
Fast, affordable Internet access for all.
In this episode of the podcast, Chris speaks again with Blair Levin, former Director of the National Broadband Plan and current Equity Analyst at New Street Research. Together, they dive into the major issues shaping the year ahead for broadband and telecommunications.
Levin shares insights on the evolving landscape of network ownership, media regulations, and market dynamics, while addressing pressing topics like the expiration of the Affordable Connectivity Program and its impact on affordability. The discussion also touches on the BEAD program, fixed and wireless broadband competition, and the influence of geopolitical and economic policies on deployment efforts.
Levin critiques the Federal Communications Commission's priorities under Brendan Carr's leadership, predicts significant shifts in media ownership and content distribution, and examines the role of satellite Internet and emerging technologies. This forward-looking conversation also highlights the importance of reliable data and competitive intensity in shaping the broadband future.
Tune in for an engaging discussion filled with expert predictions, political analysis, and reflections on the broader implications of broadband policy decisions.
This show is 45 minutes long and can be played on this page or via Apple Podcasts or the tool of your choice using this feed.
Transcript below.
We want your feedback and suggestions for the show-please e-mail us or leave a comment below.
Listen to other episodes or view all episodes in our index. See other podcasts from the Institute for Local Self-Reliance.
Thanks to Arne Huseby for the music. The song is Warm Duck Shuffle and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (3.0) license
Blair Levin (00:07):
We will not have succeeded in solving the affordability divide. In fact, no country took a larger step backwards and the United States when it let the Affordable Connectivity Program expire.
Christopher Mitchell (00:21):
Welcome to another episode of the Community Broadband Bits podcast. I'm Christopher Mitchell at the Institute for [00:00:30] Local Self-Reliance. It's 2025 and we're going to kick it off with Blair Levin, Former Director of the National Broadband Plan, former Chief of Staff at the Federal Communications Commission, currently an Equities Analyst at New Street Research and General Seer of Internet related things. Welcome back to the show, Blair.
Blair Levin (00:49):
Thank you so much, Chris. Good to see you and Happy New Year.
Christopher Mitchell (00:51):
Yes, likewise. So we're going to talk about what we expect. We're going to keep it relatively tight for you and I less than an hour, and [00:01:00] I have to say that as I was getting moving around this morning, Spotify picked out for me this song by Tom Petty, it's time to move on. Time to get going. What lies ahead? I have no way of knowing and felt very accurate for this year.
Blair Levin (01:18):
One of the things that really cracks me up is that everybody in DC they say things like you can't predict the future. And I want to say to them, for 25 years, [00:01:30] people have been paying me a decent salary to do exactly that. You may not be accurate, you may not be right, and you have to know what you have a high confidence in what you have a low confidence in. But yeah, you probably know what's ahead. I think we can make reasonable guesses.
Christopher Mitchell (01:48):
I mean, that's the thing is I feel like I have a number of, I have more low confidence and very few high confidence. My high confidence is just that anything could happen, which isn't a very good high confidence prediction.
Blair Levin (01:59):
No, I don't think that's right [00:02:00] actually. I mean, one of the things that's interesting when you look in the fullness of time, generally speaking, when we're talking about the networks, they're the same networks owned by the same people that we had approximately when the 1996 Act passed. And my history goes back to then, and a lot of my reflections are about that. On the other hand, in terms of the most popular apps, totally different in terms [00:02:30] of the devices, Blackberry gone, Nokia gone. So there are certain things where there's very significant changes, but my guess is a year from now the most powerful networks and the most powerful networks, Starling probably will have more customers, but it's not really going to be material to most
Christopher Mitchell (02:52):
Americans. Yeah, that makes sense. I guess what I'm thinking of is I feel like when I look around at people's predictions, and I've been [00:03:00] saying this and I feel like people think it's because I have a certain political mindset, which is super jumbled anyway, but at any rate, I think there's a decent chance that the BEAD program is just tossed out unlawfully and there's no consequences for doing it. I hope we don't see that happen. But that's where for me, and I don't think you share that agreement. I think you disagree with me on that, but I feel like a lot of people are not paying attention to some of the ways in which, and it may not happen in Telecom, [00:03:30] but I think there are going to be very big surprises as to things that we all thought was settled. Ways of doing business are going to change.
Blair Levin (03:38):
I agree with that On other things, I mean, the biggest question mark in a way is the tariffs. And I hear things all over the place in that. Another big question mark is mass deportation, and there is a view among a lot of people that one of the geniuses of Donald Trump as a politician [00:04:00] is to convince people that he's only going to do the things that they like, that he says he's going to do,
Christopher Mitchell (04:06):
But
Blair Levin (04:07):
The things he says he's going to do that they don't like, he's not really going to do them. I hear this all the time on Wall Street. He's not really going to do tariffs. He's not really going to deport 10 million people. That kind of stuff. That part I agree with you on a little unpredictable,
Christopher Mitchell (04:23):
And if we can just talk about this neutrally, I don't know how many people we've already lost, but I think it's worth going back to [00:04:30] the first term and saying he campaigned on building the wall. He modestly expanded the wall and he got credit for building the wall among his supporters. And the question is, will that be the same sort of thing for tariffs and for deportations, which we are talking about because it has a material impact on broadband deployment and the economics around broadband?
Blair Levin (04:54):
Yeah, absolutely.
Christopher Mitchell (04:55):
That would be my most likely guess, is that there will be some small amount of tariffs and some small [00:05:00] number of deportations and they will talk about it as though it is a significant amount and they will move on and do other things with some tail risk that they would be doing much more of that. And then that would then be very disruptive to the industry is what I'm expecting.
Blair Levin (05:15):
So I'm going to agree with you on the deportations, it's going to be far less than the 10 million, and there are lots of different reasons for that. The thing about tariffs is you can look at it from an economic perspective, you can look at it from a national security perspective, but Trump tends to look [00:05:30] at things totally from a personal leverage perspective, and nothing would give the president more leverage than to say, okay, here's a baseline 10% for everybody. Now you come kiss the ring and to ask me whether I should increase your competitors' tariff to 30% and decrease yours to zero. And we saw that in the first term where Republican aligned firms got breaks on the tariffs and democratic firms got less. [00:06:00] So I tend to have more of a political analysis of that, but that's a low confidence thing. And I do think that one thing that's really interesting and important is to watch the bond market. The bond market is not believing that America is going to be great again and inflation is going down, and if it goes up even higher, I think the bond vigilantes are going to be the adults in the room in terms of controlling [00:06:30] some of what I, obviously I have policy instincts, but just from a Wall Street analysis point of view, I think that's a critical element to watch.
Christopher Mitchell (06:40):
We're going to dive into specific communications issues in a minute, but the last thing I want to say about that is the thing that I find not enough people take seriously, which is the way these things can spiral, and I think what you said regarding President Trump being able to individually negotiate [00:07:00] with different firms about tariffs. I mean, apple, I think is perhaps a canonical example. They found a way to make sure they were exempted from it in their first term. If other countries decide to start using export tariffs to respond, that's where things I think can just sort of escalate beyond where President Trump is the one setting the agenda.
Blair Levin (07:19):
Yeah, a hundred percent.
Christopher Mitchell (07:21):
And why? I just feel like a lot of people forget that there's a two-way street with tariffs, and perhaps people will be so intimidated that they won't do that, but [00:07:30] there's ways in which those things can spiral out of control and get beyond any one individual's ability to manipulate them.
Blair Levin (07:36):
I think anyone who reads the history of the depression would have to agree with you, the great depression of the thirties. Yeah.
Christopher Mitchell (07:44):
Okay. So can we expect the Federal Communications Commission to dive in February and try to really adjust, pull attachment rates to increase investment and start proceeding to fix the universal service [00:08:00] fund? Is that something that we'll see in the cards?
Blair Levin (08:04):
One of the great things about Brendan Carr as chair from my perspective is he's pretty clear about what his priorities are, and I'll get to those two things, but those are not what he's been focused on. The number one thing he's been focused on is the so-called censorship cartel represented by tech, and we could chat about that, but fundamentally, [00:08:30] he sent a letter in November to Microsoft, Apple, Google, and Meta asking questions about their use of a firm called News Guard, which rates news sites. And I would say if you look at that correspondence you're struck by, I'm struck by a couple of things. Number one, what jurisdiction does he have here? Number two, what is he really trying to do? Number three, how is this deregulatory? It goes to what you were saying about the wall. You forgot the fact that Mexico was supposed [00:09:00] to pay for it.
Christopher Mitchell (09:01):
I just didn't want to get into it. Yeah.
Blair Levin (09:03):
Trump and MAGA again, again, I give them credit for a certain kind of political brilliance, even if I find it very problematic from a country's long-term point of view. They're very good at choosing their enemies and getting people to believe that he may not accomplish it, but at least he's attacking the right people. In fact, I think Vance said, our people hate the right people. I have to say that's a very disturbing thing to me from kind of an ethical [00:09:30] and religious point of view. But from a political point of view, I think that's right. And I think what Carr is doing is saying that the enemy is big tech. Okay?
Christopher Mitchell (09:39):
Big tech is fascinating to me. We just had X censor a bunch of Donald Trump's biggest fans and nobody cared. So let's just be very clear about what's happening here. This is not at all about censorship. It could not be more clear course not all when that happened. Yes. Okay, so your second thing, go ahead.
Blair Levin (09:57):
I'm sorry. I should have mentioned that I [00:10:00] find car's letter problematic in a variety of ways, and now I am not speaking as an analyst because as an analyst, I would simply say it'll have no impact on those four companies. But if we're going to go to what my own policy preferences are, that wouldn't be the North Star Telecommunications policy is the censorship cartel. But you see the head of the FTC saying that too, and it's part of a larger kind of MAGA theme. A second theme is that the broadcasters should be held to a public interest standard and he wants to revive it. Now, [00:10:30] this actually does have implications for communications, but they're kind of a cushion shot, but he's currently reviewing the Skydance Paramount deal and basically saying, gee, I don't know. It's really problematic. They were way, they're news coverage way too pro-democratic.
(10:48):
Stephen Colbert's jokes are much more about Republicans than Democrats. It's totally unfair. Well, I agree that we should have a vibrant public interest standard. [00:11:00] The problem with what he's doing is it appears that he's only doing it in the area of transactions where he has very high authority to do whatever he wants, as opposed to having a rulemaking where if you actually wrote a rule that said your news coverage can't be too biased one way or another, he would destroy Sinclair Broadcasting and Salem Broadcasting. When a television, a local affiliate group, the other radio group who are, they are like Fox News, which is a cable channel. [00:11:30] So that's a complicated thing. But he has gone on to say that he wants to support local affiliates in their battles to get more compensation from the big networks. And here's where we get into broadband, because what you're essentially saying is that the broadband providers who are also mvpd, that is to say they deliver multichannel video programming. They're going to have to pay more,
Christopher Mitchell (12:00):
[00:12:00] Right? But if for anyone who's gotten into broadband in the past 10 years, certainly the last five, I don't even think they know the relationship between local broadcasters and what they were required to pay for and how those relationships work. I don't know if you have a 32nd explainer on that that could help.
Blair Levin (12:18):
Well, if you go back to the eighties, basically what you had with the big cable companies, they controlled what the content was and they got a piece of the action that [00:12:30] is to say the large cable company. Then TCI owned a piece of CNN, and they owned a piece of this, and they owned a piece of everything in the Cable Act of 92. Congress said, no, the cable providers, they can own a piece, but they have to offer the programming on an equal terms to competitors to cable. And that destroyed cable's interest in owning the programming. It didn't make sense anymore because the whole purpose of having ownership was to control who got it. But then they were selling these [00:13:00] very large packages. The big change came with Netflix, and suddenly you have people subscribing to apps, Netflix, Apple TV, Apple Plus, Amazon Prime, but now Disney plus Peacock Paramount, and the number of people subscribed to these big cable channel bundles has gone down. And what you're going to see next [00:13:30] year is a real reconfiguration of the media industry, partly driven by policy, but mostly driven by markets, but it's going to affect the way we use broadband. It's going to affect the economics of broadband as well.
Christopher Mitchell (13:43):
And so you think that there, well, not you think there is a virtual certainty that in the future, Comcast will not be distributing linear television programming over its network? The question is at what point that will happen? We're not expecting it to happen this year. [00:14:00] There's an outside chance it might impart based on some of these different factors.
Blair Levin (14:05):
Well, on Wall Street, there's a concept known as a melting ice cube, a business that you know is time limited. It will eventually go away. And what Wall Street is betting on is how many more years does it have? If the market thinks this ice cube will be melt in five years and you think it'll melt in three, you short it. If you think it'll melt in 10, you buy it. Right? And private equity is likely to buy a number of assets that [00:14:30] Wall Street considers melting ice cubes because they still produce a lot of cash and they're betting on the amount of time. But at some time in the future, will there be the big bundle sold by the multi-channel video providers, distributors? No, that's going to go away. Linear television will eventually go away, but it will take a long time.
Christopher Mitchell (14:51):
And so for people who are tracking that media ownership and issues around media ownership and also some of these [00:15:00] claims about censorship could change the regulations, which will change the incentives of how this programming is distributed, changing that whole market in ways that are difficult to forecast and how it will change the melting ice cube.
Blair Levin (15:13):
That's right. That's right. But you already see this. Comcast is spinning off their cable channels. There's lots of expectations on Wall Street that that group of channels will somehow align with Warner Channels and maybe Paramount, and you have the super group. [00:15:30] It is very much like you push a balloon somewhere, the air goes somewhere else. That business model is fundamentally not attractive to the consumers in the way that it was. And incoming Chair Carr wants to help local affiliates in their negotiations with the big networks. I understand why he's doing it, but [00:16:00] whether he'll succeed or whether he'll simply actually accelerate the end of linear television, I don't know.
Christopher Mitchell (16:07):
And this gets into a question that I think is important. I raise it frequently among friends of mine, allies on the left, on certain issues where I feel like there's a difference between really wanting to achieve something and being seen doing something in the short term. And that's where I feel like we would expect [00:16:30] to see kind of half-hearted not well thought out policy initiatives on some of these matters. As someone like Chairman Carr, I don't think is deeply committed to gutting the First Amendment in order to, for a particular point of view, I think he wants to increase his standing among people who see that as important right now. And so he doesn't have a 10 year plan for doing this. He has a one or two year plan for doing it. And the consequences of that could be difficult to guess.
Blair Levin (16:59):
Motive is always [00:17:00] hard. And we tend to judge other people by their actions, ourselves, by our motives, because we're always well motivated, but we sometimes attribute bad motives, and I don't want to get into that too much. I'll simply say what was interesting about a letter that he wrote Disney, is that he defined the problem in a way that he can go after Disney, Comcast and [00:17:30] Paramount. Huh? Is it a coincidence that those are the three companies that own the three national news providers that Donald Trump has said should lose their licenses, but it doesn't include Fox? Interesting. But I think on that, Brendan is a very smart able guy. He's been on the commission a long time. I think he will be consequential in terms of what he does, but one [00:18:00] of the things he does better than anyone else currently on the commission and possibly as well as anyone ever is he uses the power of the bully pulpit. He was enormously successful in talking about TikTok and getting congressional support to Banon. Now of course, since Trump changed his mind, Carr has been quiet on that topic.
Christopher Mitchell (18:22):
Well, lemme make the point in a different way. How many people listening to the show can name the second Republican commissioner on the FCC? [00:18:30] Right now,
Blair Levin (18:30):
I listen to the show and I can
Christopher Mitchell (18:33):
Don't know how often that name Simonton has been in the news compared to car, but it is certainly been far less frequently. Okay. We've talked about media ownership. I think the only time we really talk about Dish is when you're on here, but I want you to make the case of why people who are concerned about broadband deployment have an interest in what happens with Dish in the next year.
Blair Levin (18:57):
So I would say Dish is the most important company [00:19:00] for markets. And what I mean by that is if you believe they're going to succeed, your view of everything else is different. If you believe they're going to fail your view of everything else, if you have a fourth wireless provider, that changes the competitive intensity of the market. And since now, wireless is to some extent competing with fixed, not entirely, but to some extent it goes throughout the market, and [00:19:30] Ergen is very much a disruptor. The general view of Wall Street is that it will not succeed that the effort will go into bankruptcy and it'll be broken up and sold for parts. But even that is significant because as we look at the future of Spectrum, the biggest portfolio of spectrum that may become available in some way would be the dish portfolio of spectrum.
(19:55):
So we'll see what happens. I think under the Democrats, you [00:20:00] would've seen a lot of accommodation in terms of build out requirement, timing and things like that. And in fact, the Democrats did extend that build out requirement to do everything they can to help 'em succeed. There is some point of view that it doesn't matter what the government does, it's simply not going to work. He's too late to the game. I don't trust my level of knowledge to make a prediction about that. But what I do know [00:20:30] is that whatever way it goes, there'll be a cascading effect in the market. And I would say for broadband, generally, Brendan Carr nor the Democrats have any plan for increasing competitive intensity in the market other than dish. And this, again, by the way, is very different than the world as we saw it in 1996, where we thought we could increase competitive intensity in every sector, and we were [00:21:00] right back then. Cable was very isolated from the telcos who were isolated from long distance and lots of different reasons for that. But that massive change, taking single purpose networks, voice, video data, and making them all basically data networks in which voice and video are just applications, absolutely increased the competitive intensity. This is it. There is no other plan.
Christopher Mitchell (21:28):
Well, this is something that I was thinking [00:21:30] about the other day because over break, I took some time to figure out how to play a certain video game with some of my friends virtually and would just sit there on an open telephone call for hours playing this game, chatting with them and stuff like that. Didn't go to the effort of setting up a discord or something else to get around it because phone calls are basically free now for most of us.
Blair Levin (21:52):
This is what we're doing right now is free.
Christopher Mitchell (21:54):
Right?
Blair Levin (21:56):
I am old enough to have gone to the World's Fair in 1964 [00:22:00] as a 10-year-old, and one of the big things was the AT&T video phone call, $3 a minute is what they were saying, which
Christopher Mitchell (22:11):
Was really expensive then.
Blair Levin (22:12):
It was really expensive then. And the notion that we're essentially now doing this for free
Christopher Mitchell (22:19):
And this gets sense something, when I was scheduling this out, I was like, I don't think we're going to be able to get into this, and I would like to dig into this more with you at some point. There's [00:22:30] a couple of things you said there, and it just sort of crossed over with. Benton recently had a piece in their digital beat looking at the 2024 competition report from the FCC, and you said in the beginning of this segment about dish that mobile is competing with fixed, and certainly mobile has taken more away from fixed than we would've expected, but now these numbers are a year old, and I seem to recall it was, well less than 10%, it might've been 8% that had mobile [00:23:00] broadband for, and now it might be approaching 10%. I would say that when we have this fight, if we do, again about whether they're complimentary or not, I still feel like mobile's not truly competitive with fixed.
Blair Levin (23:16):
I think there are a couple of different elements. One is to what extent are people going to say, I've got essentially broadband on my phone, I don't need it anywhere else,
Christopher Mitchell (23:26):
People without children. And there's a number of cases in which they'll do that, but I think that's [00:23:30] certain people will have a higher propensity to do that than others, and I don't feel like that's the general population yet.
Blair Levin (23:36):
I completely agree. A second question is to what extent will fixed wireless broadband compete with fixed wired broadband? And that's a big debate on Wall Street, and the question is, is it going like this? Is it going this? Is it going like this?
Christopher Mitchell (23:54):
Let the record show Blair Show making different graph shapes.
Blair Levin (23:57):
Oh, right. I'm sorry. In other words, is [00:24:00] it up into the right, is it flat lining or is it going up and then going down? And I can make a case for all three of them. But the third thing, and this is again a little bit outside of my lane, is to what extent does the presence of that kind of service provide a competitive impact on the way that fixed wireline broadband providers price their product? But here's my big point. What is the FCC [00:24:30] strategy for increasing competitive intensity?
Christopher Mitchell (24:33):
Right. So before you actually raise that, let me this, I pulled out two other stats which I thought were interesting. And again, there are a year old from 2022 to 2023, the percentage of households with at least three provider options for 100 down 20 up megabits per second service increased from approximately 19% to approximately 29%. And then as of December 23rd, approximately 66% [00:25:00] of households had at least two options for services meeting at least 100 by 20. And approximately 7% of households had two options for services that were roughly a gigabit down. And I guess the question that I wanted to raise with you was is this success? We have achieved success with telephone and with many other services, but I feel like the Telecommunications ACT's vision for broadband is nowhere close to a reality yet.
Blair Levin (25:28):
I'm going to disagree with you, [00:25:30] but since I was in a lot of rooms, I would say, when you say what was the vision of the 96 Act, as I think Anton Scalia said in one of the court cases that went there, the act was a model of ambiguity. And the reason was a model of ambiguity is because as one senator once said to my boss, the chair of the FCC, well, here's what we did, Reed. We put in everything that somebody wanted and then we put in everything that somebody else wanted. You figure it out. [00:26:00] This is not exactly, you could say, well, that's not the way Congress should work. Okay, fine. That is the way Congress works, uses ambiguity. So the question you're raising is what was the north star of the 96 Act? And it really was, let's open it up to competition.
(26:21):
Big question mark. We know how to allow local phone companies to compete with long distance. How do we get long distance [00:26:30] to compete with local? And that was the 14 point checklist and stuff like that. You could say, well, it turned out the long distance guys all got bought up and therefore it wasn't a success. And we did our best to try make it life possible for the long distance guys to succeed. And maybe we did a good job, maybe we did a bad job. We could go down a real rabbit hole of what really happened. But at the end of the day, the cable guys are now competing with the telcos, and there [00:27:00] are in a lot of places, CX, and then you have wireless. Look, again, we couldn't do what we're doing right now In 1996, I think we opened the door to that. I think there were a couple of key moments. One of the most important moments that nobody knows about was when we said that the wireline guys had to interconnect with the wireless guys at actual cost, which was zero. And that was when wireless [00:27:30] went from being a niche service of doctors and plumbers to a general service where I think what 98% of the adult population now is a cell phone. That was not true in 1996.
Christopher Mitchell (27:44):
No, and it couldn't have been, but the way I look at it is not looking back at like did they screw up or didn't they? It's more like the 1996 ACT threw a bunch of new tools out there, and we've seen, I think the vision of robust competition [00:28:00] and investment in some areas, in other areas, I feel like those tools have not been used as properly or they've been used more defensively. And my point in raising it is that what got us into this is you were talking about competitive intensity, and that's where I feel like we're going, right? I mean, as we roll out of 2024 into 2025, we are more or less moving away from a discussion about people who don't have access. And we're moving into a discussion.
Blair Levin (28:29):
Well, people don't have access [00:28:30] is different than competitive intensity. When I talk about competitive intensity, I'm talking about 90% of the public. When we're talking about people don't have access
Christopher Mitchell (28:38):
Precisely,
Blair Levin (28:39):
And I feel, let's just say a mid-level confidence sometime in 2025, then President Trump and Elon Musk will declare we succeeded. Everyone is now connected. Now whether that's through BEAD, it's through Starlink, whatever, they will declare victory
Christopher Mitchell (28:54):
And they will be largely correct, right? I mean, that's the point that I'm making is that we are moving in that direction where [00:29:00] we can all agree the problem is not primarily one of the number of families who have been left behind without a physical infrastructure option. The problem from my point of view is people who are not able to take full advantage, the problem from other people's point of view may be a lack of competition or those sorts of things. These things are interrelated, and I think that's where we're moving and that's what you're talking about.
Blair Levin (29:22):
I agree with you that what we might think of, what we should think of as the access divide, we're going to declare victory and that we solved it. [00:29:30] Now, that has a lot of implications for the restructuring of universal service. Maybe that's interesting people, maybe it's not. We will not have succeeded in solving the affordability. In fact, no country took a larger step backwards than the United States when it let the affordable connectivity program expire. But I see very little political pressure on the Republicans in the House and Senate or on Trump to address that affordability divide. I might [00:30:00] note that I had a editorial, I co-authored in the Wall Street Journal a few weeks ago saying that the DOGE thing that Musk is doing, they should look at closing literally thousands of offices, Veterans Affairs, Social Security, Department of Labor, or a bunch of others. There are basically customer services offices. They were set up in the thirties, forties, fifties. They did great work
Christopher Mitchell (30:22):
For people to go there in person to receive services.
Blair Levin (30:27):
But now the private sector is doing almost all [00:30:30] of that work online. And in fact, with ai, it's better to do it online. But what I say there is when they do that, they should take some of the savings and make sure we have something like an ACP program. Let me confess that I care a lot more about the ACP program than about, and this is not Blair Equity Analyst. This is Blair, former Director, National Broadband Plan, who just looks at, okay, that problem got solved, that problem got solved, this one didn't. Let's solve this problem. I'm trying to get [00:31:00] the Affordable Connectivity Program with my very limited resources and megaphone back on the table to be discussed. And I would just note the three Democrats at the FCC to me, sadly have done nothing to make it a more politically viable thing. And what I'm trying to do there is here's a way to pay for it, guys.
Christopher Mitchell (31:24):
Yes.
Blair Levin (31:25):
Yeah, having said that, do I think that's going to happen? No. Do I wish it would happened? [00:31:30] Yes.
Christopher Mitchell (31:31):
I mean, so this all gets wrapped up into USF. We've talked about that so much. I don't want to spend a lot of time, we're waiting, we'll maybe have you back on in June when we're getting the decision from the Supreme Court regarding the Fifth Circuit decision, but one of the other areas in which there is a pool of money, and for people who aren't familiar with policy, if you really want to solve an issue, you often have to identify a pool of money with which to tap to get it. You've talked before about [00:32:00] sports betting and the danger that that is causing. We have seen analyses, ProPublica, I think among others about the danger. I think New York Times may have done a piece on the rising rates of domestic abuse of male suicides, a variety of impacts from putting betting so rapidly at our fingertips, particularly US men and young men at that. And so I just wanted to give you a chance to [00:32:30] tie these things together if you want to.
Blair Levin (32:33):
Yeah. I actually gave a speech about this a couple of years ago. It's curious to me, Brendan Carr, Congressman Gallagher, historian Nile Ferguson, lots of other Republicans referred to TikTok as digital fentanyl. Now there's all the kinds of national security issues and some other things, privacy issues, but let's focus on the digital fentanyl. That is a very strong allegation, but it might be right, because what [00:33:00] we see in social media is a lot of, we see the impact very troubling in lots of ways, and you see countries like Australia, I think New Zealand banning it, social media for kids, you see states doing it. By the way, something else I'll predict comfortably, the states will be much more active in communications regulation this year than they have been in the past, and they certainly are the major ones doing social media regulation. And actually I agree with a lot of these things. [00:33:30] This is not to ban social media. It is to regulated in a way in which you reduce the harm to children. We do this with cigarettes, we do this with alcohol, we do this with other kinds of things. Well, sports, gambling, it's curious. It seems to me to be so much more destructive to so many more people and very clearly. So number one, we should tax it more as we do cigarettes and alcohol.
Christopher Mitchell (33:57):
If I developed a addiction [00:34:00] to opioids, my wife, children and parents would probably notice if I develop a problem with sports betting. The evidence suggests they may not notice. There may not be any signs of it, and so that's just one of the ways in which these things can get far worse.
Blair Levin (34:17):
A hundred percent. They will notice that when they go to the bank account and suddenly there is nothing there. They will notice that when you become an abusive person, though I know you well enough to know that you won't but it, it's astonishing to me [00:34:30] that it is probably the biggest problem on our phones and over our communications network, and yet nobody is talking about that. But they are talking about things that I agree we should talk about, but there are a lesser harm.
Christopher Mitchell (34:48):
Scott Galloway has put it on the agenda. I think 2025 will be a year in which, as you've mentioned, we'll see some friction developing from cell phone companies or different entities that have [00:35:00] a point to introduce some friction. I think. I do think that may start to happen here. I think it's people are starting to pay attention to it. You had mentioned state regulation, net neutrality, and it seems to be done at the federal level for some time, and meanwhile at the state level, it could be alive. And similarly, the shocker to me, the state of New York is able to impose a think well-designed program requiring a $15 [00:35:30] a month plan on many ISPs. That's something I think we'll see other states. Is that what you had in mind when you think states will be getting more involved
Blair Levin (35:38):
On both levels? California has a net neutrality regime. It was upheld by the Ninth Circuit. The New York low income provisions have been upheld by the Second Circuit. The Supreme Court didn't take cert. I think a number of blue states will look at doing those kinds of things. I'll make another prediction, which is if enough blue states do it, the ISPs will [00:36:00] go to the Congress and say, you must adopt laws that preempt the states, but the only way to do that is to essentially have some federal regulation in both of those areas. But here's the thing you can't do, which is what Ajit Pai tried to do with his order. He said, we have no jurisdiction over broadband except the jurisdiction to preempt states from them doing anything about broadband. [00:36:30] It doesn't work that way. And the court, I think in almost whimsical way said, now we'll agree with you under Chevron deference that you don't have authority here, but that doesn't mean you have authority to preempt states.
Christopher Mitchell (36:45):
Yeah. My biggest frustrations is that the idea that Section 2 53 is not sufficiently clear that Congress is preempting the states, but the fact that Congress has to be very clear in preempting the states gives us a little bit of cover in other areas [00:37:00] as well.
Blair Levin (37:01):
That's right. Look, I mean, here's the thing about the major question doctrine, which lots of people immediately said, this is great because this will hurt regulators, and it'll mean that Congress really has to act. Well, Congress isn't going to act, I mean, not for a long time. If Congress isn't acting, that almost automatically says states can act. Now, the interstate Commerce clause plays into this a little bit, but I think state action is when we're talking [00:37:30] about real impact, that's where we're going to see it in the next year.
Christopher Mitchell (37:34):
Spectrum's super important. Not a ton of spectrum available to hit the market. You mentioned Dish is the most likely. Is there anything else to be paying attention?
Blair Levin (37:43):
Well, for the first time, I think we'll have an auction at the end by the end of the year, the AWS three, small number of licenses material to some of the companies, but I don't think you're going to see a major change [00:38:00] in it. The big question is whether in the reconciliation tax bill, they can work out something in which the Department of Defense agrees to allow the auctioning of some portion of the 3.1 to 3.45, so-called lower three band. But I don't know that I would look, first of all, the auction won't occur for a number of years, and then secondly, given that 5G from a revenue perspective turned out to be pretty disappointing for the carriers, I don't know that they're going to be excited [00:38:30] about spending tens of billions of dollars on new spectrum to offer six G or something like that. But spectrum is definitely important. There are various things that'll be very interesting at the FCC in which Musk will attempt to get the FCC to change some of the rules, to allow Starlink to offer a more robust service, have greater capacity that could affect the competitive dynamic a little bit at the margins in less densely populated areas. But I think [00:39:00] those are the big things.
Christopher Mitchell (39:02):
Do you think that that will be open to other low Earth orbit or will they be trying to do it in an exclusive way for a SpaceX, and do you think they'll be successful if they tried to do it that
Blair Levin (39:13):
Way? Yeah, no, there's a concept at the FCC known as Purple Cowing, an item. What that means is you write the item as if it's generic, and it affects every similarly situated entity, but [00:39:30] in fact, it is narrowly targeted. And this is what I meant about the thing I referred to earlier. When Carr wrote the letter to Disney, he said, Disney is unique because what they're essentially doing is taking money from local affiliates and subsidizing their streaming video, and that's bad. Well, number one, Disney isn't unique. Comcast has a very similar business model, so does CBS. Disney may be more successful, but they're not unique. [00:40:00] Number two, for a government official to say that an entity should not cross subsidize within their corporation, that's a very tricky thing. I don't know that I agree. It could be that the subsidy is going the other way, right? I mean, these things are really complicated, but the point is you could see them doing a similar kind of purple cow. Oh yeah, this is for all Leos, but as [00:40:30] it turns out, Musk is the only one that really can take advantage of it. But maybe I'm wrong. Maybe Amazon is much more successful. They're definitely behind, but they could be successful, and then that could change things too.
Christopher Mitchell (40:42):
Right?
Blair Levin (40:42):
But I should say the real value of the Leos is what it does in the world context. Its impact on the world is much bigger than its impact on the us.
Christopher Mitchell (40:52):
One last thing I wanted to note, if we had time, which we barely do, is on competitive intensity. I had a 20-year-old [00:41:00] car I'd been driving. It's our second car, and the windshield wipers weren't working, and there was a point in a major wind driving 70 miles an hour in a major downpour when I had no windshield wipers that I was like, this is not a way to die. And so we now have an EV. In the course of going to the dealerships, I came across this dealership half mile away from an interstate south suburb of St. Paul, fairly developed area, and when they put in their charging stations at the EV, they didn't work and they realized it was because they don't really have [00:41:30] Verizon service in this area for mobile because these things all use mobile airwaves. They put in AT&T. It works just fine, and this is, I think one of the things that I don't think will come out of 2025 with any major changes on this, but it would be nice to me if we would have some acknowledgement from the Federal Communications Commission that all of its data is a fiction about where Internet service works, mobile service, fixed service, and we had a real effort.
(41:56):
I don't foresee that happening, but one of the things that we may see, [00:42:00] we don't really know what competitive intensity is happening because we don't really know where service actually is to a significant degree. I think
Blair Levin (42:07):
You're hitting a source subject for me. I talked to a lot of people privately, I'm not going to reveal those conversations, but I did a project for California that basically suggested the number one task of the CPUC is to become the authoritative source of information about the information economy in California. Basically, that was what I was suggesting. The FCC should become Jessica [00:42:30] Rosen. Al has no interest in this. I don't think Brendan car has an interest in this. It's one of those kind of, you have to be a real institutionalist to understand how the Bureau of Labor Statistics has been essential
(42:45):
To lots of things, including Wall Street. It would be great if there was an institution that as to the information economy did the same thing. It would be great if it were the FCC. I don't think it's going to be, could be Department of [00:43:00] Commerce, could be others, but this is, we suggested a number of things in the National broadband Plan. You have to have a certain amount of political, I don't want to use the word courage, but I would use the word backbone because it is not in the interest of the companies for anybody else to understand what they're doing, and I understand that from a Wall Street perspective, but at the end of the day, I think the public interest demands good data.
Christopher Mitchell (43:26):
Yeah. Adam Smith recognized this. It's not new. Right? [00:43:30] Absolutely. It's a matter of markets will work better if people know where there's a lack of service and an opportunity to invest in things like that.
Blair Levin (43:37):
Part of the reason BEAD is viewed as an unsuccessful program is after three years, no money was spent. Most of that time was caught up in the FCC doing maps. The truth is, there are two companies that have great maps, Google and Apple, because their phones are dominant and because their phones not only track where the Wi-Fi is, they track where [00:44:00] the connect, they know everything, but the government could not figure out how to get their maps, and we could have cut two years out of the process if we had just gotten what the private sector and worked most in the private sector. Believe me, the private sector has much better information about where there are good networks and where there aren't.
Christopher Mitchell (44:22):
Yeah. Well, 2025, let's see. It's time to get going or it's time to move on. Time to get going. What lies ahead? I have no way of knowing. [00:44:30] You've suggested we have a significant idea about what lies ahead, so we shall see, and I look forward to reevaluating with you in December, which I think will feel like it's about six weeks from now when it finally happens.
Blair Levin (44:42):
Chris, always good to see you, love your show and keep up the great work.
Ry Marcattilio (44:46):
Thank you, Blair. Thanks for coming on again.
Blair Levin (44:48):
Alright, thank you.
Ry Marcattilio (44:50):
We have transcripts for this and other podcasts [email protected] slash broadbandbits. Email us at [email protected] with [00:45:00] your ideas For the show, follow Chris on Blue Sky. His handle is at Sports Shot. Chris. Follow community nets.org stories on Blue Sky, the handles at Community Nets. Subscribe to this and other podcasts from ILSR, including Building Local Power, local Energy Rules, and the Composting for Community Podcast. You can access them anywhere you get your podcasts. You can catch the latest important research from all of our initiatives if you subscribe to our monthly [email protected]. [00:45:30] While you're there, please take a moment to donate your support in any amount. Keeps us going. Thank you to Arnie Sby for the song Warm Duck Shuffle, licensed through creative comments.