 Ralph Thank you very much. I still Of me I say that when we go into the open debate with audience members, I will ask you to give us your affiliation and name and affiliation so we can recognise the spin, if any. Well, let me start indeed, paper since you were already introduced. I was going to say much the same. But given the speed at which things have changed, yes gyda'r ddweud y byddio'r dynol am ein cyfnodiol ac y gallwn gwirio'r gweithio, gwylio'n dweud ddweud ychydig fel y gallwn gwirio'n eu gweithio felly mae'r ddweud yn gweithio'r ddweud ac yn gwirio'n gallu ddweud y gweithio am y dyfodol, ddiddordeb o'r ddweud y cwestiynau. Mae'r ddweud yw'r cwestiynau. Dwi'n ddweud am y cyfnodiol i'r gweithio i'r ddweud, yng Nghymru, ac yw Macanthras Gerald yw'r cyfnod o'r gweithio'r ysgolwyr. Yr ysgolwyr maen nhw wedi'i'r ysgolwyr a'r Sullivan yw'r ysgolwyr yw'r Ysgolwyr. Felly mae'n gweithio'r ysgolwyr. Rwy'n meddwl i'r ysgolwyr. Mae'r ysgolwyr yw'r Ysgolwyr yw'r Ysgolwyr. Mae'r ysgolwyr yw'r ysgolwyr. Mae'r ysgolwyr yw'r ysgolwyr. Mae'n ddod o'r ffordd ddod i chi yw'r hynny i'r ddod o'r hynny yw'r lyrych cwestiynau a'r ddatganoedd ddwyniad ar ôl? Mae er mwyn i'r ddod ar ôl yn cymhraffydd ymlaen, am hyn yn meddwl i'r llai fawr, ac yn cof bowlol yn ddod o'r hynny a'r fawr a'r hynny, ac yn gyda ddod o'r hynny i'r llai ddod o'r hynny i'r llai yn cwysydd ac wrth gwrs, ac felly mae'n meddwl o'r hynny o'r hynny oes. Well, certainly privacy is one of them, privacy on the side of the Atlantic, and we have already seen great controversy regarding, of course, the NSA scandal, and what governments are doing not just in the US, but as we're finding out almost every minute through that, what other governments are doing with either the monitoring of citizens abroad or within their own borders. But also, so are companies, we've known that for a while, and so are lone rules, you know, just individuals able to hack into whatever, a database or whatever, for whatever purpose, and as it becomes easier for all of us to communicate through a variety of means, and there's a permanent record of those communications somewhere, it also becomes easier in a way for folks, whether the intentions are good or bad, to be able to hack into those. So what's going to be the future of privacy? What are the generational expectations of privacy as a result? As I look at my kids, I have three children, a son who's 14, a daughter who's 12, Mary Shea, named for my great-grandmother, who was the immigrant, Mary Agnes Sullivan, Mary John Francis Shea, and then the bonus baby, Cormac, who's six, Cormac Augustine, whose name gets mutilated in the states, but over here, everyone would know how to pronounce Cormac. But as I look at their consumption habits and their expectations, Jennifer, my wife, and I, we try to impose our views of privacy and what's appropriate, but as they grow up, that's going to become increasingly difficult unless there's a huge crisis, sort of a pearl harbor of privacy, and maybe we're starting to see that, we don't know yet. There might be. There might be, and there probably will be. So whether that's, you know, one day, a billion people's bank accounts have been cleaned out, or something that shows how vulnerable things are, the experts in cybersecurity in particular do say there will be some sort of catastrophe that'll be on a large scale at some point. Now, probably the large-scale catastrophe won't be nation-state sponsored, although it could be in that context of cleaning up bank accounts, but it could be in terms of power grids going down or other sort of national functions, infrastructure, national defence, things of that nature. Those in the know say it's not a matter of if, it's a matter of when. Given there's a lot of debate at the moment now about what's on the, what's available through these systems and the issues of censorship or issues of what's appropriate to be there, who should the sense, you know, let's say, I think there are going to be sensors. Of course, who wants certain material available casually to children. So how can that be managed or what are the challenges of managing that? And this is right at the crux of the future of internet governance and treaties and things such as child pornography are easy, right? That's kind of the low-hung fruit in terms of... There is some, but not a lot necessarily happens. Well, when I say easy, it's easy for folks to agree that that's a bad thing and should be kept off the net. That's what I meant by easy. But there are then thornier issues, copyright protection, right? So intellectual property. So, you know, the internet is a tool. It's a dynamic and revolutionary tool, but it is a tool nonetheless. So can it be used for nefarious purposes for law-breaking that by any other measurement would be law-breaking? Can you use it to steal things? Can you use it to sell heroin? Can you use it to purvey child pornography? And said in that way it seems easy, but then copyright protection is different depending on different national laws. And so that becomes more cumbersome as we see just the engineering, the architecture of the net being a global network of networks without borders. So you can, if you're transmitting something to your next door neighbor, actually that transmission might get bounced around several different countries on every continent except for maybe Antarctica. And then end up next door. So what does that mean in terms of legal jurisdiction? And as we go forward as a world community, these questions will have to be addressed. But there will always be the tension between what do we do as a world community, what do we do about national sovereignty and what do we do about sovereignty of the individual as well? Now the United Nations wants to play a role in that, but you're very skeptical about their particular role that they want to play in the manner and who's influencing their particular voting pattern on this issue. So exactly. So internet governance since the privatization of the internet. So since the days of DARPA net, U.S. taxpayer funded network and then TCP IP protocol was invented to run it. And then in the mid 90s we saw the internet migrate further away from government control and become privatized and open up for public use. And at that point internet governance became what we call multi-stakeholder is non-governmental. You had engineers and academics and user groups and others working in their individual capacities, not on behalf of governments to keep these networks robust and up and running and how do you keep them safe from denial of service attacks and things of that nature. And that has worked quite well. So you've seen this as the fastest growing disruptive technology in human history. Perhaps since the invention of fire, I think, or discovery of fire, I think it has probably done more to improve net and net the human condition than any of the technology. But like fire it certainly has dangers. Fire could be used for good things to cook your food, sterilize things, but it can also burn down your house. The internet, if misused, can do the same thing. And so grappling with all that is what's important. But I think we need to preserve the multi-stakeholder model for internet governance. I do not think that the NSA issue should cloud that. So what we see with NSA is we're also discovering that other nations are doing the same thing. And the story will continue to evolve. We'll learn a lot more about it. But the idea of government involvement in this space, I don't think that is cured by having more government involvement in this space. And so the question becomes, how do you resolve it? How do you resolve the monitoring? But I don't think another overlay, an intergovernmental international overlay into the internet governance space is the answer. I'm not sure what the answer is, but I don't think you solve government intrusion by having more government intrusion. I think that ultimately will harm the developing world. I think when you look at the World Conference on International Telecommunications, the treaty negotiation this past December in Dubai, for 10 years or more, we've seen Russia and China and a lot of their client states pushing for more international control of the internet. In fact, Vladimir Putin said just a couple of years ago very explicitly and openly he wanted international control of the internet under the auspices of the ITU. And that's almost an exact quote. So what does that mean? Well, I think the selling point for a lot of countries is that the internet, and it's a bit of a mistake to put the article V in front of it, is being dominated by the US in a number of factions. They seek companies such as Google or Facebook, you see, or Twitter. You see internet backbone such as the old MCI backbone by Verizon and also AT&T. You see a lot of money being made. You see ICANN, which administers names and numbers having been an arm of the Department of Commerce, but over the years has become, has migrated further away from government control, but nonetheless is perceived by some or alleged by some to still be an arm of the US government even though the facts might say otherwise and even though it might have its own issues. So all of that is seen as... But a lot of its interests might coincide with those of the US government and to say of your own outlook as an American Republican who believes in less government basically, don't you? Right. So perhaps the cure for that isn't to have a different governmental control. It is to have less governmental control of anybody's government, to have it more bottom up in that regard. And the architecture of the internet really defies centralized control anyway. There's always going to be a workaround as we saw in Egypt when there was an attempt to turn off the internet kill switch. You saw within 24 or 48 hours workarounds to that, to where the government then couldn't control it. And so in the short term I might be pessimistic. In the long term I'm more optimistic in terms of being able to control the flow of information. And keep in mind that the flow of information is a threat to authoritarian top-down regimes. And that is the real motivation here. And all the rest of this is just sort of sales pitches. These are pretexts for ensuring that authoritarian regimes can have more control. And it legitimizes walled gardens and intranets like you see in China or Iran. These are two of the most vociferous proponents of international regulation of internet governance. So you see the UN intervention in any of this as sort of enemies of promise of undermining that which might bring better forms of politics and representation of people in various countries, particularly authoritarian countries. Again, exactly. The concern being the answer to having government intervention is not more government intervention. We can return to some of these issues, but I want to both, so I'm not saying that I'm not going to ask further questions, but I am going to now invite the audience to come in on this because I know the agenda that you've covered and your own experience is extraordinarily wide and multifaceted. And I know there are many different interests in the room and that's why I want people just to say who they are and if they want to give us a quick comment of where they're coming from as it were. Can I? Yes. I don't think you need one. I think the room is good enough. Mike's in the back, I believe. We have a mic as well. So if you wait for the mic because the camera would appreciate it too. John will sing a few songs before we're waiting for the mic. There we go. Thank you very much. My name is William Bacon of the Institute and for five years I've been in the state of Qatar, which is about 200 miles from Iran, and is the home of Al Jazeera. I could tell by your accent you're from Qatar. It's actually from the state of Qatar, which is the state of Qatar in the Irish word for town. So if you put a soft T, it's definitely not Qatar, which I'm sorry, a lot of Americans know. Sorry about that, but I'm going to get on to that. One of the things I found on the Mandala period is I was very familiar with the European framework. It was a relief in some ways because we're still in there. We just had to put a WTO requirement, which was to separate telecoms regulations from ownership. In Qatar, the government still owns the telecoms. It still has 50% of investment, but it's now overdue. It's finally cut out. I accept that as a cultural thing, but the great thing was that we basically had a power out there. We had people that came in from Canada. Over the years, we have a lot of people from your part of the world, people like David Gross, Kathleen Abernathy, Dr Bob Pepper. I'm sure you know all these people. Dr Pepper, yes. Dr Pepper is actually formally one of your subords at the FCC. But one of the things was that I didn't have to worry about things like concepts like stay days. I didn't have to worry about articles 7. I didn't have to worry about barracks. I didn't have to worry about things that we could create our own law. But we could also design it culturally or wherever we are. Do I hear a question coming? There is a question coming. This is the home of the gift of the gab. One of the perceptions is that we are improving on Microsoft is non-culture, US culture, Western culture. There are cultural differences around the world. I'm not talking about China, I'm not talking about the US. I'm just talking about the Middle East. The model which serves well in Europe and the FCC in Washington is not the model which works everywhere in the world. I just like your thoughts, your comments on that. Excellent lead in by the way and excellent point. This is something that during, especially the bilateral talks in Dubai last December, I talked about very specifically with countries such as Saudi Arabia. Let's just pick that one as an example, which is national sovereignty. So actually the multi-stakeholder non-governmental posture or model is actually better for national sovereignty. So certainly every nation state has a right to administer things according to their culture. What is not offensive in the US in terms of content might be offensive elsewhere. That's why I think it's important not to have a new international regulatory overlay. The question I have there is does that start to legitimize across the board the imposition of what I would view as somewhat pejoratively the lowest common denominator in terms of freedom of speech on countries that now enjoy it. So instead of the Saudis of the world saying we don't like the content that comes from the US over the internet and so therefore we're going to filter that out. Does it become a matter of well going from the US to Ireland or Ireland to the US or whatever the case might be that someone in Geneva is going to have authority over that. So you start to create just that type of uncertainty. There's lots of uncertainty, economic uncertainty as well, which we could talk about more. But in terms of content, political speech, let's forget about some of the obvious choices of the speech regarding morality. So does this become a choke point for freedom of speech? And if countries, I guess, want to have their own intranets, so be it in a way as reluctant as I am to say that, that's their sovereign right. That's not how I want to see the US or what I would hope all countries ultimately would be liberal democracies as classical liberal democracies. But that would be the Saudi right or the Iranian right or whatever the case might be. And I actually think that their arguments for more intergovernmental control actually undermine their own objectives, whether they realize it or not. Yes. It's kind of to follow on from that point. The dark internet seems to be on the rise more and more at the consumer level, whether it's in the likes of the Middle East because you don't like the government and both restrictions. Or here, just for the few of you who joined the book of hiding who you are and what you're doing. I'll go back to your earlier point about an Armageddon moment. It seems that we had one in the financial system which was brought about a lot by the shadow markets in many ways. I just wonder if there's some sort of analogy between how the shadow markets operate in the financial system and the dark internet and hiding IP addresses in the internet. And whether there is another way that isn't state controlled that people are getting thought to and what the thought leadership in that direction is saying at the moment. So if I could just ask a clarifying question which is, so you're saying that financial crisis, the mortgage crisis was somehow related to markets created by the internet or I'm confused. It was based on the development of a much more complex system than simple banks doing simple transactions. It was based around complex differences, it was based around the packaging of subprime loans in the US and selling them all around the world in ways that people couldn't trace where it was coming from. And that would be one of the concerns I imagine in the world of the internet if you have a country based IP protocol you kind of know where everybody is. And now we're starting to get around that either by terrorists or more simply by consumers for various different reasons. And is that bad? Is that good? It's obviously open for debate but if it's not country controlled what other sorts of models are out there? Yeah, so you raise a lot of potential issues which we could talk about the rest of the day but we don't have time. So I'll tell you what one of my concerns is. China actually proposed this as leading up to the wicket. I imagine leading up to the ITU's pleniputentiary conference next year that'll take place in Korea. It's essentially a constitutional convention for the ITU. They will elect a new leader, the leading candidate right now, new secretary general, the leading candidate right now is Willan Zhao of China. So China has proposed having a global registry of IP addresses to associate every IP address with a person. Yeah, I have a very strong opinion on that. I would be strongly opposed to that. That is probably more to track political speech than anything else. And if you think about the number of IP addresses with IPv6 that there'll be out there with the Internet of Things, that would be tracking everything from refrigerators and automobiles and more than just your personal computer, right? So there are a lot of things that are going to have IP addresses in the coming years. So I think that's a very dangerous proposal. Again, back to the earlier premise, which is the Internet is a tool. And like any tool, like a crowbar, it can be used for illegal purposes. A crowbar is supposed to be designed for legal purposes of pulling out nails and prying things apart, but it can be used to break into someone's house as well. So let's look at what the act is that's wrong. So if it's securities fraud, if I understand your example properly, then that's a violation. I think part of your question is, well, how do we know who committed the securities fraud? And sometimes that's, you know, in history, that's always been an issue pre-Internet as well. So let's focus on the laws being broken rather than breaking the Internet to ensure things like that don't happen. Emma Ryan. Yes, excellent question. I'm enjoying this Tipperary water, so my grandfather's a footnote real quickly. I fought in World War I, so I was the only kid in my class who had a grandfather of that old. I fought in World War I in France alongside some Irish troops, and he came back and would sing, it's a long way to Tipperary. So that's what I think of when I'm drinking Tipperary water. It was not a product plug, sorry about that, but anyway. I think regulation can emulate the architecture of the Internet itself. And this sounds a bit idealistic, and that's because it is. But in that, I don't think there's another technology that has empowered the sovereignty of the individual like the Internet. I think if you look at how it is helping commerce, so whether it's consumer-generated sites, if you want to rate your hotel or the restaurant or the plumber in your neighborhood, you can do that. And that makes information very cheap and quick and there's crowd, essentially crowdsourcing. In the old days we called crowdsourcing democracy. So things that are wiki, well, the Athenians were their democracies, figured that out a long time ago. So those can apply there. So I think when you diffuse power and you put it into the hands of individuals, that can be very empowering, for lack of a better word. So I think regulations could start from that perspective. Let's focus on what empowers consumers, what limits consumer harm as best as possible. There are always going to be fraudsters and bad actors and any economy and any government and any throughout the world. But I think this is a terrific time to be a consumer. I also think we are just now entering the golden age of mobile. And when you combine the power of the Internet with the power of mobility, I think that it can also be a model for governance and regulations going forward. So you do have to have enforcement and that state power for enforcement of laws is always important. Enforcement of contract to prevent fraud or certainly prosecute it shouldn't happen, criminal activity as well. But let's maybe look at our governments through the structure of the Internet rather than looking at old governmental structure and centralized power and foisting that on the net, which defys that type of architecture. Yes. He's the third one there. Thank you, John. Philip Woodward, I'm a member of the Institute, but I have an interesting international trade. Right at the very beginning you talked about preserving the multi-stake order of my book. And I'm curious to understand maybe a little bit more about your apparent opposition to UN standards. For example, when John and you were exchanging on that, you mentioned something about the voting that can go on at the table at the UN. So was there some reference there to maybe commercial voting? I'm sorry. I'm trying to understand your question, which was trying to understand my statement. So a little bit of a hallway of mirrors here. But so first of all, the ITU, which is a UN chartered agency, right, an arm of the UN. And by the way, let me drop an important footnote here, which is I'm not anti-ITU. The ITU performs many very important functions. It's a forum for the negotiation of treaties. Whether it's a spectrum harmonisation, satellite orbital slots, all those are extremely important. I just don't think it's the best way to address internet governance. So I think, you know, if we look at the efficiency of some UN agencies and, you know, various despots who have been in charge of the Human Rights Commission and things of that nature, it starts to undermine certainly the efficiency of it if not the credibility of it. I'm not anti-UN. I think the US should be part of the UN. But again, for the internet itself, either nothing happens at the UN or something that will be centralised and more authoritarian in nature will happen there. And neither of those is good. I think that will impede technological progress. And ultimately, I think it will harm the developing world the most. The developing world stands to gain the most from an unfettered internet, especially a mobile internet. I've written and spoken before about this. There's one quick example of that, which just indulged me for 30 seconds, and this can be multiplied many billions of times over probably. But it looked at a story of two pineapple farmers in Ghana. And for generations, these families were barely above being subsistence farmers, barely made enough to just feed and clothe their families, and they raised pineapples. Part of that was because they were selling their pineapples below market rates, because they didn't have the information regarding market rates. As soon as they got something that was a mobile device, not even up to the level of a smartphone, but allowed them to access information, there was apparently a platform where they could figure out regional and national prices for pineapples. They were able to raise their prices and greatly increase their standards of living and actually buy property and buy more property and employ people. This, not only the ownership of property, not just revolutionized them for the first time, probably in the entire lineage of their ancestry, but also started to raise political expectations. And this is where then authoritarian regimes become very concerned. As individuals own property and become more empowered, they might expect more from the political process. And so some folks in charge of some countries might not like that very much. So replicate that many, many times over, and I think it's only a net net positive for the human condition as a whole if we allow that type of progress to continue. And generally speaking, what do you see as the... Can you see then... Well, the answer to this probably has to be no. You wouldn't be here. You'd be somewhere in marketing the device or looking for capital to develop it. But imaginatively, can you see what style, what type of empowerment will come next in this whole field and what will the regulatory challenge be? Do you have any kind of broad notions in that field? Yeah, I think the technology already exists in prototype format. So I think we're just now in the infancy of, especially mobile communications. So I don't know if anyone here in the room, if it came to Ireland like it did in the US, but probably 35, 40 years ago, the game Pong, the video game, very simple video game. Okay, so we're in the Pong stage, I think, of internet connectivity and the mobile internet. And we will look back at these days and just say how cute everything was. So it sounds like science fiction, but actually it all actually exists. So high definition holograms. If you choose surgically implanted communications devices, maybe we'll choose to do that, but some will. Literally video projected to the inside of your eyeball. And I don't know what happens if that goes awry. So that could all have tremendous benefits. We already see medical devices, and this was a small thing we did at the commission as a matter of process, but revolutionary, if you're a victim of paralysis, it had been held up in government, mainly by our federal aviation administration. The idea of these devices that are surgically implanted into the limbs of victims of paralysis to essentially replicate the nervous system, and they'd be associated with electrodes to where there'd be electrical charge that would move muscles. So it allows, this is actually some experimentation outside of London, it allows the victims of paralysis to walk again. Absolutely revolutionary. But through wireless connectivity. If there was a severed spine, or whatever the case might be, or a severed nerve somewhere, through wireless technology, we could route them around then. The FAA was concerned that one milliwatt of power might crash an airplane, but we got them over that concept, and so now it's available. So it's really unimaginable, but also imagination is boundless at the same time in terms of what might happen. This, though, from a regulatory perspective, I think we will face a lot of challenges regarding spectrum availability. So right now we think the best spectrum is under one gigahertz, not to get too much in the weeds. Actually, I think that concept will be tossed aside before long. We already see in our country the build out of LTE or 4G infrastructure above two gigahertz. Granted, you need to have your antennas closer together, so it requires more capital expenditures, so somebody I think we can get over that. There's even experimentation above five gigahertz in that area. But bringing more spectrum to market, and as a regulator, are there any... They were in Ireland, I don't know if the original Star Trek was ever watched here. So any truckies in the audience? I'll admit it if you will. So the prime directive in Star Trek was... Don't interfere. Very good. Which, of course, they violated... They violated it in every episode, right? Or else they wouldn't have had a TV show, right? So in wireless policy, it's have no harmful interference, right? I think technology will advance to the point where we won't have to worry as much about harmful interference, because that's really at the root of all-spectrum policy. There's competitions issues, too, but when you're licensing and the table of allotments, where our mobile carrier is going to be versus broadcasters, it's like real estate. You can't have noisy neighbors next to one another, so you need to put them in different neighborhoods so they can party away and have their noisy parties without harmful interference, right? So this is how I think. I was a liberal arts major, so I'm not an engineer. This is how I... The analogies I use. So there'll be a lot of challenges there, and then government uses this. So in our country, the federal government occupies about 80% of the best spectrum. Does it need all of that all the time? And my hypothesis is no. I would love to see the U.S. Congress pass legislation and the president sign it that says the federal government has to do a bona fide honest audit of all the spectrum it's using and then try to relinquish it for auction. Maybe some unlicensed purpose is too unlicensed. It's very important. But to get it out of the hands of the government and into the hands of the economy, which has this tremendous effect in terms of growing the economy, improving the human condition, increasing tax revenue back to the government as a result of all that economic activity. So it's a virtuous cycle. And in Europe is way behind American on 4G. Can it catch up? Close the gap? It can, absolutely. So for the most part, the American wireless sector has been relatively lightly regulated. We were sort of first to market or at least first to market in a big way our megahertz auction. I was there at the commission for that. And also the AWS one auction. That was August of 2006. The 700 megahertz auction started in December of 2007, went into early 2008. And that really sparked our build out of 4G and there are a lot of carriers that want to accelerate that. And at some point we'll be talking about 5G. So I think there's a large part behind Verizon's intent to buy out Vodafone so that they could plow the money they were sending to Vodafone back into network upgrades. So but I do think Europe, it depends on the regulatory climate and the conventional wisdom says that Europe is more regulatory on the wireless front than is the US and it might have something to do with it. That's for historical reasons because of course when it all began Europe was much tighter space. America had geography on its side if you like and when wavelengths for radio broadcasting were scarce Europe was very, very competitive with interference with Copenhagen and the Queen's and so on. So I think a lot of that history is still kind of embedded in the... In the state on PTTs and all the rest, yeah exactly. So what do you say then to the argument about a regulator for Europe? Should the EU be attempting a pan-European single regulator or do you think that's just so difficult when you have so many countries involved? Why do I have the feeling you want me to wade into a political swamp right now? So when I was at the FCC I was always careful when I traveled abroad to say please learn from the mistakes as well as the successes of the US and I'm never going to tell another country or a group of countries how to do it, they have to determine what's best for themselves. But now that I'm not a regulator what do I do? I guess I can't just cling to that. So I think simple is always better, simple and like touch. So wireless lends itself well to competition and especially even if you see a concentration of let's say four carriers to three and maybe two dominant out of those three like we have in our country. One of the big escape valves for that is unlicensed. I know someone who got her masters in London a couple of years ago and never subscribed to a wireless carrier and through Wi-Fi in coffee shops or on campus was able to do all of her communication on web traffic as well as skyping back home without paying a carrier a dime. So that is competition to the carrier, right? And actually those people aren't really captured in a lot of statistics whether it's the OACD survey or whatever which focuses on subscribers. Well there are millions if not billions of people who aren't subscribers who are still using some sort of broadband facility wireless in an unlicensed way. So I think simple is better and a lighter touch is better. And let's look at a lot of this through competition law and consumer protection law rather than traditional telecoms regulation that still has the mindset of being in the fixed circuit switch analog voice world. That is really a thing of the past where you have open dedicated circuits that are locked open and voice traveling back and forth. Through IP and wireless there's tremendous opportunities here and I think it's only terrific for consumers if we don't mess it up as governments. Eamon, do you want to come in on some of this, I think? You're listening, okay? Yes, here. Oh, my cousin, Katie Sullivan. Katie, I think we better. A lot of debate in Europe and certainly in Ireland on quite much based on consumer regulation facilities and competition the rollout of ISN data networks. Therefore the debate is very much focused on the supply side of ISN data networks. From a policy standpoint I understand that you've focused Mae gyda'r cyflawn o arpwysgol, dyma hynny a'i meddwl i yn ystod, am y model rynnu'r ystyried. Ond rydw i'r rhywbeth ni'n bwysig mewn ffelly, ond mynd i'n gwasanaeth plwy na union arbennig mewn ffelly, pan wedyn maen nhw'n cael ei gilydd. Mae ydy'r ysgrifennu'n gwneud ar hyn i'n gweithgareddol iawn i'r FFAT, ac yn mynd i gwneud ar y methu fel y golygu, mae'n golygu i'r gweithfyrdd i'r cyflawn yng nghylch ar y cwmdd. I think sometimes the debate has missed in Europe a little bit that the networks will be built in certain parts and other parts will not be built, but we're kind of missing a trick I think a little bit in terms of what can governments or what can policy makers or indeed maybe regulators do to stimulate demand, demand size and inclusion, I'd be interested in using that. Excellent question, I must have said something she disagreed with because she disavowed that we were cousins right off the bed I know this. So this has been a topic of discussion and even debate in the US for a few years. So while 95% or so of the country has access to at least one broadband provider in the US and with the vast majority having access to two or more, excuse me, the penetration rate, adoption rate is only about 70% but again that's subscribers. So I'm begging whoever's listening to please try to do some surveys and it's going to be hard to measure those who are broadband users but are not subscribers but they're out there, they could be municipal Wi-Fi, campus Wi-Fi, it could be a lot of things. So it's a big debate so right now the chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, Jay Rockefeller who has announced his retirement so he's entering his last year in office. He was a champion in the 1996 Act for the Schools and Library Fund which funded the build out or connection to public schools and libraries to what we called the information superhighway back then in 1998. That's large I've been accomplished. So now he's saying we need to stimulate demand but we also need to take the Schools and Library Fund to the next level which is perhaps devices, digital literacy and things of that nature. So the seeds for that have been planted. That will be I think a bit of a controversial debate in our country because it will be seen as the expansion of an entitlement, a federal entitlement. Now what's interesting about how we just as a footnote here administer it in our country is it doesn't, the subsidy does not come out of the Treasury, it's not coming out of the general taxation into the US Treasury and then out. It goes from telecoms consumers into a fund that's ultimately administered by the FCC and then the checks are cut to companies, to the operators, network operators. Lots of debate as to whether or not it should be vouchers that go to consumers and would that provide for a more competitive marketplace and the build out of redundant facilities and things like that rather than just reselling one type of facility. So I think it's an interesting issue. It could also be a generational issue. There are a lot of reasons to why people don't subscribe. Price has something to do with it but a lot of the studies I've seen show that it's not price alone. Sometimes when broadband has been offered for free, fixed broadband has been offered for free, some people still wouldn't take it. And so that could be generational. It could be a variety of reasons. Digital literacy being one of them. You still have to have a device too so then the question becomes do you subsidize the device which Chairman Rockefeller has alluded to that. So it's an excellent question. I think over time it resolves itself much the same way the telephone did. So in our country it didn't take that long to get to 98% tele-density and I think internet access will follow a similar trend. If it hasn't already because we're not measuring non-subscribers. So I think the number is a lot higher than 70% in our country anyway but not everywhere. Thank you John. My name is Mark Redmond from the Ardyshack Institute for the reasons of the tax question. This will be a great presentation. Thank you for sharing your wisdom and experience. Can I just assume and be optimistic and say that the trade deal has reached between the states and the European Union. What would you like to see as the key benefits for the communication sector from certainty? Well I think first of all certainty I think helps. I philosophically am a big believer in free trade. So low taxation, low barriers to entry, low tariffs if any. And I hope those would be two cornerstones to that. I understand there's a big debate over privacy and it's the official position of the US government to maintain that sort of self monitoring model but with a backstop of government intervention or enforcement if possible. You know in the wake of all the NSA revelations that can become more sticky and difficult. I hope we do pass it. I think it's absolutely necessary. I'm actually working through the Hudson Institute with some other think tanks with Annenberg and with Brookings and some others on the idea of handling a lot of cross border data flow issues through free trade agreements. And if that's regionally then so be it. But we can handle a lot of these sticky questions maybe even regarding internet governance through those. And we can call it cross border data flow but the analogy would be the cross border flow of goods and services too in this or to take our model from some of those. So I'm a big proponent of those types of agreements and I hope they would look at trade with a light touch from a government perspective. Yes here Mike Lawrence is coming. There from the Irish competition this interpretive question but you made a reference to the preference for nitrogladiation in the communication sector and then the issues could be doubted by a sector of agitation like the FCC. See he's trying to get me to wade into the morass. So excellent question by the way and something I've actually addressed before even when I was a commissioner. So I think there are some aspects of what the I'm just speaking about the American FCC now. I'm not going to tell Ireland what to do. OK. But I think there are some aspects of what the FCC does which could be wound down. The FCC does many important things. So certainly our International Bureau helps with international treaties. There are certifications of equipment to ensure no harmful interference. There's the administration of our universal service fund. But when it comes to things like merger review the government gets two bites at the apple. There's either the Federal Trade Commission or the Department of Justice Antitrust Division depending on whether it's a common carrier or not. Federal Trade Commission is our general consumer protection agency. It also primarily handles privacy. And I was delighted that they did as an FCC commissioner because that's such a sticky wicket. I don't I'm not sure the FCC could handle it and get up to speed. You know I'd rather have someone else do that. So I think there are some aspects that could be could be wound down. Now there are some you know if you read some academic articles and such they say just get rid of the FCC altogether except for maybe enforcement. Of it be the independent law enforcement authority. The FTC is primarily an enforcement agency does not really have a rule making authority. That's something to think about. Should you have spectrum administration done through let's say the executive branch. So right now you have an assistant secretary of commerce Larry Strickling. I don't know if he's been to Ireland. I'll try to get him to come. Great guy who's the assistant secretary for NTIA our agency that handles government spectrum. Well could the government handle all spectrum in terms of allocation for licenses. The executive branch executive branch handle government spectrum. And the answer might very well be yes. Now you know once you have institutions that are created it's hard to wind them down in any political climate. But I think this is a healthy conversation to have in the U.S. I think it ought to be had pretty much everywhere and have that debate and have the discussion to look at things like redundancy and efficiency. And I was never a regulator who was jealous of my bureaucracy and was always more interested in making things more efficient. And I think that's a good question to ask. That's my view from the FCC perspective and again not necessarily for Ireland. And what about his point about the sunset clause isn't that doesn't this area because the future may be imminent. I mean the future is always in that of course. Let's hope. But in this case something may be out of date faster than in most other. So isn't this isn't the notion of a sunset clause which can of course be reviewed and renewed if necessary but also might just lapse. Yes. I think it's excellent. I'm sorry I've neglected. I got off and took the scenic route to answer your question. Yes. I think it's an excellent idea actually. So since my time at the commission I advocated for sunsetting rules like you said you can always reinstate them. But they should be refined. There are a lot of rules in the FCC's books. You know we have the code of federal regulations and the FCC's portion grew from 1961 to about I want to say just under 500 pages to almost 4000 pages. Right. And a lot of them were just left on the books. They weren't enforced anymore or whatever. But they should be sunsetted and just gotten rid of. And if nobody notices they maybe they didn't really provide much of a benefit to begin with. If it is important then it'll be renewed or it'll be renewed in a modified way. You know from your very first question isn't the marketplace moving so quickly. It absolutely is. And there are new challenges and new questions a lot of which we're raising today which could be addressed through some sort of periodic review. Every seven years ten years or whatever the case might be. And in general what's your view of getting the balance between consolidation of the market and competition. Yeah so interesting so you know economists. I don't know. I don't know the answer to that. I mean the market tends to try to sort that out itself. If you have a perpetual race to the bottom on price what does that do to investments. Economists of different stripes can have debates over that. But if you have too much consolidation what does that do about just institutionalizing complacency among the incumbents. And therefore you don't have any advancement that way either. I think you know certainly in a kind of say four is competitive three some would say is also competitive. Still in the U.S. actually we do have the big four wireless carriers but the average U.S. consumer still has a choice of five consumer the average consumer not everywhere. So that's certainly by anyone's definition competitive. I think you have to look at what is happening. Are prices going down and is innovation going up. If prices are going down and innovations going up that's a very good sign. If prices go down. That's happening in the U.S. anyway certainly. Yeah a lot of CAPEX and experimentation mean every day you know new devices new services being offered is wonderful. If prices go down and innovation starts to stall that starts to tell you something. If prices go up and innovation stalls that tells you even more that's bad news. But again in a wireless I think the use of unlicensed actually tremendously helps the whole competitive equation. It's harder to measure if you're an economist but I think it provides a check and a balance and keeps everyone honest. That's why I've been a big proponent of like unlicensed uses of the TV white spaces for instance. You've you said there that the NSA revelations recently made things sticky and difficult which is the euphemism I suppose. But if you were if you were batting for the as you did so often going into an international negotiation on behalf of the you're batting for the U.S. State Department were you part of their team. State takes the lead and we played back up singer. So if you're going in how just how difficult would that be now. How damaging has all has all that been in Europe. Throughout the globe it's been very damaging. So I'm actually overall I try to be an incurable optimist but when it comes to the ITU plenipotentiary next year I'm quite pessimistic right now. And the trajectory of where we're going with the sort of Dubai being a big turning point than the NSA revelations fueling all that at the worst possible time as we head into next year. I think the trajectories is not good. I think as the proponents of more ITU intervention of the space show they've got the votes and they were willing to depart from a long standing tradition of the ITU. Of unanimous consensus. So that had been the hallmark of how the ITU did business and we saw that end last December when it was roughly a 60 40 vote. And so that means they're willing to take you know majority mean 60% a lot but when you're departing from unanimity to settling for that that means 40% of the countries were not partaking or didn't vote or won't vote for those changes. So I'm rather pessimistic as to where that goes. Then you have the prospect of sort of a bifurcated internet. These are treaties and in our country the treaty has to be ratified by the U.S. Senate so it won't be and other countries the same thing. You're not signing on to it. You have some countries living under this and others not. That creates an engineering nightmare in terms of the internet of how do you have this balkanized patchwork quilt for internet governance or the economics of it and all the rest. And that starts to drive up costs and create uncertainty. So when you drive up costs in the internet economy some things that are free will no longer be free. New innovations are they're impossible to measure when they don't happen. So in other words the unintended consequence of a change in the regulatory construct regardless of its domestic or international it's impossible to measure what doesn't happen as a result. But there will be things that do not happen as a result certainly in the developing world and maybe that's a little easier to measure because we'll have it and they won't. So I'm pessimistic in the short run in the next five to ten years but in a longer term I'm more optimistic. And in general then and given that I keep coming back to this point about the future being so difficult to read despite regulation this whole technology is itself anarchic. I mean it is accessible by some people whose governments do not want them to have it. And we've seen that in the way the news has been the way news broadcasting has been influenced by iPhones and footage being shown. And sometimes needing to be authenticated because it too can be propaganda and quite easily forged if you think about it. But anyway or fabricated what's your view of the impact of this technology on those who will ignore the regulation and will just have this unintended consequence of impacting on the way the world is and what will it do to sovereignty what will it do to our authoritarian regimes over the next few years. Yeah and so I've spoken and written on this very subject and I think authoritarian regimes as a result are really in danger so that's the good news and from my perspective unless you're pro authoritarian regime. So because the sovereignty of the individual is so empowered it's easier to connect and it's easier to do it's easier to work around government censorship as a result as we see different types of networks being deployed in different ways of working around them. The good news is is that makes it easier to organize politically. There is a downside to which I think it does fragment society in a way so we can become more tribal. So we were talking about the lunch earlier about political speech and fairness doctrines and things of that nature and I think the plethora of choices you enjoy in the media marketplace now thanks to the internet tends to show that people don't want to look at the opposing viewpoint or the viewpoint that makes them uncomfortable they want to look at what makes them comfortable on the whole right. So you gravitate towards what you already think in a way. Is that good and what does that do? But overall I think in terms of having capitalistic liberal democracies that these technologies will only help that. I think we'll see decentralization of capital as a result as well which is a good thing. So more ownership of property be it corporate property or just capital in general real property whatever the case might be. I think these technologies will help all that and it will create a bit of a virtuous cycle. Now having said all that there are a lot of negatives that come around as we discussed at the beginning of the talk but that come along with the ease of access of information. Excellent question. Excellent question. So I've long talked about the internet being open and free. I don't necessarily mean free in terms of it should be free to everyone. There's no cost. How do you support the build out of the infrastructure? When I say free I mean freedom enhancing. So yes so unlicensed in particular does tend to mean free access but not always. If you've ever been an airport or an airplane trying to use Wi-Fi you're at a hotel you can pay dearly for that Wi-Fi. But I do believe the market will sort that out if it becomes an economical to offer let's say free wireless. Someone has to backhaul that by the way and that's going to be probably a piece of fiber at some point and that costs money to dig up the streets to lay the fiber and operate it. So how do you capture that? Is it going to be subscription or is it going to be advertising or something along those lines? That's a good point.