and social media's effect on political polarization. UScellular CEO Laurent Therivel urged revisiting the decision to allocate the 6 GHz band for unlicensed use. The prospects of AI regulation also were discussed (see 2308210029).

Kate O’Connor, House Communications and Technology Subcommittee Republican chief counsel, said FCC spectrum auction authority is a particular priority for House Commerce Chair Cathy McMorris Rogers, R-Wash., due to the 2023 World Radiocommunication Conference (WRC-23). O'Connor said permitting reform such as the American Broadband Deployment Act (HR-3557) is also "super important to get done right now" given the pending broadband, equity, access and deployment (BEAD) program spending. Duncan Rankin, Senate Commerce Committee Republican senior adviser, said more comprehensive federal privacy legislation is a priority, as well as oversight of federal telecom program spending such as BEAD and ensuring efficient distribution of funds. He said BEAD's preference for fiber over satellite broadband is a barrier needing to be removed. Edgar Rivas, senior policy adviser to Sen. John Hickenlooper, said the Colorado Democrat's priorities include broadband program supply chain issues, such as availability of fiber and antennas. He said the rip and replace program shortfall is a particular concern for Colorado. Expect hearings in early September by the Hickenlooper-chaired Senate Consumer Protection, Product Safety and Data Security Subcommittee about AI consumer transparency issues, Rivas said. Ensuring both the FTC and FCC have full panels of commissioners should be a congressional priority in September, said Rivas.

Pointing to China having far more 5G base stations than the U.S. and clearing far more licensed midband spectrum for wireless use, Therivel said the U.S. is falling far behind that country in wireless capacity. That could mean the economic benefits of 5G and 6G will head to China the way the U.S. and Japan enjoyed the economic benefits of LTE, he said.

The 6 GHz band's unlicensed assignment "would be extremely difficult to dial ... back," Therivel acknowledged. He said use of the 12 GHz band for terrestrial wireless "could help" but is nowhere near as efficient as 6 GHz. The 7 GHz band could substitute for 6 GHz but doesn't have the global harmonization benefit that 6 GHz does, Therivel said. An infrastructure and spectrum race with China has to emphasize investment, and unlicensed spectrum doesn't do that, he said.

Today's media giants can't compete against the deep pockets of FAANG (Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix and Google) companies, which are increasingly looking at content as a way to boost user engagement, said Laura Martin, Needham & Co. analyst. That competition will drive even further consolidation among the media companies, she said. Also driving that M&A is that those media giants today "are uninvestable" because of declines in their revenue, she said. The way they stay attractive to investors is through combinations that boost revenue and are followed by aggressive cost-cutting, Martin said, citing Discovery's buy of Warner Brothers as an example.

Every streaming company is losing money, and Wall Street didn’t care as long as revenue was growing, Martin said. Now that interest rates are rising, investors are looking for a return on capital, and the result is that media stock prices are down significantly, she said. Disney will likely offer equity stakes in ESPN to sports leagues like the NBA since the programmer will be hard-pressed to outbid companies like Apple or Amazon for sports rights, Martin said.

Cable is losing subscribers because it's a fat, expensive bundle when viewers are interested in creating their own bundles and there's sizable competition in content, said Jean Barnard, Kennedy Capital Management director-research and portfolio management. She said must-carry rules should be done away with, “and let’s see how that goes.”

The belief that social media is the key driver of increased political polarization in the U.S. appears to be overstated, but there’s some evidence its impact on mental health and well-being is understated, said Matthew Gentzkow, Stanford University economics professor. Polarization as measured in various ways has increased in the U.S., but that growth started before social media, he said. There's more polarization among older Americans, who generally have been lesser users of social media, he said. Polarization is also less pronounced in other Western nations, he said. And studies involving changes to people’s feeds show zero effects on political polarization, he said. There's thinner evidence about the effects of social media on personal well-being and mental health, he said. A documented growing mental health crisis starting in the early 2010s among adolescents is circumstantial evidence that should at least generate more attention, he said. Studies showed people who deactivate from social media report significant improvements to well-being and mental health. Gentzkow said there's a strong rationale for policy intervention regarding youths. There's a history of regulating access and content by age, and a similar framework applied to juveniles’ social media use might have mitigated some of these harms, he said.

Aspen Forum Notebook

In advance of WRC-23, the U.S. has "communicated very clearly" to Europe its positions on issues where it has them, said Jennifer Bachus, State principal deputy assistant secretary-Bureau of Cyberspace and Digital Policy. She said the U.S. is coordinating more closely, though, with the Inter-American Telecommunication Commission (CITEL) because it's through CITEL that proposals are put forward. But the U.S. is lobbying globally in preparation for WRC-23, she said; "It's a ground game. Every vote matters."

Asked about whether the age of lawmakers is a hurdle when crafting tech policy, Senate Commerce's Rankin said it is to a limited extent. "The Senate is a geriatrics club," but there's also fear-mongering among younger lawmakers about novel technology destroying jobs, he said. Jeff Lopez, senior policy adviser to Senate Communications Chairman Ben Ray Lujan, D-N.M., said Congress is well situated to address tech policy since tech has broad societal effects. Rankin also was highly critical of the FTC under Chair Lina Khan, calling it "a nightmare hellscape" with the chair having "weaponized" the agency.