COVID-19 Offers Lessons on Communications, O'Rielly and Rosenworcel Agree

“Some policymakers would love to have fiber to everybody’s home,” O’Rielly said. “I don’t think that’s sustainable. We have a very scattered population. In some of the more rural parts of America, it’s just not economical.” The FCC shouldn’t “put its finger on the scale” in favor of any technology, he said. If fixed wireless or satellite is the best solution in an area, O’Rielly said, he would accept lower connection speeds. “Give me a Chevy over a Lamborghini,” he said: “I need to get more Chevys out there so everyone is connected.”

O’Rielly said the pandemic is an FCC challenge: “How do we expand in a short time frame broadband access as quickly as possible, in some instances patchwork networks, to get up and running for those people who don’t have” broadband, while “making sure that for those that do, the network is sustainable and doing fairly well? How many screens can you handle? How much bandwidth does your household handle?”

“We just moved into the future very fast,” Rosenworcel said. “Our bandwidth demands are real and they’re big.” We’re starting to “realize with total and complete clarity who has access, who doesn’t, what bandwidth is necessary to accomplish all of these things at home and what’s not, and how outages affect our networks.” COVID-19 is “really telling us a lot of what the future of communications needs to look like,” she said.

U.S. providers have “done fairly well” keeping up with shifting network demands from the novel coronavirus, O’Rielly said. Indications are some of the peak demands for broadband are declining, he said: “Maybe everyone has seen all the Netflix that they want to see.”

Flexible use rules are critical, Rosenworcel said. “There was a time in the United States, not that long ago, where we would allocate certain bands strictly to a certain type of technology.” That led to broadcast TV and spectrum for public safety and automotive safety, she said. “What we’ve learned over time is that if we allocate our airwaves with a mind only towards what’s happening right here, right now, we lose out on opportunities."

“Robust” spectrum secondary markets are important, Rosenworcel said. “We should make sure that there are opportunities to be able to reallocate those airwaves in the private sector,” she said. The U.S. needs “the right mix” of licensed and unlicensed spectrum, she said. “One thing that’s become apparent in this crisis is we’re using a lot of both, and our long-term planning has to be mindful of the fact we need both.”

Rethink how the FCC reallocates spectrum, Rosenworcel said, noting pressure on federal agencies to give up frequencies and the resulting fights. “Create a system of incentives so that every spectrum user has an incentive to be efficient and gets opportunity to see gain and not just loss from relocation,” she said. “We’ve moved past the idea of having specific bands for a specific purpose,” O’Rielly said.

“I didn’t know there were so many screens in my house until everyone was home and now they’re all often operational" at once, said Jayne Stancavage, Intel global executive director-digital infrastructure policy, who interviewed the commissioners. The U.S. has hit a turning point, she said. “People actually understand how important our digital infrastructure is now and how much it is a part of our lives.”

Regulators worldwide face the same issues as the FCC, Stancavage said: “Everybody has diverse populations in terms or urban, suburban, rural” and different industries that need broadband. “How do you balance all that?” she asked. “Everyone struggles with this.” In high-band spectrum, unlike other nations, the U.S. took existing licenses and just provided more flexibility, Stancavage said. “That really jump started things much more” than a “lengthy rulemaking process,” she said. “Regulators in other countries have certainly asked” about the FCC’s approach, she said.

The TV incentive auction and the planned December C-band auction show the importance of market mechanisms and creativity on spectrum, O’Rielly said. "You had incumbents using basically the full band and how do you shrink footprints and do so in a thoughtful way,” he said. Both provided “the incentive to move through money,” he said. In other cases, the FCC isn’t offering financial incentives “and that becomes a struggle,” he said. “If someone is using 3% or 5% of an allocation, how do you shrink their footprint?”

The challenge is “price discovery,” Rosenworcel said: “What’s fair compensation to relocate or remove existing users? What tools do regulators have to figure out what’s the just, lawful price to make that happen?” An incentive auction is complicated, but “a really good way to engage in price discovery,” she said. “Worldwide, we’re all going to learn from each other’s examples.”