FCC Chairman Slams Trump Team's Proposal To Nationalize 5G (axios.com)

The Federal Communications Commission's Republican chairman on Monday opposed a plan under consideration by the Trump White House to build a 5G mobile network, nationalizing what has long been the role of private wireless carriers like AT&T and Verizon. From the report: "I oppose any proposal for the federal government to build and operate a nationwide 5G network," he said. The FCC's reaction doesn't bode well for the proposal the Trump administration is considering, first reported by Axios on Sunday night, since it's one of the main government agencies when it comes to wireless issues.

Comments

Killing Net Neutrality was fine....

[MikeDataLink]

because it filled their wallets. This takes money off the table. Whoops.

Re:Killing Net Neutrality was fine....

[jellomizer]

A government monopoly means that you have some say in what goes on in a democracy. Vs. a Corporate monopoly where your only action is to not purchase it, and being a monopoly you will not have competing products to choose from.

Re:Killing Net Neutrality was fine....

[ranton]

And you failed to answer the question, you brain-dead fool. All you did was throw up a strawman.

Considering his post was nearly identical to you, every bit of criticism you gave him also applies to your argument. If your only argument is that government shouldn't be trusted because it has done bad things, then it is no better than saying private companies shouldn't be trusted because they have done bad things. His implied point is that both private and public entities do bad things, so your argument is moot.

Most people agree that a competitive environment is best, a government monopoly is worse but sometimes necessary, and a corporate monopoly is the worst possible option. What many disagree on is what it takes to maintain a competitive environment and whether or not one can realistically exist for all industries.

A disagreement on this topic can be had without the type of inflammatory language you are using.

Re:Killing Net Neutrality was fine....

[rahvin112]

More importantly than anything it segregates the infrastructure from the service. A government run infrastructure would sell access to telecommunication companies to handle the calls. You'd have dozens of choices of telecom providers with different service offerings.

Government run infrastructure in natural monopolies is always the best solution. In fact government owned with yearly bidding on maintaining and running the system would be even better with all costs rolled into the access fee's charged to telecom providers. We'd have 100% national coverage and multiple providers in every area instead of the current system where rural people get the choice of verizon or verizon.

Re:Killing Net Neutrality was fine....

[HiThere]

The thing is, the transmission layer of the network, even a wireless network, is a natural monopoly. In such a case it does make sense to have the government running it...you aren't going to get much competition anyway. *Somebody's* going to be controlling it.

Compare the current situation with the original situation, where the phone company supplied the wires and the connection, and any group that wanted to could start up an ISP. Then there was real competition between the ISPs. Now? But competition at the physical level is impractical. So the physical layer should be handled by a "public utility". The problem is, I'd really like it to be isolated from government control.

Re:Killing Net Neutrality was fine....

[Anonymice]

Government run infrastructure in natural monopolies is always the best solution.

As a card carrying lefty, I wish that were the case. Unfortunately, all monopolies have a tendency to stagnate, and public services are no exception to that. The definitive answer has rarely been simply nationalising/privatising the service, the subsequent monopoly eventually leads us back to where we started.

Big organisations have a habit of falling into bureaucratic ruts that are resistant to change. Some form of competition is needed to pressure them to continue to innovate & improve efficiency.

In our modern capitalist economies, there seems to be a universal cycle:
1. Government creates public infrastructure X that works well & supplies for the population's needs at a reasonable cost;
2. After a number of years, the public infrastructure lacks sufficient improvement and/or bureaucracy becomes a huge drag with no incentive to streamline. Service improvements stagnate & administration costs spiral out of control;
3. The public become disillusioned with the public service & cry for competition;
4. The public infrastructure is privatised to incentivise competition;
5. Competition drives innovation & improved efficiencies;
6. The "winner" eventually becomes a monopoly, kills off competition through sheer market dominance, surpassing the need pressures to innovate, and uses its position in the market to gauge its customers;
7. The public become disillusioned with the high costs & poor service, & demand government intervention with the renationalisation of the service.

Rail, post, utilities, you name it. It's the same story, again & again.

It's a constant battle between monopolies' economies of scale versus the competitive pressure to constantly innovate.

Can't fault a man for sticking to his guns.

[RedK]

At least it's consistent with his usual positions of "Less governement".

Re:Can't fault a man for sticking to his guns.

[gtall]

Maybe. It is also consistent with his positions of being a tool of the telecoms. Or maybe he's holding out for a higher bid for his "services".

Re:Can't fault a man for sticking to his guns.

[jellomizer]

I am not sure why it is funny. But Trumps only policy is what seems to Trump up Trump. He isn't a conservative or liberal, he is Trump who just wants himself to look good. He will stick with the people who likes him and complements him, and will betray anyone who makes him seem less then he thinks he is.

This makes him easily manipulative. I have worked with personalities like this in the past, just as long as you weather the temper-tantrums, you can get the person to do whatever you want.

Re:Can't fault a man for sticking to his guns.

[Marillion]

Exactly. Pai has a deep ideological belief in free markets. I'd go so far as to say he has too much faith in free markets. I feel free markets are good when there's enough elasticity in the market for good old-fashioned supply and demand to function correctly. But the telecom industry has a natural tendency to be a monopoly due to the enormous physical plant required to prevent the supply side from reacting to the demand side. In the absence of strong regulatory action, the monopoly will ... what's the euphemism? ... maximize shareholder value.

Re:Can't fault a man for sticking to his guns.

[Solandri]

Less government, more free market is only helpful when there's competition in the free market. Back in the 3G days and before, there was competition (GSM/TDMA, CDMA, DAMPS). 4G saw all the carriers adopting LTE. That's a pretty good sign the technology has matured and competition has found the best solution. At that point, the best course of action is usually to turn it into a public utility. Build a single set of wires (or towers in this case), but don't run any service over them. Let multiple companies provide that service, paying for use of those wires/towers. That competition keeps prices low, as well as keeps a finger in the free market pie in case someone comes up with some new breakthrough.

Electricity is a good example. When it was first developed, nobody knew if AC or DC was better for long-distance transmission. Edison (DC) and Westinghouse/Tesla (AC) built competing electrical systems - entire cities were wired up with AC or DC electricity. Since the government didn't know which was better either, the smart thing for it to do was to stay out of it and not try to regulate it.* Both systems competed, and it soon became clear that AC was superior. Pretty soon all electrical systems were AC, and that's when the government stepped in and converted it into a utility. Your local power company built, owns, and maintains the wires. But in most jurisdictions you can purchase your power from any number of electricity providers. Those providers pay the owner of the wires a fixed rate, set by the local or state's public utilities commission.

* GSM is a good example of how to screw this up. The EU government regulated too quickly when it developed GSM and mandated it as the standard all EU phone companies had to adopt. GSM was based on TDMA - each phone took turns talking to the tower. That worked fine in low-bandwidth applications like voice, but once cellular data became the hot commodity, it was terrible. GSM wasted data bandwidth by allocating it to phones which didn't some or all of it. Fortunately the US didn't adopt GSM and let cell phone companies come up with their own systems. A few tried CDMA - each phone transmits simultaneously, and the tower tells them apart via orthogonal coding (kinda like writing on a sheet of paper, then turning it 90 degrees and writing on it some more - the letters are orthogonal enough that you can distinguish the vertical ones from the horizontal ones). With CDMA, each phone sees the transmissions of the other phones as noise, which raises the noise floor and reduces the signal to noise ratio, automatically dividing the available data bandwidth between all transmitting phones. It completely blew GSM out of the water. Enough so that within a year GSM threw in the towel and was amended to include wideband CDMA for data. That's why CDMA networks got 3G data about a year before GSM networks. That's why GSM phones could talk and use data at the same time - they had a TDMA radio for voice, and a second CDMA radio for data. CDMA phones only had a single radio for both voice and data.

So 5G is a good candidate for converting the cellular network into the utility model.

“He” is Ajit Pai

[93 Escort Wagon]

Just thought I’d mention it since the editors didn’t...

The FCC shouldn't have a position on this

[mysidia]

This just comes to show.... the FCC is in the Pockets of the corporate monopolies who are scared of potential competition.

The FCC's job is to be a neutral technical regulator for spectrum and consumer protection --- having a national 5G network would not adversly affect the FCC's ability to do their job, so why are they even commenting?

I can think of only one reason.... the commission is attempting to leverage the fallacy that they are experts in matters of commerce and infrastructure investment to push the administration in the direction of the political goals of their past and future employers: The largest cable companies and Telcos.

Re:The FCC shouldn't have a position on this

[danbert8]

Yep, I was against a national 5G network when it was suggested, but if Ajit says it's a bad idea, I'm all for it. Fuck that guy.

What could possibly go wrong?

[pablo_max]

I am sure that the government would never turn over all personal information without a warrant to the ... government.

Sounds like Lenin's wet dream. A conduct for for all information which the government has total control over. What could possibly go wrong?

Re:What could possibly go wrong?

[swb]

What fantasy world do you live in where cellular carriers aren't regularly and enthusiastically turning over data to the government?

Re:What could possibly go wrong?

[swb]

Which is unbelievably easy to get plus we have no idea how much permanent ingress is allowed to the government or what data is just sent over regularly.

I don't think a common wireless utility (simply running the spectrum + backhaul) would be any less subject to the thin barrier of warrants or any less compromised than the major carriers already are.

The consumer benefit so greatly outweighs the "muh gubmint" risk.

my brain exploded

[Danathar]

I hate Trump and the FCC chairman. How do I know which to oppose on this? ;)

Go figure

[elohssa]

A lawyer for Verizon would oppose nationalizing part of Verizon's business.

Re:"He" is Ajit Pai

[Baron_Yam]

It's worth mentioning to drive home the point that he works for the telecom cartel and not DJT.

While the WH was definitely on-side with the Net Neutrality debate, it'll be interesting to see Trump's Twitter reaction to this news (assuming Fox tells him what to think about it first). I mean, this will have to look like disloyalty to him, right? I wonder how he'll blame Obama or Hillary for this betrayal?

As much as I think ...

[PPH]

... Trump's nationalization plan is way over the top, he (Trump) does have a point in that our telecom infrastructure is a critical utility. And to the extent that it probably should remain in private hands, it needs oversight and regulation. And if the private owners can't see fit to run it as anything more than their own marketing channel to consumers, then the government needs to step in. And this includes building systems in poorly covered areas where private capital doesn't see the ROI to justify the service.

Of course he'll slam it...

[QuietLagoon]

... he is owned by Verizon and other ISPs.

Re:"He" is Ajit Pai

[whoever57]

I wonder how he'll blame Obama or Hillary for this betrayal?

Simple, he will blame Obama for appointing Pai.

Re:"He" is Ajit Pai

[93 Escort Wagon]

Obama: "Mitch (McConnell), I am required to select a Republican to the FCC. Who do you want me to appoint?"

McConnell: "My choice is Ajit Pai."

Obama: "Okay, I appoint Ajit Pai to the FCC."

Beginnings of corporatism?

[Torodung]

Some people like to call Trump a fascist, and this, potentially nationalizing what now belongs to private industry to serve the body state, is a feature of Mussolini's corporatism (not the usual government by and for the corporations, as it is commonly used, but private industry serving the corporate (body) state).

Now, I know they're talking about Federal ownership like the way the roads are maintained, but do you think a compromise deal between privatization and government ownership might include the beginnings of corporatism? It just might.

Oh... and Ajit Pai is a tool. This actually isn't a bad idea, if the government wants to roll out 5G securely and quickly, but it is a bad idea if private industry winds up being mixed up in co-ownership with the government. That's not a good thing at all.

Re:Only Consistent Trump Policy is TREASON

[MachineShedFred]

Actually this is very consistent for Chairman Pai - he's a telecom shill and (officially) former Verizon lobbyist, so both rejecting the Federal government from becoming a supplier for Verizon, as well as killing Net Neutrality is entirely consistent with serving his corporate overlord.

He can't serve two masters, and only one of those masters is paying him 30 coins of silver to sell the rest of us out.

Re:"He" is Ajit Pai

[whoever57]

I know that's what happened.

But do you think that the fact that Pai was McConnell's choice will stop Trump from blaming Obama for Pai's appointment?

Re:According to Slashdot

[dszd0g]

Are you trying to claim Trump is more coherent than Obama? Trump loses his train of thought mid-sentence all the time when giving speeches.

https://www.bostonglobe.com/op...

https://www.theguardian.com/tv...

I love this example of a Trump speech:

“Look, having nuclear — my uncle was a great professor and scientist and engineer, Dr. John Trump at MIT; good genes, very good genes, OK, very smart, the Wharton School of Finance, very good, very smart — you know, if you’re a conservative Republican, if I were a liberal, if, like, OK, if I ran as a liberal Democrat, they would say I’m one of the smartest people anywhere in the world — it’s true! — but when you’re a conservative Republican they try — oh, do they do a number — that’s why I always start off: Went to Wharton, was a good student, went there, went there, did this, built a fortune — you know I have to give my like credentials all the time, because we’re a little disadvantaged — but you look at the nuclear deal, the thing that really bothers me — it would have been so easy, and it’s not as important as these lives are — nuclear is powerful; my uncle explained that to me many, many years ago, the power and that was 35 years ago; he would explain the power of what’s going to happen and he was right, who would have thought? — but when you look at what’s going on with the four prisoners — now it used to be three, now it’s four — but when it was three and even now, I would have said it’s all in the messenger; fellas, and it is fellas because, you know, they don’t, they haven’t figured that the women are smarter right now than the men, so, you know, it’s gonna take them about another 150 years — but the Persians are great negotiators, the Iranians are great negotiators, so, and they, they just killed, they just killed us.”

https://www.snopes.com/donald-...
https://www.theguardian.com/tv...

Here are some more examples:

https://www.vox.com/policy-and...