First Timers: FTC, FCC Heads Tackle 5G, Big Tech at CES

摘要

Three years after rising to the position of FCC chmn, Ajit Pai finally made his CES debut Tuesday afternoon. He receivedplenty of ribbing from CTA pres/CEO Gary Shapiro for his delay in attending the conference as Pai has beenscheduled to appear at the Vegas-based conference every year since 2018. Threats to Pai and his family led to acancellation in 2018, while both he and FCC commish Brendan Carr were forced to back out in 2019 due to a partialgovernment shutdown. Pai kicked off the inaugural appearance by discussing the success of broadband since theapproval of the FCC’s 2017 Restoring Internet Freedom Order. “More Americans than ever before, faster than everbefore, are able to hate-tweet their favorite FCC chairman,” Pai joked. Taking on a more serious tone, he encouragedlawmakers and citizens alike to focus on what both Democrats and Republicans can agree on in terms of open internetprinciples, including no blocking or throttling, encouraging competitive conduct and maintaining transparency. “I justdescribed in five seconds a bill that should sail through Congress, but this has become more of a political issue than apolicy one,” Pai said. Turning to 5G, Pai said that it’s part of a suite of services that the FCC wants to encourage in theUS. The FCC has encouraged 5G deployment through its 5G Fast Plan, which prioritizes freeing spectrum and greaterdeployment of small cells. Those will continue to be priorities in 2020, as will the deployment of fiber. “We have a verybig country geographically, we’re very diverse demographically, and I don’t want fiber to be the bottleneck for some ofthe 5G networks that need to be built,” Pai said, adding that he wants to make it easier for companies to participate inthe FCC’s rural broadband programs to encourage fiber deployment. “Frankly, we don’t care what company is trying topioneer fiber deployment. We want all of them to have a full and fair chance to compete.” On the data and privacy front,FTC chmn Joseph Simons addressed the way that the agency approaches big tech. “We don’t go after companiesjust because they’re big and successful,” Simons said. “It has been doctrinal law in the antitrust in this country that weencourage firms to compete, and if they do that and become successful and go to the extreme of monopolizing themarket, if they’ve done it legally, we shouldn’t then turn around and penalize them for success.” The FTC has beensubject to criticism from consumer associations and Democratic lawmakers for not going after big tech enough, andstriking insufficient settlements with those companies when it does decide to take action. The two biggest examples in 2019 were its $170mln settlement with YouTube over children’s content and its record-setting $5bln settlement withFacebook that required the social network to revamp its consumer privacy practices. Though they sparked controversies,Simons said he designates those as his proudest achievements since becoming FTC chmn. “Those settlementsimposed requirements that are far and away greater than what the law itself requires, including transparency requirements,”Simons said. “Facebook and Google know that we’re paying attention… if they continue to do what they weredoing in the past and violate the privacy laws, then they can expect that the repercussions will be even more severe.YouTube rolled out changes to the platform to comply with the settlement Monday, restricting targeted ads from runningon kids’ videos and restricting user access to comments and other community features. YouTube will also begin runningpromotions for its YouTube Kids app which filters the type of content users can see on all videos made for children.