FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel on broadband access across America

Verge editor-in-chief Nilay Patel and Verge policy reporter Makena Kelly talk to FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel about American broadband policy and the advocacy for internet access, broadband competition, and net neutrality. While the coronavirus pandemic is happening and people are working online at home, now is a perfect time to talk about who has access to the broadband, who doesn't, how much it costs, and how we can get it to more people for less money. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

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• 0:57Nilay Patel?

  Hey, everybody. It's Sam from The Vergecast. On this week's interview episode, FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosen-Worcel joins me and Verge Policy Reporter Makena Kelly to talk about American broadband policy. Now, I have wanted to get Commissioner Rosen-Worcel on the show for a long time. She has been a staunch advocate of consumer rights, of broadband competition, net neutrality, of getting access to more people in more places. And this is a really interesting time to have this conversation because it's the coronavirus. All of us are working from home. Schools are shut down. People are getting all of their entertainment over streaming. We are stressing our nation's broadband infrastructure like never before for an indefinite amount of time. So it's a really good time to talk about who has access, who doesn't, how much it costs,

• 1:42Nilay Patel?

  how we can get it to more people for less money, and how we can ensure the internet is fair. This was a pretty casual conversation. All of us are working from home, so it was basically just three of us on Skype. It wasn't as formal as a normal interview that we'd have. That's going to be happening for the next few weeks as we get through this. But it was a really smart conversation, and I'd like to thank the Commissioner for giving us her time in the middle of a major crisis. So check it out. It's Makena Kelly and FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosen-Worcel.

• 2:16Nilay Patel?

  FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworth, so welcome to the Vergecast.

• 2:20Speaker 03

  Thank you for having me.

• 2:21Nilay Patel?

  I've wanted to get you on our show for a long, long time. So thank you for doing it in this time of coronavirus. I appreciate that you've taken some time for us. And Makena Kelly is here as well. Welcome McKenna.

• 2:32Speaker 04

  Hey, it's good to be here.

• 2:34Nilay Patel?

  So Commissioner Rosenworth, it's, it is a strange time in America and the world right now. We're all working from home. I think you're at home. Vox Media is at home. We're all, we're all taping this at our respective homes. There is kind of not a better time to talk about broadband policy. We are straining our networks more than ever. All entertainment has moved to streaming. All work has moved to telework. Education, which is something I really want to talk to you about. Schools are canceled all over the country. Kids are learning at home. It seems like we're testing the networks that our policies have shaped more than ever. What, what is your sense of it right now?

• 3:12Speaker 03

  Ah, you're right. You're right about all of it. But first things first, these are strange and unprecedented times. Definitely feel free to call me Jessica as we discuss this.

• 3:21Nilay Patel?

  I'll do my best.

• 3:22Speaker 03

  You know, like everyone else, managing kids' school, work, home. And then of course, the work of the Federal Communications Commission. I mean, broadband is front and center in this crisis. We are telling the nation to go online for work, for school, for healthcare like never before. We're going to stress our networks. We're going to expose the extent of the digital divide. And I think the FCC has got to pay attention to what's happening and take every step it can to try to connect more people right now. Because really, this is about the future of our civic and commercial life, but it's also about our ability to get through this crisis together. And we really want to make sure we all do that.

• 4:02Nilay Patel?

  So there are some short-term things and some sort of medium and long-term things. One, you know, I saw yesterday the FCC has allowed T-Mobile to use some 600 megahertz spectrum that some companies sort of gave to it. That seems like, okay, we're going to build that and use more spectrum. Great. Then there's like, all the companies are going to excuse customers from data caps, which seems very immediate. Or we're not going to bill you right away. Or we're not going to punish you if you miss a payment. That seems very short-term and related to the crisis. How do you think those things bucket out? What are the, what are the immediate, short-term steps that the FCC and the broadband companies can take? What are the sort of medium-term steps that maybe help us get better prepared in the future?

• 4:42Speaker 03

  Sure, let me point out that I'm going to try to describe what I understand the FCC has done to date and then also talk a little bit about how much more I want the agency to do. Late last week, it announced a pledge. It got several dozen of the nation's broadband providers to commit to doing a few things. First, they would not shut anyone off during this time. If you are a small business or a home, can't pay your bill, they're not going to shut you off. Second, they are going to waive late fees during this period. And third, to the extent that they have private Wi-Fi routers that are out there, they're going to make sure they're available publicly so that we can expand our nation's Wi-Fi capacity. And those things are all good.

• 5:24Speaker 03

  Everyone who has signed on to that pledge deserves credit. I think we need to go further. And some carriers have made some plans to help low-income households, for instance, get online for free for 60 days. Some have made clear that they will not have data caps. And these things are good, but the bottom line is, I don't want us to just rely on their generosity. I think we need a nationwide plan for addressing the digital divide. And I like their kindness. I want to clap for it and I want to support it. But I think as a nation, we need a policy that addresses how we're going to connect all of us and what are the plans we want in place to make sure it happens.

• 6:04Nilay Patel?

  So McKenna, you, during the Iowa caucuses, you were in Iowa, you were talking to lots of people there about broadband connectivity, about how kids are learning in rural areas. I want you to just kind of give an overview of that and then I'd like to talk about that a little bit as well.

• 6:18Speaker 04

  Right. So when I flew into Iowa, being from Nebraska, I know, and I lived some of the connectivity problems. So what I wanted to do was kind of drive around and see people, whether it was in urban areas like Des Moines or going all the way up to 12 miles from the Minnesota border and seeing folks there and what they're doing. So there are a lot of people in rural areas and also folks who are having trouble connecting in urban areas. And we're seeing that stress primarily now in the news and with a lot of people chasing these stories about the homework gap. And you've done a lot of work on this. You have been championing, remedying this gap. And basically, for folks at home who don't understand what the homework gap is,

• 7:01Speaker 04

  it is basically explaining the trials of kids in schools who are unable to connect to the internet and complete their homework. So when I was in Iowa, I was speaking to school districts in Winterset. At the Winterset Public School District, they were making some really creative solutions by placing some signs outside of public libraries and Pizza Huts for kids to go and use free Wi-Fi to submit and do their homework. They've also, at the public library, decided to start loaning out hotspots for kids out in the country who don't have high-speed broadband access. And we're seeing that kind of across the country with communities really stepping up, where companies and the FCC and Congress just haven't yet.

• 7:46Speaker 03

  Right. I think we should. I mean, listen, when I was growing up, if I wanted to do homework, I needed paper, a pencil, and my brother leaving me alone. And that third one was the hard part, right? But those days are just gone. They're over. Today, students need internet access to do nightly schoolwork, and so many of them don't have it. According to the Senate Joint Economic Committee, there are about 12 million students in this country that fall into the homework gap. They can't get their nightly schoolwork done because they don't have reliable internet. And you know, you see them in urban America and rural America. You know, they're sitting in a car late at night outside the library after it's closed with the glow of a borrowed laptop.

• 8:30Speaker 03

  Or they're sliding into the booth at McDonald's and writing a paper while nursing a soda. And you know, in the United States of America, we should be able to fix that problem because every student's going to need this access to prepare for the economy in the future. This is just table stakes. We gotta fix it. And now we have this virus. We've got 30 million students at last count. Who are being told their schools are shutting. And millions of them are being told to go online for class. But we don't have an adequate census of who has service, who doesn't. There are huge issues of digital equity in the homework gap. We can address them. It is within our power to do that. And one way I have been championing for quite some time is suggesting that the FCC

• 9:15Speaker 03

  use its power through its universal service programs to make sure our schools and libraries can all loan out Wi-Fi hotspots. I think it fits within the Telecommunications Act, which is our governing law on this subject. And I think it's never been clearer we need to do this than right now because the homework gap and the coronavirus is especially cruel. But we could fix it, we could solve it, and we should take immediate action to do so.

• 9:43Speaker 04

  Right, well, it seems like with that pledge that those companies are taking, that it seems like the FCC played a really big role in doing. It's helping kids who already have some access.

• 9:52Speaker 03

  Right, no, that's a good point. Some of the good they're doing will help those who already have access. And let's clap for it, that's important. And then they're making it available to some who don't. But remember, not all these providers serve nationwide. They serve different regions of the country. And so what we have is this patchwork of their commitments. It's not a national plan. It's not a nationwide agenda to solve the homework gap. I think we need one.

• 10:18Nilay Patel?

  So let me just take one step back from that.

• 10:21Speaker 03

  No, go right ahead.

• 10:22Nilay Patel?

  I'm worried that it would be great to give everybody a Wi-Fi hotspot. But the discrepancy I hear is that the carriers are always telling us their networks are overloaded, that they have to manage them very hard, that there's all this congestion. Do we have enough capacity to pull something like that off?

• 10:40Speaker 03

  We are about to do an enormous experiment in this country, right? We're telling everyone, go work online. Go have video conferences online with your office. Go watch these videos online for school. And we're going to have people doing it at all hours of the day. You know, it's not going to just be the rush to a streaming service late at night. I think our networks are going to see pressure. Like they've never seen before. But it's not coming just from one place. We've got to remember, some of this will be the video platforms that folks use online. Some of this will be the Wi-Fi connections, the last mile to your home. Some of this will be interconnection points and some of it will be backhaul and network capacity. In other words, when we talk about can the Internet withstand all this traffic?

• 11:25Speaker 03

  There are many different points of stress. I think it's really important for us to study what happens. Because we'll know more about our networks where they're likely to fail. And what we need to do to make them more resilient in the future. But I don't think there's a single point of failure here. There are a lot of different places where we're going to start understanding what capacity looks like. And the challenges that it creates.

• 11:50Nilay Patel?

  So we have talked many, many times on The Verge with other folks who've come on the show about sort of, you know, the layers of the networking infrastructure, about how we need more fiber. When you look at the sort of stack of things the FCC regulates, or at least it used to, depending on how you look at it. When you look at that stack of networking technologies, of services are private to consumers. Right now in this moment, where are you sort of the most concerned?

• 12:14Speaker 03

  You know, right now, I'm actually most concerned about the digital divide. It's not really the network itself. It's just that there are people who are disconnected in this country. We're going to ask them to stay at home. We're cutting them off from so much in the world around us. How are we going to make sure more people are connected? And so much of our digital divide discussion in Washington and at the FCC has been about rural America. And we have real challenges in rural America because networks are expensive to deploy. And you can only amortize the cost over a limited population. So we got to figure out how to support that. But we have huge problems in urban America, too. Lots and lots of people are not connected. In the city of New York, 29% of households don't have Internet access.

• 12:57Speaker 03

  In cities like Detroit, 60% of the students live in homes without Internet access. In other words, in some of our urban areas, we got connectivity problems too. And I hope going forward, we use this crisis to understand the digital divide has both deployment and adoption issues. We got, we really got to address both. And I think the FCC has focused more on the former and less on the latter, and that's a mistake.

• 13:23Speaker 04

  Yeah, so even when it comes to deployment, it seems like the conversation really starts and ends in some places with money. So we have a lot of plans from presidential candidates. We have bills and we have measures and all these things asking for more money. Is money the primary problem here?

• 13:42Speaker 03

  Yeah, let's not sugarcoat it. Money matters. It costs a lot to deploy networks. I wish it were otherwise, you know? But pushing fiber facilities further out into our most remote communities is a costly proposition. We've got to figure out how we're going to change that cost curve and bend it. And there are things we can do with regulatory policy, like making sure every time you pave a road or open up a road, you have a dig-once policy, so you lay fiber down. It adds only 1% to the cost of transportation construction, but it can help future-proof our networks. So there are smart things we can do with policy like that. But we're also going to have to figure out how to stimulate this with some support from Washington, from state governments,

• 14:27Speaker 03

  because the cost of getting these services out to places with limited population is really high. And then the cost of serving them is high, too, because you can't spread that cost on such a small population without charging them extraordinary amounts. We've got to figure out how everyone gets connected. And as hard as that math is, what I'll tell you is we got telephone service to everyone in the last century, and we got rural electrification out there in the last century. All of our farms have electricity today. These things are possible, and history proves it. We've got to start addressing this challenge, because it's really one on the same order of magnitude.

• 15:06Nilay Patel?

  Do you think this moment provides a new opportunity to talk about broadband as utility? I realize this leads into a long story about Title II and net neutrality, but...

• 15:15Speaker 03

  Listen, I think so much in public policy is going to change as a result of this crisis. What we're talking about now, what we're reading about, what we're hearing about on the news is something that a month ago, I think any one of us would have had difficulty really imagining. And yet it's here, it's happening. And we're seeing how our social connections, our physical connections, our infrastructure is all being challenged by this. And I hope we use what's happening so that when we come out on the other side, and I know we will, that we make smarter choices about how we're better prepared for the next crisis. I just really want to see that our public policy reflects what we learned from this. And I think it is going to reflect the fact that broadband is really essential for the modern economy.

• 16:00Speaker 03

  And Washington really needs to think about it that way.

• 16:03Speaker 04

  Do you think classifying the internet as an information service has hampered the FCC's authority to kind of act right now?

• 16:09Speaker 03

  Well, I think it hasn't made it any easier. To be clear, I supported net neutrality and I vigorously opposed the FCC's rollback of net neutrality in 2017. So the record shows where I am on that. But, um, you know, I, I think we're kidding ourselves if we think this isn't somehow of infrastructure that's totally necessary for modern life. And this event, right here and now, is proving it in real time. We're going to have to take that proof and make sure Washington understands this issue better going forward.

• 16:41Nilay Patel?

  So when you brought up electrification or the phone service, the phone service, I think, is the, sort of the key example of the Universal Service Fund subsidizing telephone providers to build out the network in places where the sort of return on investment wasn't obvious to them. Is that how you foresee it working for broadband as well?

• 17:00Speaker 03

  Sometimes I like to also talk about the 1920s and 1930s because in the 20s, like, life was roaring in our cities. We had automobiles and broadcasting and radio and we had lights that turned on and off. But on the farms, you couldn't find electricity if you looked for it. 90% of our farms had no electricity. And that's not just a loss for being able to turn on the lights, that's electrification. It's all sorts of things that contribute to effective and efficient farms. And, you know, we went to all these folks doing electricity policy and they said, well, you know, it's just too expensive to serve them. There's just no business case there. The math is too hard, can't make it work. This might just be a service we can only have in the cities.

• 17:44Speaker 03

  And you know, it's like the electricity divide from history is the digital divide we talk about today. And you know what's amazing is the first thing we did to develop a plan with the Rural Electrification Act was that we went out and mapped where service was and wasn't. Which sounds awfully like the conversation we're having in Washington right now, right? Like, let's get accurate maps about where broadband is and is not. Because that's what you have to do when you start something. You're not going to manage what you don't measure. And I think there's so many lessons from electricity in the past and how we connected the countryside. And if we did something that audacious, you know, a century ago, there's no reason why we can't do something just the same right now. I think we got to develop that mindset and make it happen.

• 18:29Nilay Patel?

  So this kind of brings, you know, it's a weird time. It's a casual podcast because we're all at home. So I'm going to ask you sort of a much loftier question than the intricacies of technology. But this, this whole situation has sort of laid bare. Oh, we've, we've actually privatized a lot of government. We've handed a lot of government function and authority away to, quote unquote, the market, for better or worse, in some cases, better. But now in a time of crisis, that is laid bare. That we actually don't have a lot of the abilities at the government level to handle a national emergency like this. How are you seeing that playing out from, from your perch in government?

• 19:09Speaker 03

  Well, that is big. Let me see. I am a public servant, you know? I think the first duty of a public servant is to serve the public and protect the public. And I think that many of our institutions across this country have withered. We got to figure out how to restore them, make them stronger, make them more resilient. Things the market will always do better than government, and that's appropriate. But we got to make sure our institutions in government are strong enough to rise up to challenges like this one. And I don't know that we've been paying as much attention to that as we need to. But I think this crisis is going to force us to do more of that in the future.

• 19:47Nilay Patel?

  So when you look at something like, okay, there's an obvious homework gap for kids who are now stuck at home and they can't do their homework. How do you, as an advocate, as a public servant, kind of take that and turn that into a policy that makes sense?

• 20:00Speaker 03

  Oh, my gosh. Anything and everything. You know, we live in these days that are so different in Washington than, you know, just five or 10 years ago. So you got to figure out how you take all this wonkish stuff about the E-Rate program and Section 254 of the Communications Act. And, yeah, I mean, already, you're like, rolling your eyes. It's, I'm getting weedy. How do you take all that, which feels so technocratic, so hard to grasp, and make it real for people? Because the choices we make are really consequential for all of us in all of our homes. And shame on Washington if we are dressing everything up in legalese and technocratic language and making it impossible for the public to understand and participate.

• 20:45Speaker 03

  I think agencies, including my own, have been doing that for too long. And we've made our policy discussions the province of a real limited community that understands what we're talking about or pays enough to get a lobbyist to see us. That's just not right. We've got to figure out how we make these things that we make decisions on and make them in clean English so that we all understand the consequences. I really think going forward, all of us are going to have to do that a lot better.

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• 22:20Nilay Patel?

  To bring this back to now, I brought us way all the way up. I wanted to bring us all the way back down. We're in a moment where the FCC's authority is, and I kind of pointed out, we reclassified the internet as an information service, or broadband as an information service. The FCC abdicated a bunch of authority to regulate that stuff, but we have seen these moves over the past week or so to encourage companies to change their behavior in this time of crisis. Was that an ask? Was it a use of regular authority? Did all of you just sort of call the heads of ISPs and ask nicely? How did that work?

• 22:52Speaker 03

  Yeah, you know, I don't have perfect insight into it. I know that it came out of the chairman's office. And, you know, I testified last week in front of that Senate appropriations and then the House appropriations and called on the agency to convene our nation's broadband providers and do it immediately because there are ways they can help. They've got things in their toolkits we might not even be thinking about. And so I'm glad to see that they followed up and did just that. And we got this pledge from so many broadband providers as a result. And individual providers are stepping up with their own plans. That is really good, but like I said, not all these services reach everyone everywhere. And I think we need something more than their generosity. You know, we need the justice of a national plan. And that's what's missing here.

• 23:37Speaker 03

  And I don't think the FCC should be shy about saying we need a national plan to attack the digital divide in all of its dimensions. This virus is pointing out just how important it is. And I hope we don't let this moment go by without thinking bigger about what we can do with our authority here. I think we need to do some hard thinking about how we can make sure more people are connected and what things we have in our power to make that happen.

• 24:03Nilay Patel?

  So when you look at things like it's Comcast, which disclosure investor and apparent company, they don't love me, but there it is. Comcast suspends its data caps. AT&T has suspended its data caps. I see stuff like that and we have been raging about how they make no sense, especially for physical broadband internet for years. But why do these data caps even exist? And now it seems like there's emergency, there's pulling the trigger at a time of radically increased usage. They're saying, we actually don't need all these management controls we had, even in the time of the most usage. Do you see that as something the FCC should, that's evidence for the FCC to act on if it is able to regulate the behavior and provide a more, a bolder national plan?

• 24:44Speaker 03

  Yeah, you know, especially with wired networks, there are questions about data caps and how much they're necessary for reasonable network management. And I think right now, applying them is especially cruel because we're gonna have so many people who are told to work from home, or you're gonna have so many students who are told to go online at home for class. I mean, if they keep on crossing over lines and getting saddled with overage fees, that's not fair and it's not right. And it may in fact prove that these are not entirely necessary. So I think that the agency should be taking a hard look

• 25:24Speaker 03

  at that going forward. And to be clear, I have called repeatedly during the coronavirus for all of our providers to lift data caps and end overage fees. I think that consumers otherwise are going to get stuck with so many additional costs in an environment they didn't create and frankly, one they don't deserve.

• 25:45Speaker 04

  Right. So all of this is coming from the companies and discussions with the FCC. You talked about the need for a national plan. Ideally, what would that national plan look like? What would you want to see the FCC tackle or get into the, you know, the granularity is of how we would go ahead in an emergency and come together and address this?

• 26:08Speaker 03

  Well, like I said before, when we think about the digital divide, so much of our work here has been focused on deployment challenges, which are Largely about rural America, we got to be honest that we have adoption problems in urban, suburban, and rural America, too. That's got to be a component, and it's been missing. But this episode with this virus is putting that front and center. And I want the FCC to adjust its thinking going forward and realizing if it really wants to address the digital divide, it's got to think not just about deployment, but also about adoption.

• 26:44Speaker 04

  Right. And on adoption, I mean, how does the FCC address that?

• 26:49Speaker 03

  You know, the adoption programs that the FCC has today are from its universal service powers, like they help schools and libraries. They've got a program called Lifeline that helps low-income households get phone service and get online. We've also got a program to help healthcare facilities. Those are important tools. I also think the agency needs to collect some data about affordability. We don't collect much of that information right now. And I think that affordability is a real impediment for a lot of households. We've got to start understanding it in order to figure out how to address it. And I think the agency is, has been negligent not looking into that.

• 27:30Speaker 03

  We have this annual obligation to report on the state of our nation's broadband, but we're never really going to have a frank or honest report if we don't also study just why cost is a barrier and what that means.

• 27:44Nilay Patel?

  This is the second time you've brought up measurement in some capacity, and the fact that we don't do it very well. The first was maps, and now you're talking about cost.

• 27:51Speaker 03

  I think numbers are what makes Washington move. When you can prove something again and again that there's a hole, there's a void, there's a gap, there's something that needs to be fixed, I think you'd be surprised that both sides will come together and get something done. But when we don't measure things accurately, we tend to fight, we tend to move into our ideological corners. I think there's a lot of power in math and we need to be using more of it.

• 28:19Nilay Patel?

  But why is it such a theme that we're not measuring? I mean, literally entire crisis right now, the theme of the crisis is we have not done enough tests or measurements on virus spread. But it seems to be a theme now in this conversation that we, we're not measuring what you would call like the KPIs in tech speak of cost deployment, all those sorts of things.

• 28:39Speaker 03

  Right. I think a lot of this has come to focus because the FCC's broadband maps have proven to be such a problem. Right now, they say that if you've got one subscriber that you could serve in one census block, then we assume there's service throughout. And so what's happened is a whole bunch of people who work on Capitol Hill go home and they find out that the FCC's maps say that there are service in their districts, but there isn't. And they get a whole bunch of constituents who are angered that there's no resources or support available because our maps say they have service when they don't. That is happening in communities across the country. And so what we've had is this bipartisan consensus that we got to first fix our maps. That's really good. By the way, it's late. I wish

• 29:24Speaker 03

  this happened two or three years ago, but we've got bipartisan consensus to do that. My hope is when we do, we will know with so much precision where we should send our scarce dollars. Because right now, we're just flooding the zone with money without actually knowing if it's going to the right places or doing the work it needs to do. So that's why we talk about maps a lot in Washington right now. But also, and let's celebrate this, because there's bipartisan consensus, there are problems and that we need to fix them.

• 29:53Speaker 04

  Right. And last week, you focused on this a lot in the Senate Appropriations hearing, when it comes to sending money where we don't know exactly who has and who doesn't have high-speed broadband access. There's a new program, there's the World Digital Opportunity Fund, which came to be earlier this year. And it looks like the majority is moving forward with sending these dollars, it was 20, about $20 billion to areas. That they say that they know are completely unserved. But it seemed, you talked about this a lot, that it would be much better to send that money once we have, you know, the most precise data.

• 30:30Speaker 03

  Right. I mean, isn't that obvious to anyone outside of Washington, right? You need maps before money and data before deployment. This feels easy and obvious, right? But somehow about two weeks before the election, we're going to try to send out the bulk of our dollars available for the next 10 years to try to solve our nation's broadband problems. Don't you think it would be better if we spent a few months fixing our maps first? I mean, I'd be hard pressed to find anyone in this country who thinks that we shouldn't actually try to fix our data first. Because you know those communities that we say have service today, but don't? We're going to skip them for the next 10 years. They're going to be left behind. They are going to be consigned to the wrong side of the digital divide for the next decade. That's not right.

• 31:14Speaker 03

  Spending just a little bit of time to fix our maps first is the right thing to do. And so I kept on saying that at the appropriations hearings last week. Because to me, it's so obvious. And sometimes in Washington, you just have to repeat what's obvious over and over and over and over again to get people to pay attention. So thank you for letting me do it here, too.

• 31:34Nilay Patel?

  Let me cosplay as a telco executive. I'd like to do it.

• 31:39Speaker 03

  Okay, let's see.

• 31:40Nilay Patel?

  Why do they need the government to push them into providing service? Every subscriber, especially in communities where they have one subscriber and the map's lit up, every sort of incremental subscriber is cheap. Like, won't they just do it over time by themselves?

• 31:52Speaker 03

  I think the challenge is that the economics are hard. And overtime may take place, but it could be a very, very long time. So if you are able to stimulate it by saying, here are some money, how much further can you stretch that network? If you got this additional boost, you'd find that we cover many more people who are not covered today. And government has always played that role to kind of stimulate private sector actors to make things happen. That's what the FCC's Universal Service Fund is all about. That's what the Rural Digital Opportunities Fund is supposed to be all about. And I just want to see that we engage in that, but do it smart and informed by data about where service really is and is not.

• 32:31Speaker 04

  Right. It's really hard. When I was in Iowa earlier this year, I was driving around in this pickup truck with a guy who runs municipal broadband network, and he was driving me down these gravel roads. And you could go miles with only seeing one home. And he would point to that home and be like, I know this person. This person does not have any access to the internet. But why would Verizon, with no incentive, or AT&T, or whoever, run a whole mile of cable to connect only one person? You know, it's not profitable, and that's the problem.

• 33:01Speaker 03

  And you know what's amazing, by the way? It's not just that one house you saw, and whether or not that person can watch some streaming video at night. Just imagine if there are fields around them. There's technology we can use with precision agriculture now, that if that community, that household, that field is connected, we can know with incredible accuracy where to water when, where to put nitrogen in the soil and when. We could manage environmental runoff. We could figure out how to be more efficient with every aspect of our farms. In other words, there are economic use cases beyond just someone pecking at the computer or watching a whole bunch of cat videos. And I think

• 33:42Speaker 03

  in rural America, some of those economic use cases, like precision agriculture, are really, really exciting. But we've got to figure out how to stimulate their development and deployment first.

• 33:54Nilay Patel?

  What do you say, I know that this is happening, that we have Vergecast listeners right now who are listening to this, and they're like, Elon Musk is going to fix it with Starlink.

• 34:02Speaker 03

  Yeah, you know, I'm super excited about the next generation of satellite services. I mean, it used to be like, if you wanted to shoot something into the sky, that was like the province of the superpowers. But now we've got private actors, you know, raising money, having secondary payload go into space. We have authorized more things to

• 34:23Speaker 03

  Rotate the earth than ever before. An orbital debris could be a real problem. But it's going to take a long time for those satellite systems to be fully up and operational everywhere. And between now and then really matters. So I am worried that waiting years for those to be operational is a challenge. Plus, there are outstanding questions about latency, service speed and cost we've got to resolve. And I think in the meantime, we're going to have to pursue some terrestrial alternatives. But I am very excited for what we're going to be doing in our skies. I think satellite, which used to be, you know, old and small and limited with who they could use. You know, in other words, like it wasn't, it was a small

• 35:08Speaker 03

  community that worked on it. We're getting a much more diverse range of actors who want to put these birds in our skies and beam broadband to all of us. I think it's exciting. I want to see it develop some more and I'm looking forward to that happening, though I think it will take a little time.

• 35:23Nilay Patel?

  Speaking of things that will take a little time, access technologies, I ask everybody who comes on who might have an opinion, the following question about 5G.

• 35:32Speaker 03

  I know, I knew you were going to a 5G thing. I just knew it.

• 35:34Nilay Patel?

  I mean, it's, it's, I'm not, it's, you know, it's a casual thing, but it still has some direction. Um, is 5G a race?

• 35:40Speaker 03

  You know, I've grown tired of that metaphor, but someone also recently said, is 5G overhyped or underhyped? And I thought that was a good way of putting it. I actually think despite it all, it's underhyped.

• 35:53Nilay Patel?

  Okay.

• 35:54Speaker 03

  Wow.

• 35:54Nilay Patel?

  That's a, that's a new answer.

• 35:56Speaker 03

  Because if we start appending this connectivity to everything we do with amazingly low levels of latency and radically fast speeds, we can create efficiency and smarts in every aspect of our economy that has not existed before. Now, between here and then is hard because we have to develop a whole bunch of new use cases to make it happen. And I think worldwide, you hear about this race because everybody wants to be in on this. And of course, when it came to 4G, the United States led, right? We, we pushed 700 megahertz spectrum out early. We had the iPhone developed here. The applications economy started on our shores. I mean, we changed the world.

• 36:37Nilay Patel?

  By the way, I only half buy that argument, to be completely honest with you.

• 36:41Speaker 03

  Really? You see, I think the 4G revolution was led by the United States. And I think that the connectivity that is in all of our palms and pockets all the time is really directly related to a whole bunch of choices, public and private, that were made in the United States. So I think the rest of the world took a look at that and saw what the next generation of wireless service looks like. And they, you know, they're doing their best to make it happen wherever they are. And frankly, I understand that instinct because technology is so important for our future. Everyone wants to lead.

• 37:13Nilay Patel?

  The reason I only half buy it is, you know, we had, we've had economists on the show and I asked them this question. And they're like, look, the United States has a gigantic, wealthy, single market. Once, once you launch a new app, it hits that critical mass instantly in a way that European tech companies can't do, in a way that doesn't exist in China.

• 37:33Speaker 03

  We have unique scale and that scale is one of our powers in the deployment and development of technology, and particularly software-based technology. So that is a superpower that we have here on our shores. And not every other nation has it. You're absolutely right about that.

• 37:48Nilay Patel?

  And then, and then the other piece I would say is, okay, we won the race to 4G. But what do you and I end up talking about the most is we have not actually hit everybody in the States and our service is more expensive than many, many other companies that came in second. And so to me, there's like this huge value in coming in second that I kind of don't understand or that we haven't like really spelled out.

• 38:11Speaker 03

  That's true. I think I'd like an economist to study some of the things you're saying. But I also think we have to put a new premium on competition. We allowed two of our four wireless providers to merge this year, or last year, over my, over my objection. But I think we have to recognize that competition really matters going forward because we want our airwaves distributed broadly because we want innovation to come from so many more places. And by the way, that's not just an argument for commercial licensed airwaves that move through our wireless providers. It's an argument for unlicensed airwaves which are used for Wi-Fi. Because like Wi-Fi is where you create without asking anyone's permission.

• 38:52Speaker 03

  We need more Wi-Fi in our economy because a lot of wireless creativity depends on it. And when we move into the 5G era, a lot of traffic is going to be downloaded on it. So figuring out how to clear our skies for more unlicensed and more Wi-Fi has got to be front of mind. The good news is, I feel on a bipartisan basis like never before, this FCC is actually thinking about it. Not a lot of people spend a lot of time thinking about unlicensed spectrum. You know, it's, it sounds like it's illicit or something, but it's one of the most important things that makes our economy work. I mean, if you want to use Wi-Fi, if you want to use your home garage door opener, there are so many things in your life that are powered off unlicensed spectrum.

• 39:36Speaker 03

  There are so many more that could be in the 5G era. We absolutely need to clear more space in our skies for it. We need to do it fast.

• 39:43Nilay Patel?

  So mechanic, I know there are some proposals out there, but mechanically, how do you see this working? We're going to move everybody to 5G on a new set of spectrum, we'll clear up some old spectrum and make that unlicensed? Is that, is that sort of the broad?

• 39:55Speaker 03

  I think one of the challenges that comes with our airwaves are, you know, born out of physics, we're not making more. So we got to use what we have more efficiently, develop technologies to make them more efficient. But then we also have to recognize that sometimes we allocated whole bands in our skies to older services that don't make as much sense in today's economy, or to federal authorities who might be able to accomplish their missions using fewer airwaves. And now if we can get full-on spectrum nerdy for a second, I'd point out the best thing that we did on this recently is in the 3.5 gigahertz band, because that used to be used for, in part, for military radar.

• 40:37Speaker 03

  But the Defense Department acknowledged that they're really only using it on the coasts and only very occasionally. So the FCC came in and said, well, can we sell a secondary right to this spectrum? And then to the extent that's not being used, can we have an unlicensed right for Wi-Fi? So instead of just having this Commercial or federal or Wi-Fi mix. We took a single band and we created this hierarchy of rights to be more efficient, make greater use of it and prove that we can cooperate with authorities like the Defense Department that also have our airwaves. It is a giant test for the future of spectrum policy. I am so excited it happened here and I think it's going to be one that we're not just going to use more often.

• 41:22Speaker 03

  We're probably going to export this model abroad. So you heard it here first. The 3.5 gigahertz band is one of the most innovative things we're doing in spectrum. And even if you're not a wireless nerd like myself, you should watch it.

• 41:35Nilay Patel?

  Does that plan require the devices to sort of manage their spectrum use?

• 41:38Speaker 03

  There are spectrum access systems and we're working a lot more now, looking at real-time ways we can manage our airwaves. You know, if they're not in use, why couldn't we have a secondary use? Just think, we could take the scarcity we know when it comes to wireless policy and turn it into abundance. I think this is a really exciting time for spectrum policy and I think the challenge is making more people understand that because right now, spectrum policy to most people is how many bars do I have my phone? Legitimately, right? Do I get service? Do I not get service? But how we zone our skies is spectrum policy and it matters to every one of us that counts on being connected with any wireless device.

• 42:20Nilay Patel?

  Well, the reason I ask about that is a bet on sort of devices allocating themselves spectrum or not, depending on what's around them, is fundamentally like very similar to sort of the white space bet. And I have like literally, Microsoft has been promising me white space internet for 10 years. And like I, at this point, I'm just like totally skeptical.

• 42:40Speaker 03

  No, no, no. Okay. Well, first of all, white spaces was an idea that we came up with here in the United States first. We'd say, okay, there are these slices of our airwaves between our broadcast television stations. Why don't we use them for wireless broadband? Because hey, if we have unlicensed there, we'll have the ability to go really far. Those signals propagate far. There's lots of ways we could use it. And by the way, it was a great idea. It still is a great idea. But one thing that's important that happened in the interim is we had digital television transition. We started to buy back. Different spectrum from our broadcasters and reorganize our broadcast band starting in

• 43:20Speaker 03

  2012. And all of that has led to a shuffling around of service that I think has slowed the development of white spaces. But it's my hope that we get our mojo back, get up and running, because I think it's a really tremendous technology that makes efficient use of the airwaves like I'm describing. And I think it's still exciting. I would like to see it actually happen here and not just abroad.

• 43:45Nilay Patel?

  You know, in these times of strife, it is comforting to just always get consistent press releases from Microsoft about white space internet. Like, it's something I can rely on. Hopefully, I'll rely on it for the next 10 years.

• 43:57Speaker 03

  Consistency is very powerful. I think consistency from Washington is a good thing now, too. You know, I think we might need some more of that. But anyway.

• 44:07Speaker 04

  Well, and the interesting thing, too, I just want to, what I hear about like the C-band auction and Senator Van Hollen, I know some other folks are trying to figure out how to profit off of these auctions to get 5G going, that kind of benefits the people who are left behind, too. So there was that bill. So you would have, basically, you'd have all these folks bidding on all this spectrum. And that's a lot of money, because it's such a limited, you know, limited resource. So that money, if you can put that into a trust, or put that in somewhere else, to get the people who are being left behind. So Van Hollen is working on that bill that would get some of that money going to the homework gap. Right. Right. There's creative ways to use the money you're getting from this kind of stuff to help other people in the long run.

• 44:48Speaker 03

  No, absolutely. Because remember, when we sell off our airwaves to the big wireless carriers, we give them licenses, we raise billions and billions of dollars at the FCC. Now, when we sell off public airwaves, wouldn't it be good if we took some portion of those dollars and used it for a public service, a public challenge? And so Senator Van Hollen identified the homework gap and said, why don't we take some of these billions and use it to create a trust fund, where every school could have Wi-Fi hotspots, or come up with programs to make sure every student is connected at home? I mean, it's smart thinking about our resources, and how to make sure our public airwaves, even when they're sold for licenses to private actors, support a public service.

• 45:33Nilay Patel?

  Okay, it would be criminal if I didn't take these last few minutes and not talk to you directly about net neutrality, which is an issue I know you're very passionate about, issue historically The Verge has been very passionate about. We've talked a lot about increasing competition, about getting more services out there. Net neutrality as a regulation has always somewhat been in tension with the idea of competition, right? When I see multiple wireless carriers competing about what services they're going to zero-rate, they all just sort of compete their way into unlimited in some way, right? Like, that's what competition does. It ends you up at net neutrality. How are you, in this moment, it's been several years, how are you seeing the internet play out in the absence of net neutrality, and are you seeing that dynamic take place?

• 46:17Speaker 03

  Well, one thing's clear to me from data at the FCC, most people in this country don't have a choice of home broadband providers. So we don't have a fully competitive broadband market. And that makes it troubling that your broadband provider could, without net neutrality, just block websites, throttle services, or censor online content. Because the FCC gave them the green light to do that legally, they've got business incentives to do so, they've got the technical know-how. And I think you start to see it happening with zero-rating and the like. But I'll also acknowledge that broadband providers are under tremendous scrutiny in Washington. The House of Representatives passed a bill to put net neutrality back in

• 46:58Speaker 03

  place. It doesn't have all the support of the Senate, but it's pretty close, which means that the public is watching, legislators are watching, we know state houses are watching because several states have passed their own net neutrality bills. So our providers are being really careful. But I think it's smart to put this on the books. I think the public wants it, and I think Washington should be responsive to that.

• 47:20Nilay Patel?

  Do you think that this moment is another inflection point of, hey, we're just on the internet? Like, it is hard to imagine AT&T deciding how the internet works right now when everyone is using it to...

• 47:33Speaker 03

  No, I think you're making such a good point. And then here's what's crazy, is in this moment, right now, the FCC is actually requesting comment on net neutrality again. You see, back on February 19th, you might have missed it, the agency put out a document with what I would describe as... One of the most bureaucratic titles ever. Yeah, right. And that's a challenge, given what I do. So here we go. WCB seeks comment on discrete issues arising from Mozilla decision.

• 48:03Nilay Patel?

  Oh.

• 48:03Speaker 03

  Right? What that actually says is the court shipped back to us our net neutrality decision and said, we might have gotten it wrong on how net neutrality affects public safety, low-income consumers and broadband infrastructure. And so you have to do some more work on that. So the FCC dutifully put this out for public comment and asked the public to comment. But again, it did it in a document titled, "WCB seeks comment on discrete issues arising from Mozilla decision." The words "net neutrality" are nowhere in the title. They're nowhere in the document. It's almost like the agency doesn't want to hear from the public. So I think they should hear from the public anyway.

• 48:45Speaker 03

  I think we should make every effort to make sure that this agency, even with this virus ongoing, but especially with this ongoing, because we're living our lives online, tell us what you think about net neutrality. Tell us if you think the agency got it wrong. File in the docket, which is 17-108, or reach out to my office and we can help you do so, because this agency has to be responsive to the public. And putting something out like this, which doesn't even mention the words "net neutrality", is really an effort to avert the public's gaze and not talk to them about this issue. And they deserve better than us cowering like this. So, anyway, there you go. Again, soapbox, but I, I think that this is another opportunity to comment.

• 49:27Speaker 03

  And the public needs to step up, do so, and help make clear to this agency, yet again, that they care about net neutrality and that this issue matters to everyone who counts on going online for, you know, modern life.

• 49:40Nilay Patel?

  How are you protecting against the comment being gamed and astroturfed the way it was last time?

• 49:45Speaker 03

  Oh, my gosh. Last time, we had millions of comments with stolen identities. We had 500,000 comments from Russian email addresses. I mean, it's astonishing to me that we haven't substantially changed our systems. We're doing a study of how to change our systems. That is not good enough. It's not good enough by any measure. But the bottom line is we need the public to speak up. And the agency is making it really hard for them to do so. It's almost like we don't want them to. So I think, I think now's a good time to make some noise and make sure that they, the, uh, the public, uh, makes enough noise so that we hear them anyway.

• 50:22Nilay Patel?

  But let me, I, I know you said that, you know, there's a lot of scrutiny in Congress and the, the bills out there, but cosplaying is, is a telco executive again. If I was Randall Stevenson and I ran CNN and I ran AT&T and, you know, the whole spectrum of things they run, this would be an amazing time for him to say, CNN now streams on AT&T wireless for free, right? And he could, he could sell it as a benefit to the public. We're taking this off your data cap. And people would, would appreciate that. But that is exactly the kind of paid prioritization that, you know, net neutrality was supposed to prevent.

• 50:57Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 50:57Nilay Patel?

  And yet he hasn't done it. Why do you think that is?

• 51:00Speaker 03

  It's, um, it's challenging. I do think there's a lot of attention on those providers right now because we might be in a position in the not too distant future where Congress could act. So I think they're being careful. I appreciate they're being careful. But again, I, you know, I don't, I don't think careful is a regulatory policy. I think a little bit of oversight is usually the best course and that's what's missing here.

• 51:23Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I've, I've, I've said to some of the policy folks at carriers before who they always say, well, if we screw it up, you'll yell at us. And I was like, I don't, that's not a policy. Like, the virtue to get mad at you is great. Yes, we will. But that's not, no one should rely on us paying attention all the time in that way. Okay. So last question, I ask it to sort of everyone who comes through. It's not about policy. So I will, I will, I will, I will take your invitation and call you Jessica. Jessica.

• 51:49Speaker 03

  Go right ahead. Go right ahead.

• 51:51Nilay Patel?

  When do you work? When do you actually take, because you write a lot, you speak a lot, you do a lot of things, you're a public servant. When do you actually take the time away from your public schedule, talking to folks like us and actually work?

• 52:05Speaker 03

  Okay, so, um, total admission. I wake up really early.

• 52:10Nilay Patel?

  I hate that this is the answer.

• 52:11Speaker 03

  I can't stay up late at night. You know, those people who in another era would be out, um, out getting a drink and spending time around town. Uh, that is not me. I go, I go to bed early. I will own up to that. I wake up really early and I drink a lot of coffee. You know, as vices go, I think those aren't so bad. But what it does for me is it gives me a little quiet time at home to just sit, read and think. And you gotta have some sustained quiet time to do some thinking. Or ideas don't come to you, or you won't find a way through challenges. So to me, that's a, that's a pot of coffee and some early time in the morning on my dining room table.

• 52:52Nilay Patel?

  What's early?

• 52:53Speaker 03

  Oh, earlier than I probably want to acknowledge. And I acknowledge that's not for everybody, but it seems to be working in my house.

• 53:00Nilay Patel?

  See, I wake up late enough that I actually have to make the regulation and block the time on the calendar.

• 53:04Speaker 03

  Ah, see, you know, but I'm not gonna, I believe these things are sort of innate. So I'm not going to try to convince you or bring you over my early bird side. I think we are who we are, but that's who I am. And I know like nothing better than an early morning, quiet and some reading.

• 53:20Nilay Patel?

  All right, well, Commissioner Rosenworth, thank you for taking the time. I know it's a very busy time in Washington. I know that you have a lot to manage. I appreciate you taking the time to talk to us today.

• 53:27Speaker 03

  All right, thank you.

• 53:28Speaker 04

  Thanks so much.

• 53:30Nilay Patel?

  All right, my thanks to FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworth, also to Makena Kelly. That was a great conversation. We're going to keep doing Verge Casts even though everyone's at home. We'll have the chat show on Friday. We're going to keep lining up interviews for people who can do them with us over Skype. I want to hear from you. I'm at Reckless. Let me know if it sounds good. We're doing the best we can. I think we're doing all right, but let me know, let me know who you want me to talk to in this extremely weird time. I'm at Reckless. Love hearing from you. Talk to you on Friday.

• 54:01Speaker 08

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• 54:26Speaker 09

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