Solve Lifeline Problems, Don't Attack It, Clyburn Tells MMTC; O'Rielly No Lifeline Foe, He Says
The FCC should come up with solutions for problems with Lifeline rather than attacking the program, Commissioner Mignon Clyburn said during a Q&A session at a Multicultural Media Telecom and Internet Council conference Thursday. Wanting to fix abuses in the Lifeline program is not the same as seeking to “kill” it, Commissioner Mike O’Rielly said during his Q&A. Criticizing Lifeline without coming up with alternatives is “regulatory malpractice,” Clyburn said.
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A GAO report on Lifeline based partially on information prior to FCC changes in the program (see 1707060054) shouldn’t be a basis for cutting it back, Clyburn said. “I’m not trying to start a fight with another agency,” Clyburn said. “But I have a problem with that.” O’Rielly referenced the report, too. Anyone who brings up any issue with the program is painted as its enemy, he said. Though he conceded many fellow Republicans want to kill the program, O’Reilly said he isn’t one. “People are getting trampled,” Clyburn said during her time. “Instead of harping on what is deficient, your next sentence needs to be a suggestion to improve,” she said. In a separate speech, AT&T Senior Vice President Joan Marsh said that it's “critical that we assess government subsidy programs to rid them of duplicate subsidies, waste, fraud and abuse.”
O’Rielly and Clyburn didn't express a point of view on reserving vacant channels in the TV band for unlicensed uses. O’Rielly conceded that previous attempts to use the TV white spaces haven’t panned out and suggested that the current level of tech company interest in the area could change that. The need for a vacant channel isn’t the same in every market. “We’ll see where the chairman wants to go” on, he said. Unlicensed spectrum is an area of opportunity for “scrappy” innovators and is an avenue for entry into the industry by smaller businesses, she said.
Some communities don’t even have reliable phone service, which underlines the need for greater broadband deployment, Clyburn said. “While we’re here talking about 5G, there are some people that don’t have a dial tone.” Every possible combination of public and private entities should be brought to bear on the problem, she said. Regulatory barriers to broadband deployment should be removed, O’Rielly said. “At the state and local level, we are asking policymakers to focus on updating siting and right-of-way policies to ensure 5G growth in their areas,” Marsh said.
Though O’Rielly said the current FCC is more transparent than the previous administration's, he said there's room for further improvements. Although O’Rielly is now in the majority, it’s important to keep pushing process changes because it affects future FCCs, he said. In a recorded video message, Chairman Ajit Pai touted his dedication to process changes, pointing to the proposed elimination of the main studio rule as a blow to “red tape.” Pai said the FCC plans to study use of incubator programs to improve diversity in telecom “by the fall."
Increasing diversity in the telecom industry is vital, Marsh said. The method by which startup companies secure venture capital funding is largely “based on nepotism,” said Rep. Yvette Clarke, D-N.Y. For those without Ivy League connections, such funding is a “pipe dream,” she said. Corporate America can’t grow if it isn’t cognizant of its biases, said Rep. Tony Cardenas, D-Calif.