The FCC’s Brendan Carr, the senior Republican Commissioner, in conversation with Consumer Technology Association Senior Director of Regulatory Affairs Rachel Nemeth, addressed the fact that the FCC’s spectrum auction authority has expired. FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel and her fellow Commissioners have called for its renewal. Nemeth asked Carr to comment on how the end of spectrum auctions would impact technologies such as voice recognition and IoT devices that are “on the cusp” of coming together to be “more seamless and practical for the consumer.” His answer was that spectrum is vital for connectivity and “our geopolitical leadership.”

Carr notes that, recently, “a lot of action on spectrum is backwards.” “They’re trying to claw back some of the rules we put into place,” he said, referring to the National Spectrum Strategy issued by the Biden administration in November 2023.

We just have to find a way to get going again,” said Carr. “We freed up about 6,000 MHz and the most recent news, we’re studying a fraction of that.” (The National Spectrum Strategy is looking at 2,700 MHz.) Carr noted that, “there are incumbent federal users with critical missions.”

“So it’s not easy and we have to be balanced,” he suggested. “But we’re behind other countries, including China, without a real plan to get going.”

Nemeth asked about his “strong track record on promoting telehealth.” “Historically, we did a great job of supporting connections to brick-and-mortar health facilities,” he said. “And we launched proceedings to move to connected care, but then COVID hit.” Regarding the Cyber Trust Mark, Carr said he appreciates that “the program proposes to be voluntary and based on NIST” (National Institute of Standards and Technology).

“There’s a sweet spot to enable consumers to have confidence in what they’re purchasing, but we have to be careful we don’t go too far with regulations that make it too complicated,” he explained. “But there’s a path forward and it can do a lot of good.”

He expressed his strong opposition to bringing back net neutrality. “It’s broadly agreed upon that we should not see throttling or blocking,” he said. “We could do this almost by unanimous consent.” Reclassification as Title II, he added, “made sense in the 1930s when we had a telephone monopoly, but the competition now is frothy. The debate that started in the early 2000s just isn’t relevant today.”