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Wireless and Drone Execs Praised President Trump as He Pledged To Cut Down Regulations (recode.net)

U.S. President Donald Trump offered support for emerging technologies including unmanned aerial vehicles and next-generation wireless networks in a meeting on Thursday with the chiefs of AT&T and General Electric and other business leaders. From a report: For the likes of AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson, the public audience with Trump offered an opportunity to continue nudging the U.S. government -- including in a scheduled, private session with the leader of the Federal Communications Commission earlier Thursday -- to cut back on restrictions that make it difficult for AT&T and other telecom giants to grow their footprint and deploy the new technologies, such as 5G wireless. Speaking with Recode later Thursday, Marcelo Claure, the chief executive of Sprint, said that he and others in his industry had emphasized to Trump that the government must help them deploy new tools like small cells -- essentially, mini cell towers that improve wireless connectivity. Trump, for his part, promised Thursday to cut down on "too many years of excessive government regulation" to enable innovators and investments to offer new cutting-edge tools in health care, science, medicine and communication. "We have had regulation that's been so bad, so out of line that it's really hurt our country," he said.

3 of 94 comments (clear)

  1. Will the execs do hardtime when a drone takes down by Joe_Dragon · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Will the execs do hard time when a drone takes down a plane

  2. Slimebags by Tablizer · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Whenever I talk to a Republican who gets all frothy about regulations, I ask for specific examples. The fairly rare times I actually get specific answers, it quite often turns out the regulation is on the books because some slimebag company abused their freedom.

    They are typically related to pollution, safety, misleading consumers, and/or anti-competitive behavior to keep smaller competitors out of the market. There are indeed some bad regulations (or in need of tuning), but most are there for a legitimate reason. They were NOT invented out of the blue by some power-hungry hippie socialist.

    And some of the regulations were actually lobbied into place by big co's who want to keep smaller players out of the market. This is especially common on the state and local level. Look at Tesla's trouble in selling cars because some states require licensed physical dealerships. The Big 3 car co's got those in place to keep out custom and foreign car co's.

  3. Re:Will the execs do hardtime when a drone takes d by guises · · Score: 3, Interesting

    This is a misrepresentation of what the story and parent are saying. The question is: when people profit by lobbying to reduce safety regulations, should they be held liable when someone dies in an accident which those regulations existed to prevent?

    The fact that these people manufacture the product is only relevant insofar as they profit from the removal of these regulations.