By Seton Motley via The Daily Signal | December 19, 2024
It’s always hilarious when people want government to do stuff. Because not only is government awful at everything, it is excruciatingly slow at being awful at everything.
People want government to continue wasting hundreds of billions of dollars connecting us to the internet when the government already acknowledged a decade ago that everyone was already connected to the internet. The Joe Biden-Kamala Harris administration has wasted yet another three years and $42 billion on yet another new government program that has connected zero people to the internet.
How are more and more people actually connecting to the internet these days? Via the private sector, obviously. And via wireless connections, of course. Via the networks built in the air rather than in the ground. And as ever more people connect wirelessly, ever more cut their grounded cords. All by its onesies, wired king Comcast is losing nearly 400,000 subscribers this year.
I’ll bet Comcast noticed that. I’ll bet their fellow wired internet providers noticed. I know China noticed. But our government didn’t. Because our government remains dishonest and steadfastly impervious to reality.
Our government counts neither cellular nor satellite as internet connections when calculating “unconnected” numbers to allegedly “justify” its continued “connectivity” boondoggles. The government still almost exclusively wastes hundreds of billions of dollars on wired connections.
Meanwhile, government owns the majority of the wireless spectrum that the private providers need to build and expand the wireless networks we are increasingly using. Government is supposed to be clearing its spectrum and then selling it to the private providers.
Except the Biden-Harris administration has done no such thing. It’s been instead too busy navel-gazing with a yearslong “study” of maybe one day eventually freeing up some spectrum—while simultaneously waging interagency spectrum turf wars that freed up exactly zero spectrum for the private sector.
And what about the Federal Communications Commission’s authority to auction any spectrum that government extrudes, should it actually extrude any? Congress let it lapse in March 2023. It’s the first time in three decades government allowed that to happen. So, the first time in the cellphone era.
What a titanic, cacophonous mess Biden-Harris has been. We can be thankful that Donald Trump is arriving on the scene. No surprise, things will immediately improve. Communications Daily reports: “Three former Republican FCC commissioners agreed Thursday that the Trump administration will likely focus on making more spectrum available for 5G and 6G.”
Trump has named as his FCC chairman sitting Commissioner Brendan Carr. What did then-Commissioner Carr say about Biden’s handling of spectrum? It wasn’t positive. In 2023, a statement from Carr said:
The Biden administration released its much-anticipated plan for freeing up spectrum—the airwaves necessary to secure U.S. leadership in wireless and connect millions of Americans to high-speed internet services. Bold and immediate action on spectrum is vital because the federal government’s progress on spectrum has stalled out under the current administration.
So, how much spectrum does the Biden administration’s spectrum plan commit to providing? Zero. After nearly three years of study, the Biden administration does not commit to freeing up even a single MHz [megahertz] of spectrum. Instead, they are announcing that they will continue studying the issue for years to come.
Clearly Carr isn’t a fan of governmental navel-gazing. So, what will he do about spectrum as chairman? Three guesses, but the first two don’t count. Communications Daily again reports: “Brendan Carr is expected to be as aggressive as possible on spectrum and wireless siting issues ….‘[Carr] will pursue a much more aggressive spectrum game plan that will free commercial spectrum for licensed, unlicensed, and shared purposes.’”
Carr needs Washington’s help, of course. Congress must immediately reauthorize the FCC’s authority to sell the spectrum Carr will “aggressively” free up. And some congressional assistance with the government’s interagency spectrum turf wars would be nice.
It’s good that Texas Republican Sen. Ted Cruz is already teeing up some of that assistance. He’ll be chairman of the relevant Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee. And he ain’t screwing around either. According to the Houston Chronicle:
Cruz is poised to ramp up a long-running battle between Congress and the U.S. military …. At issue is the military’s control of a large swath of airwaves that cellular companies say they need to access in order to keep up with the explosive amount of data Americans are downloading onto their phones …. The Texas Republican said he will make it a top priority to open the airwaves, known as spectrum, to the private sector when he takes over the chairmanship in January.
The Biden-Harris administration was a four-year dead-spot delay in our wireless advancement. Which thrilled China to no end. But didn’t do much for us.
Here’s hoping Carr and Cruz get a lot of help from their Washington brethren. It’ll be exceedingly difficult to Make America Great Again if China is better than we are at wireless communications.
Seton Motley is the founder and president of Less Government.
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