 So, as we heard earlier, broadcast had a set of, traditionally has had a set of public interest obligations associated with it as a result of what I think it was Kevin and a number of others have pointed out were kind of a historic accident that when we were setting these systems up initially the technology was capable of certain things and the way the economics of it work enabled certain kinds of things like news gathering, the technology encouraged a focus on the local community and also on an idea of one licensee acting as the, acting as the proprietor, if you will, of the spectrum access and having in exchange for this use of the public airwaves an obligation to serve the local community. In the mobile wireless we had a somewhat different vision. I point out the statute requires all licenses whether they're for cell phones or mobile broadband or for television broadcasting. All of them are supposed to be issued by the FCC only if they are found to serve the public interest convenience and necessity and in fact we have had public interest obligations associated with mobile, first mobile telephony now we speak more broadly of mobile broadband. Those tended to be also because of the historic nature of the service, it was a voice service, it was a common carrier service, the ones we traditionally associated with common carrier rather than the ones we associated with broadcast. So there were never any content obligations on wireless carriers because of course wireless carriers didn't do content, they were helping people talk on the phone, but we did have universal service and we particularly with an emphasis on the service to rural communities and then again in 1993 when we started to get serious about this with an idea of using this technology to encourage the economic development of women-owned businesses and communities of color and we also had a public safety idea inherent in this both as a direct allocation of wireless as a set aside for public safety instead of having public broadcasting we had an idea that we need to have this mobile voice for public safety and we've seen that that as a public interest obligation is also now sort of tied up in our management of spectrum and then we had this thing totally out of the blue that didn't fit any of the paradigm which was this unlicensed access which you know started initially as a way to do garage openers and other kind of very low power services that nobody thought of as you know potentially amounting to much and now we have seen that unlicensed as well as licensed use of the wireless spectrum has tremendous potential and we have a question you know do public interest obligations somehow come with unlicensed is unlicensed itself the public interest because it gives everybody access so we can kind of do away with the whole notion that we need a separate public interest obligation perhaps or alternatively is there something in all of this that we're missing that now as these services come to the fore we really ought to be thinking about so let me start to put this out to our panelists I'll introduce people as I as I call on them I will mention let me start with Amina Fasulo who is with Benton Foundation Benton of course has done a lot to straddle the the two worlds of traditional broadcasting and the new world of new media and digital divide I know you guys have been very active in the Lifeline Link Up Reform and Universal Service Fund could you speak a little bit about from your perspective how you see these two worlds perhaps blending and what this idea that a license from the FCC is in the public interest ought to mean as we move forward sure thank you so as Harold said I'm policy counsel with the Benton Foundation and the Benton Foundation has focused very specifically in the past few years and actually even beyond that on how to connect our most vulnerable populations to the most important communications mediums of today in the in the past year we focused a little bit more on Lifeline and Link Up and before I delve into Universal Service and sort of the connections to Universal Service I think it's important to note that when you're speaking about unlicensed I think unlicensed is interesting because it's actually been an area where we've been able to utilize unlicensed used to be able to connect underserved populations in a way that might have been difficult even with licensed providers or with traditional wire line services so for example in San Francisco they were able to capitalize on on fiber that they had in the city to be able to connect public housing which was a much cheaper way to wire those buildings and to bring access to those communities also alternatively it's a much cheaper way to set up computer centers in the bottoms of those buildings if it doesn't make sense to wire the whole building all at once just yesterday we held a joint conference with connected living to talk about connecting aging population seniors and it was interesting to hear from some of these people who are on the ground doing this work how much they actually utilized wireless unlicensed wireless to be able to do that work so it was it's kind of interesting to see how as you said unlicensed wireless might be doing some of the public interest work on its own does it make sense to put another obligation on top of it when it comes to licensed use I think that universal services taken a look at mobile and has sort of given it a nod that it's actually got sort of the it's risen to the level of importance that I think we've seen traditional landline have and universal the universal service fund has been focused on ensuring that we've got telephone access throughout the country with this new sort of update to the universal service fund programs what we've seen is the commission giving a nod to mobile and I think that's it's really interesting to see that because I think what they're saying is that it's it's becoming part of sort of the necessary or it's getting the necessary language is getting applied to to mobile services and with that I'll just turn back to Harold. Thanks let me next ask Margaret McCarthy who is right now serving with Representative Waxman as council on the as committee council associate with Representative Waxman who is the ranking member of the House Commerce Committee prior to that she was been in the Senate been worked in the Senate worked at the FCC so is intimately familiar with these issues and has seen these fights in all of their toxicity as we heard previously play out and most recently of course with some very significant spectrum legislation that was passed and one of the things that was interesting in that debate was we heard at least members of Congress articulate some ideas about the public interest some of them related to public safety and interoperability some of them related to raising revenue for the for the Treasury which used to be in fact prohibited by statute to consider for as a public interest benefit but but that was very clearly to the fore for a number of members and also a another new idea of innovation that particularly a number of the defenders of the of unlicensed in this debate pointed to the ability of of unlicensed to spur experimentation and innovation and that was never a public interest obligation that we thought about with regard to spectrum management previously although it's certainly been in our lexicon a great deal so could you give us a little insight into what kind of how Congress may be maybe thinking about it and what guidance we might want to take from how to navigate the toxicity here. Sure so obviously the really landmark legislation that was just enacted into law you know sort of originated with this recommendation coming out of the 9-11 Commission and and the focus on the need for a nationwide interoperable public safety network but at the same time you know recognizing that there were great public interest benefits from also making available new wireless spectrum for commercial use so the the challenge is Congress I think historically is interested in in these issues of spectrum policy most often in the context of kind of deficit reduction exercises so you know given the FCC auction authority is a great way to you know go to CBO get some of those big billion dollar numbers out of the scoring process but you know when you're talking about sort of these broader societal public interest benefits there's really no dollar sign associated with those so I think the debate that Harold is alluding to and that's incredibly important is you know we understand there are these great benefits from innovation you know even great benefits to the economy to jobs in preserving unlicensed use but it was you know I think definitely you know we needed strong advocates to be making those points as part of that process yeah and of course I'll also mention it wasn't just unlicensed the idea of innovation as a public interest and job creation as a public interest benefit were raised a great deal with regard to getting out more licensed spectrum and also interestingly enough with regard to moving it away from the broad as a justification for moving it away from broadcasters to wireless carriers that it would serve the public interest more because it would create more jobs it would enable sort of new developments let me put the question to Ben Lennett who is with us from New America and ask so you know in this debate that we just had and in fairness we'll just focus on on license for a moment you know what do we take from this debate of broadcast versus broadband and these new articulated theories of the public interest that it's about job creation and innovation as much as it may be about localism and the universal service well I mean I think that we can actually take a lot from the legacy of broadcast public interest obligations I mean the whole sort of theory or sort of kind of argument behind broadcast or public interest obligations was you know this is a public the spectrum itself is a is a public good and by giving someone exclusive license you were removing the free speech rights of the community or anyone else that wants to speak over that spectrum because spectrum is for all intents and purposes speech it's a medium for speech and so I think there's actually a rich legacy that we can take from there and if we look at the history of broadcasting it was an open question beginning in the 1920s of whether or not we'd have broadcasting that was under the editorial control of broadcasters or it would be a common carrier and so when we look going forward now where we've moved from broadcast to wireless where you know wireless is being used as a to provide broadband access the notion we are having sort of the same debate in terms of you know will the carriers themselves have editorial control over the content on their networks and I think the answer is no I think that we have seen the benefits of openness on the internet of a neutral network and its benefits for innovation and jobs and I think clearly that's an obligation that needs to be placed on them as well as sort of this idea again because they are getting an enormous benefit from having access to the spectrum not just on a shared basis but exclusive basis again where no one else can use that spectrum that they are you know is requirements for universal service you know there are so many cases out there of of entities coming in purchasing spectrum serving part of the community or part of this area and you know letting the rest of the community just lay follow and the notion that they can just sort of sit on that spectrum without any mechanism whether it's use it or share it or some sort of annual spectrum fee that would at least and send them to lease it out to someone else that's willing to serve that community I think is needs to be part of the discussion and then in terms of you know this license versus unlicensed to me unlicensed is really it is sort of this public good and I don't know that we need to transfer the same obligations in part because if you look at who's using unlicensed and where to provide internet access so you know we have Wally on who's who's an operator in Asheville North Carolina I mean there are so many parts of this country that if the wisps these wireless internet service providers didn't have access to unlicensed those areas would not have internet access I mean the incumbents have completely ignored them both wired and wireless and so it's an enormous public benefit that we continue to increase the amount of unlicensed access because it's a huge benefit to not have to purchase spectrum at auction I mean how many how many new entrepreneurs have you know what is what did Verizon spend 3.9 billion dollars on the C block how many new innovators or new entrepreneurs or local communities have 3.9 billion dollars to go buy spectrum to provide service so I think you know it's fine to talk about jobs and innovation but it's a it's a bigger picture than just the carriers and yes the carriers have done tremendous amount of innovation and we have wonderful devices in our in our in our pockets right now and they do create jobs but there's also jobs that are being created as part of unlicensed I mean all of the innovation that Wi-Fi offers in part because there are no barriers to entry for the most part and it opens up a lot of doors that otherwise would be closed given just the enormous upfront cost for for capital to purchase spectrum yes and I just can't help but chime in that one of the things that I I felt was unfortunate about Larry's remarks a little ironic in light of his admonition to move away from old fights was it really did feel that we were moving away from this license versus unlicensed that we have carriers now who are incorporating unlicensed you know into their networks we have cable operators who are offering a Wi-Fi roaming but let me you mentioned Wally Wally you there with us I'm right here can you hear me yes let me let me ask you one of the things we talked about on the earlier panel was this idea of localism and in wireless in particular for rural localism and universal service seemed to blend a great deal that and I'd like to I guess ask you two questions which is one what's your experience you know again following Larry's advice that we look outside of Washington for wisdom you're in one of the most rural areas and hard to serve areas of the country and what's your experience you know as somebody out there where carriers fear to tread and second looking at sort of this question of localism as a content issue how has the work that you've been doing with your organization been helping to enable these communities not just to connect to the internet so that they can stream Netflix but you know how is it help them with this concept of actually developing their own local voices and local content right well the first question our experience has been exhilarating and extremely frustrating simultaneously to have access to the unlicensed spectrum and unlicensed technologies we now have we've been able to reach some of these hard to reach areas but you know we're using what the engineers back in the 80s called the junk hands they called it junk because no one didn't seem to have any use and then all of a sudden all these new Wi-Fi technologies and garage door openers that you're referring to exploded on the scene but it's still not the most efficient spectrum so we will typically we will hook up someone in February who is just insistent that we bring service to them and then when the trees leaf out in the summer you know they're having real difficult getting a good broadband connection because the spectrum that we have access to won't penetrate that heavy foliage it won't bend around mountain ridges it won't penetrate buildings so we've been able to make great progress using this very limited spectrum but what's exciting is what we could do if there were more efficient unlicensed spectrum made available and I want to add that the other benefit of being in a rural area is that we're some distance from Washington so we have a little different perspective and what's exciting is that I think we're at a point where we have the opportunity to look at spectrum as infrastructure and as the part of the commons and you know we hear all this dialogue about the power of private markets and market driven policies etc but I think we've forgotten the fact that the power of markets is derived from some underlying commons infrastructure whether it's the rivers or the roads or the legal system or the post office or the internet you know there's a common power of private markets and so what I hope we have moving forward is a growing recognition that in the case of spectrum we've been far too reluctant to open up spectrum as a commons and therefore unleash the power of markets and right here and you know we can build an operator on networks which keeps jobs local which keeps money in a local economy which builds social capital all of that's possible now but our policies are stuck in the 20th century and so it's the best of times and the worst of times. Let me turn now to Amalia Deloni who is with us from the Center for Media Justice and Amalia also does her work primarily outside of Washington DC organizing folks in communities both urban and rural listening a lot to what people have to say and my question is we actually had in the statute that one of the benefits that was supposed to happen from auctioning licenses was that we were going to get this stuff out to communities that traditionally had not had an opportunity in the broadcast era to have licenses there are specific provisions about the FCC should try to structure it so that communities of of color and women-owned businesses are able to have both have access to licenses and access to the benefits of the technology as wireless has become more prevalent and certainly you know Larry at the beginning was making a point that for a lot of people in communities of color it's it's the mobile phone and not the landline or necessarily the the wi-fi hot spot that is at the moment at least providing a lot of people with service in these communities what's your perspective do you think that how are you seeing things playing out on the ground and what do you think we ought to be doing as we're considering the public interest that we haven't done given that we we did embed this in the statute when we started great question and there's already sort of a lot of rich material on the table to highlight and then I'll sort of add add another piece um stepping back for a second I think from the language of things like interoperability and spectrum and incentivizing and megahertz I think that when you're talking about this issue in communities particularly outside of the beltway but also in communities where they don't approach this from an engineering or technology or policy or legal stand the question is really one of access and right to communicate and so we work in communities all across the country we manage a network called the media action grassroots network we have chapters really all over the country and we work primarily in communities of color and with america's poor and I think um there's a couple points I want to make one I think this idea of connectivity and getting everybody um on you know on to a platform that really as I think Amina said is one of the most powerful of our time is crucial you know this is the communications backbone not just for this country but for the world and contrary to what I often hear which is that people who don't have access don't actually know what they're missing or don't know the benefits that are out there I think it's exactly the opposite I think that what we hear from people all across the country every single day is that they know exactly what they're missing when they cannot afford the access or when they when it's not affordable when they don't have an access point when they don't have the technology and the tools and they don't have the digital literacy to know how to utilize all of that I think in fact it makes the loss that much more profound because in real time they actually know that they're missing those pieces and they're seeing what it's providing for other people and so it's this double whammy in terms of feeling like really left out or really on the wrong side of the digital divide. I think also Harold brings up this interesting point and certainly a narrative that I hear circulating around the role that Wi-Fi has played in mobile phones in particular for communities of color and there's no doubt if you look at the statistics and I think they've been updated but previously it was like 16 percent of English speaking Latinos and 18 percent of blacks accessed the internet exclusively through their mobile devices and again I think Pew updated those stats what I think it's left out or so there's two parts to the story one I think the narrative that's put forward is like look at the amazing things that communities of color are doing as they leapfrog over wired internet and go straight to wireless and and I think that's the challenging narrative right because it implies that there's this degree of choice and choice implies that there's a series of opportunities and you have both the self-sufficiency and the autonomy and the political and economic power to navigate and make that choice and I would say myself and my own family included that is not the experience choosing wireless as a way to get on the internet is one of necessity you know and it does speak I think to brilliance it does speak to resiliency it does speak to capability in communities but it also speaks to a choice that you're made you're making based on a limited range of opportunities that are largely driven by the things that we're talking about today access affordability digital literacy so I just want to sort of hold that piece and not kind of perpetuate this myth of of leapfrogging and instead use it as a point of entry into this larger conversation which I think you know spectrum gets us into which is really when we say public interest obligations who is the public we're talking about and I think that this is 2012 we're going into a hotly contested um election year so it's true this year it's especially true this year but it's true in general that we're in the midst of profound change in this country you know the demographic population is shifting it's going to be tremendously different by 20 2040 or 20 yeah 2040 the age of people is changing we're experiencing a time when the racial wealth gap has never been greater you can't have a conversation about public interest obligations without also holding a conversation about the economic and racial realities of this country and the systemic inequity the both predated broadcast continued through broadcast and now we're feeling in more profound ways now and I don't want to sound disparaging I think in fact it's the opposite it presents an opportunity I think to build a wider tent and to reach a very different audience if in fact people in this room could begin to develop a narrative that talked about public interest obligation that talked about spectrum that talked about all of these things and connected it to the real material concerns that people all across the justice sector deal with every day housing public safety education full employment these are the kinds of things that resonate with people not so much does you know does spectrum help your garage door opener because that implies one you have a house and two you have a car right you know that that's a difficult place to start a conversation with a lot of people versus how can we help your child graduate from high school how can we ensure that you're not working two or three shift jobs how can we ensure that when the tornado comes to your community or the 35 w bridge collapses in minnesota you know where your family is and you know they're safe that's a very different kind of conversation and I think pulls in a much wider group of people yeah and and you raise so many interesting points that we need to to think about and I'm gonna if you don't mind key off on a cut ask a couple of questions that are based on on what you just said but one of them that I'd like to to put out to the the panel here is this very interesting question of there's benefits of wireless and there's benefits of broadband and we've talked about public interest obligations traditionally have been associated with the benefits of having this exclusive access to the wireless licenses whereas broadband to the extent we've talked about this at all was kind of like common carrier in the sense of there seems to be the social contract that you know I'm not going to say it is a public utility but we've thought of it as being beneficial to the country like electricity or water or any of these other traditional utilities how much do you think the theory that wireless itself especially licensed wireless this notion of an exclusive access and particularly in an age when people are now you know paying back the public at auction for this is this concept of a unique public interest obligation does that still have meaning or did you pay it off when you paid your when you wrote your check and then whatever else follows follows because broadband is important not because it's a wireless license and let me you know let me just start with Amaya down here and then if I if the other folks want to chime in please do oh my goodness maybe you could start on the other end it was a lot of questions Harold and one I'm sorry I'll start then I'll shift one down then and start with with Ben and then we'll cycle back well I mean I you know I think I said earlier that I thought that there was a legacy there particularly with wireless where you are we you know you are getting exclusive license there isn't a huge amount of exclusive spectrum available you could argue that there is a scarcity rationale that still holds now whether that's you know a result of policy outdated policy or just you know the practicality of the world as it is now I mean I think there is still a scarcity rationale I mean you have basically two companies AT&T Verizon that control 70% of the licenses that have been auctioned since the 1990s and you know enormous amount of power that you're putting in their hands and as a result of that they have an enormous privilege within society and part of that obligation then or part of giving back to the public should be I think this idea of you know some sort you know open internet or non-discrimination principles on the network you know and you know yes many of you know yes they've sort of purchased the spectrum at auction but I think the statute still says that you can't focus just exclusively on maximizing profits I don't I mean not maximizing profits but maximizing auction revenues I don't know if that changed from the the incentive auctions bill I don't think it did so there's still a role for applying public interest obligations beyond just you know auction you know making an entity pay for the right the privilege to use exclusive spectrum did anybody else want to take a shot at that I think that like I mentioned a little bit before with Universal Service the FCC definitely opened the door to start to think about at least mobile voice as being considered you know part of the necessity the world of necessary communications and and and now that the FCC is taking steps towards broadband I think it starts to muddy it even further because there are wireless providers that are trying to get involved in providing that broadband that the FCC is seeking to deploy across the country and what what kind of broadband do you get from a wireless provider versus from today's broadband provider so I think you know instead of I think we're we're at a moment where we're starting to see the distinctions between wire line and wireless starting to maybe even fade and and we're focused more on what you can achieve through these different conduits you know if you want to call them conduits but because at the end I think what Amalia is getting at is you know what's the goal of utilizing these devices what's the goal of of putting out these networks or having these technologies ubiquitous and if the goal is to you have people have access to each other have access to healthcare have access to education access to jobs then we're going to have to treat both wire line and wireless with more of a public interest obligations I and I think you know there's there's an opportunity to do that at least through universal service and and with other through the auctions and so we we move away from from having the public interest hang on the the scarcity of the license and move back to the idea that when you are engaged in some sort of you know certain types of of of important public services which that that you know in the same way that natural gas doesn't depend on scarcity but the obligation the traditional obligation to serve everybody in your franchise area with a natural gas pipeline was a public interest obligation that sort of is that is that going to be enough to carry us forward do you think or is there still going to be as the FCC itself recognized when it set up the mobility fund as separate from the rest of the universal service fund and let me let me ask this one to margaret and amaya you know do you think that even if we had a public interest theory theory of broadband there'd still be something about these spectrum licenses that would have some public interest attachment well i not to avoid your question herald but i wanted to go back to something that i think amalia was speaking to when she was talking about this idea of sort of you know leapfrogging for historically unserved or underserved communities you know just now being able to reap the benefits of mobility and mobile broadband you know i think that highlights that the challenge is not just about the ubiquitous availability of these networks but also this huge affordability piece that you're speaking to and you know unfortunately and i think these are the issues that FCC the FCC is trying to grapple with you know the the programs that we have that you were asking amina about at the beginning of the program lifeline and link up you know they're born out of a very different regulatory structure that you know doesn't necessarily equate with the market and technology today so it's like we still have the same public policy goals but how do we make these programs you know work in the new era so amalia did you want to yeah um you know i just wanted to add i think that you know i think one of the ways to drill down when you sort of look at the amount of money that these corporations are making in communities but particularly really vulnerable communities we often talk about the cost of connectivity and this is particularly true when you're working with like social service providers right who oftentimes are working with homeless adults or people in transitional housing and they're helping them to make their household budget you know and one of the things that we're seeing is that now social service providers are beginning to understand that this internet access point or this mobile phone cost really needs to be included in a household budget because just like rent just like electricity it is an essential utility for people for all of these things so when you think about people paying you know anywhere between 40 a month upwards of 200 plus for the different mobile phones for their data plans for their texting for all of these things you start to see the cost of connectivity that individual individuals and families are bearing and then you start to look at the profit margins for these corporations and i think you know being someone who comes to this world through organizing you know the first place i sort of go with that is you know where the community benefits agreement you know how do we talk about how do we use this language of public interest obligations as a springboard for a larger conversation around an equity agenda and what does that look like how do we use this kind of this issue of how much the carriers are making because they are making a ton of money and they have been researching our communities and how much we spend for a long time and they know where the greatest profit margins are so how do we look at that and then have these conversations about community benefit agreements or community benefit standards the same way people are forcing liquor stores or gas stations or mini-marts in their communities to say if you're going to do business and you're going to take money out of our pocketbooks here are some basic expectations we have for how you do business those are the same kind of conversations that we need to have at the federal level but also at the state and local level you know and all the way from top to bottom i think we need to be aligned around some very similar principles well do you have anything you want to add on any of these because i then want to open it up to well questions from the audience yeah i i realized that given the legacy of license spectrum that we have to talk about public interest obligations and we have to hold the big carriers accountable has been said Verizon and AT&T combined on 70 percent control 70 percent of the license spectrum but i don't want to lose us to lose sight of the fact that going forward there is no economic or social rationale for license spectrum there is no rationale for license spectrum the smart radio technology that's already here and the ability of communities to organize in self provision broadband as we've seen with municipal networks non-profit community networks like like the one that i run the the rural electric cooperatives that are moving into the broadband space what we need is unlicensed spectrum moving forward there the public whole question of public interest obligation becomes kind of a moot point because if you empower communities to self provision the public interest obligations will be built into the pie so to speak and so i just don't want us to lose i know we have to hold accountable the legacy the carriers that that control the license spectrum today but moving forward there is no economic or social rationale for license spectrum in the broadband space all right well let me now open it up to the audience here for questions do we have questions one gentleman back there and could you just introduce yourself and who you're with when you start uh hi my name is DeBarsky and i'm with me um good one to be with one thing a couple comments first i think um so-called progressive interests and people who are really concerned with public access and public use of of uh technology need to be more vociferous and clear as to what they want to have happened in specific instances because i think part of this whole thing is that corporate interest and private interests have very clear and a very profound sense of the narrative and they control it and basically what people grow up with is with this single narrative that money rules everything and in everything else it's just trickle down right and it has to be the other way uh one of the other things i would just say that the i think that the use of technology is if you just start talking about technology you're going to lose most people because because there's a model you're saying that the only purpose of technology should be to help people and to make the world better and the technology itself either should or shouldn't be used based on whether it achieves those goals just because you have technology doesn't mean you should use it if it doesn't achieve those goals uh the last thing i think a very good model from a sense of policy and activism and and actually uh productivity and use of and creation of actual things is the open source model the open source model which many people probably hear knows actually created the internet because without apache without without dns and all these other standards that are open source there would be no internet as we know it and you wouldn't have any of your stuff but as long as we think that apple and and microsoft and google are in google which is probably one of the best uh functional open source uh companies in the world because all their servers they built themselves and they use they run all this stuff off open source um but that model is the basis up behind which most of the public service uh access should be based on it should be based on an open source model not just from a standard point of view of just software but there's an open source hardware model now there's open source of everything so but but you know most people here are probably using closed source uh things you're using your apples you're using your microsoft you're not using linux you're not using these things so this is contradiction where we talk one thing but we use these products from private entities that control us and i think we got to live you got to walk talk walk the talk that you're trying to promote and use i think there's a lot in that that i think is good and i do want to give folks here a chance to respond but i'll just one thing that i did want to take from that is that perhaps there's this idea of a public interest in collaboration um and this open source model perhaps that is a new public interest idea that ought to be uh embedded in the use of the public airwaves that wasn't possible in the old technology and let me let me ask uh anyone here on the panel any response to um to the uh statement there yeah i mean i think that's where unlicensed or we could call it open spectrum comes in i mean it really is about individuals and communities being able to take advantage of this public resource and and really creating very uh low barriers entry the same way that the internet through open source and open standards allowed anyone to develop a website and become a creator and become you know develop services and so forth so uh we can create that in spectrum i think through pursuing a much more open spectrum framework whether that's through un traditional unlicensed where you have a set aside frequency that that is just available for the public like we have for wi-fi or it's through the tv white spaces or opportunistic access where you know spectrum that's being unused that's been allocated to other purposes can be used by the public uh and then you know you can either share it or you know fill in sort of the gaps and and that creates sort of a real opportunity for the public local communities new innovators new entrepreneurs to benefit from that public resource yeah herald i think the speaker was uh describing the infrastructure commons that has unleashed all this uh incredible innovation and wealth and and jobs and going forward that's i think we're at a place where the first time really um the public space can truly be treated as an infrastructure commons uh by which small rural communities can sell provision innovators and innovate new businesses new wealth can be created great let me um as now um i've got uh you serve her there and then angela i know had her hand up so we'll take those two and then we'll see if we have time for any additional questions hi my excuse me my name is terry scott i am independent producer for public television public radio in my past so i'm a storyteller and i'm trying to get my head around this story so i can tell this to my community so dc has this fiber optic network they're sitting up on and the public can't get to it yet but they're selling their services to comcast and verizon who then sell it back to us how do we explain that that's um uh i'm i'm tempted to explain it but that's the subject of a different panel but um but uh um i do think that it is in some way perhaps tied into this this broader question particularly if we expand this out to broadband and not just wireless does anybody uh uh want to uh want to take a shot at that i can come back because we've been looking at it um well i think it goes back to walley's point of an infrastructure commons i mean dc got that you know it's building this network part of it's being funded by the federal government through b-top uh grants part of it's being funded by dc taxpayers and so what you have is basically a publicly funded build for fiber that where they promised within their grant discussion to serve to have all these community benefits among the community benefits with serving community anchor institutions institutions uh nonprofit organizations so forth so that there'd be a direct benefit from the for the community of this this fiber optic infrastructure now whether they've been meeting that as of recently is not really clear uh many of the community anchor institutions that they stated would be connected have not been connected uh nonprofits are unable to afford the cost of connectivity that they're charging um the they also you know sort of set this up as sort of a public infrastructure for isps as well and so the the argument was that other new isps could come in and provide service over this infrastructure the way they've set the fees up and where where the negotiations have gone it looks like Verizon and Comcast are the only companies that are going to potentially benefit from leasing capacity on this network which is profoundly kind of disturbing because those are two companies that a are enormously profitable b this is an enormously profitable community i mean it's not like you can't make a business case for building fiber in washington dc um and so the notion that we should have to publicly subsidize them to get higher connectivity in washington dc which is a major metropolitan area i think is is should be very controversial uh and i don't think it's gotten quite the attention that it probably should and i i just like to add this the the the question that you raised here goes to something that amalia was saying earlier about this problem of if you want to do business in the community then the community really ought to have a say in setting the rules and unfortunately one of the things that we've seen when communities have tried to build their own networks is that the providers have then come in to get laws passed or otherwise use pressure to prevent those public communities from quote competing with the private sector although as we've seen the private sector is very happy to take advantage of the infrastructure when it's built out and perhaps one of the things is we're we're looking at the public interest on this is to uh to raise this question of you know you're everybody wants people to do business in the community you know the communities are happy to have people come in and do business but um come in and do business does not mean you know expect to have money thrown at you charge what you want and keep anybody else out for the privilege of having you do business uh and that's where uh maybe the the story you're talking about needs to to raise those uh questions uh let me get here i think one key question about this dc fiber uh network is could a neighborhood based non-profit step up and lease fiber lease bandwidth from that network and and become an isp for that underserved neighborhood and and in a way linking this back to the actual topic of this panel and would they use unlicensed spectrum to provide uh uh the link to uh uh from the home to the uh to the fiber or uh something else uh and let me just get angela and then uh i think that'll be all we'll have time for thank you angela cambell institute for public representation so to the extent that we're trying to identify uh what public interest means going forward i like the way we've the factors we've talked about so far amalia identified access affordability digital literacy and then we added the open source but i think there's another thing that should be on that list and that is privacy protections for the public i worry not just that the lack of privacy is a deterrence for some people getting access but i also worry that in promoting universal service uh we're unintentionally uh creating a lot of problems down the road if we don't um ensure that people can protect their privacy and anybody want to respond to that well yeah terrell um one of the benefits of a community network is accountability and one of the things that we we talk about a lot here in and astral and the mountains of north carolina is the fact that um our network is accountable i mean you pick up the phone and you come to our office we have strict privacy protections we're all about protecting digital civil liberties and the fact that we are local we are accountable people know where we live uh you know where we can't take uh liberties with people's privacy and personal personal information like a big absentee young carrier can i just wanted to add quickly to it i think um what angela and what walley said are important and i think it raises this sort of final kind of larger point around so long as we don't talk about um you know the sort of the the word that's unspoken which is power right like in a community setting if you were an organizer you would be doing a power analysis about all of this and you would see that there are carriers in particular talcos all of this stuff who wield disproportionate power so even if you you know when you throw around situate are kind of band-aid solutions like public private partnership you would know that there's nothing inherently equal no one's starting on common ground if you talked about public interest obligations you would know that there are certain portions of the public that were left behind you would know all this and i think if we don't talk about power and we don't talk about the increasing role of private companies in our life and the way that we continue to turn to private corporations to fill um and fix the social gap and you know help to alleviate a social safety net that no longer exists we cannot see clearly that all of these other situations come with it like privacy being one because of course as the corporations provide these sorts of services to us they need to incentivize themselves through that process and increase their bottom line which means that they're always treating us as consumers which means that will dictate the power dynamics in that relationship which means they want to call information from us they want to data mine our communities and they want to use that to develop more high-tech ways of selling these services back to us so i think it gets to what the earlier speaker was talking about why we don't know what open access is i think it raises the question of why facebook and twitter and all of these things are a huge issue i just think it's that that piece around power and the and the role of corporations well i want to thank you all very much and i want to say as leader director of public knowledge i yeah we were very pleased to sponsor this conference and to to help with the organization with with both Rutgers and with new america all of us i think hope that this will be the first of many conversations that we are having inside washington and outside of washington and now i know that ellen would just like to thank you all thank you very much thank you