Administration Playing Politics With 5G, Says Wheeler; Stakeholders Say He's Playing It, Too

Some stakeholders disagreed with Wheeler, calling it a political, not a policy statement.

“Bring some order to the chaos,” Wheeler wrote. “Move past the political and marketing talking points to consider both the promise of 5G and the challenge to its realization.” At the FCC, 5G is “an excuse to preempt the antenna siting decisions of local governments,” Wheeler said. For satellite companies, it's an opportunity “to sell something for which they paid nothing at a windfall profit” through the C-band proceeding, he said. For Sprint and T-Mobile, the cost of 5G justifies their proposed deal, he said. For President Donald Trump, “5G is a political talking point to gin up nationalistic furor over a ‘race’ with China,” he said.

“If 5G is to live up to its promise, its rollout out must improve over 4G,” Wheeler said. No redlining buildout areas in cities and it must provide broad rural coverage, he said. “Continuing the ‘rural last’ precedent for broadband service will perpetuate the disenfranchisement of large numbers of American citizens.” Wheeler slammed the current FCC for retreating from the Obama-era focus on cybersecurity. “Unfortunately, the Trump FCC eliminated the 5G cyber protection plan begun by the Obama FCC,” he said. “The Trump FCC has even questioned whether the agency entrusted with the nation’s networks has any responsibility for the cybersecurity of those networks.” Monday, the White House and FCC officials didn’t comment.

"If you want less of something, you tax it,” Commissioner Brendan Carr emailed. “That's exactly what some of the biggest cities in the U.S. were doing with 5G. Their exorbitant 5G taxes slowed down the deployment of next-generation broadband networks in big cities and small towns alike. So the FCC adopted commonsense reforms designed to help every community in the country see the economic benefits that 5G will enable. Those reforms are now in place, and we're already seeing the results -- new small cells being cleared for construction at an accelerated pace and new, pro-build out agreements being adopted in cities across the country.” While chairman, Wheeler led the FCC in pre-empting state and local authority over antenna siting decisions, “stating then that 'High-speed mobile broadband also requires high-speed broadband buildout,’” Carr wrote.

Playing Politics

“This is politics, not policy,” said Georgetown Center for Business and Public Policy Project Director Larry Downes.

“There is a lot of marketing speak around 5G that describes it as the next big thing,” said Kristian Stout, International Center for Law & Economics associate director. It's true that 5G will be deployed first in the high-density areas that are the most profitable, he told us. Wheeler implies rural and poorer areas should be served first alongside more profitable areas as some sort of "connect everyone simultaneously" program, Stout said. “Leaving aside the problem that deployment resources are finite … it’s not entirely clear that every area should get the exact same kind of 5G network,” Stout said. In some rural areas, “it seems to make a lot more sense to promote the rollout of fixed wireless, with smaller local networks around particular properties,” he said. “Everything Wheeler recommends in that post amounts to political talking points.”

Wheeler wrongly claims C-band companies “paid nothing” for their spectrum, tweeted Preston Padden, C-Band Alliance head-advocacy and government relations. “SES and Intelsat acquired their C-band spectrum in secondary market transactions for Billions of Dollars -- SES buying GE Americom; Intelsat buying PanAmSat. $Billions more invested.”

Others defended the former chairman. “This FCC has relied on 5G as justification for any number of sins,” said Public Knowledge Senior Policy Counsel Phillip Berenbroick. “Whether it’s giving a green light to a merger like Verizon/Straight Path” or “pre-empting states and localities on small-cell approvals.” The FCC has used 5G as “the justification for anything and everything,” he said.

Wheeler wasn’t always a friend to local government when he was chairman, said Best Best local telecom lawyer Gerard Lederer. “We are therefore grateful to … Wheeler for pointing out that the campaign for the race to 5G campaign, a race that local governments want to win if it includes all citizens, is in many cases nothing but a facade for a telco wish list that comes at the expense of others,” Lederer said.

Wheeler is “dead-on when he notes that 5G shouldn't just be a marketing tool or political football,” said Free Press Policy Director Matt Wood. “It shouldn't be an excuse for mergers, when companies like T-Mobile and Sprint tell their investors they have robust 5G plans already.” Without a push from regulators, 5G will widen rather than close the “digital divide,” Wood said.

Wheeler doesn’t go far enough, emailed Spiegel & McDiarmid's Tillman Lay. “I’d revise one of his points to say that, for the wireless industry, 5G is the excuse for federally mandated access to state and local government property at subsidized rates and in expedited timeframes,” said the local-telecom lawyer. “Industry’s (and the FCC’s) argument that preemption of state and local governments will speed 5G deployment in rural areas is simply wrong. It’s just an excuse for giving industry subsidized access to public property that belongs neither to industry nor the federal government.”