Executive Calendar

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. KENNEDY. Madam President, I want to spend a very few minutes today to say thanks. I want to thank Chairman Ajit Pai and his colleagues at the Federal Communications Commission. The Chairman announced yesterday that he was going to put 5G technology and the American taxpayer first by holding a public auction, as opposed to a private auction, of what we call the C-band. It was a courageous decision that he made against a lot of pressure.

Allow me, for just a few minutes, to explain why that is important. We have all heard about 5G, which stands for fifth generation. It is a brandnew wireless technology. It means incredibly fast internet and cell phone calls. It means the ability to deliver as much as 100 times more data through wireless technology than we can do today.

We will notice it in our iPads; we will notice it in our computers; but we will notice it also in our cell phones.

As you know, a cell phone is really a sophisticated walkie-talkie. I will use the cell phone as an example to explain 5G. A cell phone is just a very sophisticated, much more complicated walkie-talkie. How does a walkie-talkie work? How does a cell phone work? Radio waves. The scientific term is ``electromagnetic radiation.''

A radio wave is just what it says, a wave that goes from my cell phone, say, to the President's cell phone through an antenna, a transmitter, and a receiver. A radio wave and the air through which it travels and the right to send a radio wave is a sovereign asset. It belongs to the American people. The American people own that radio wave and the right to send it. Our FCC gets to decide who gets to use those radio waves and who has the right to send those radio waves.

There is a particular type of radio wave that is absolutely perfect for 5G. It is between 180 megahertz and 300 megahertz. Why are these radio waves so perfect for 5G? Well, because they strike a balance. First, the radio waves in that spectrum, as it is called, can go a fairly long distance, and they can carry huge amounts of data. That is going to make driverless cars possible. We have heard about those--the internet of things. That is going to make remote surgery possible, where a doctor who is in one place physically and through the internet, using a robot, can perform surgery on someone 1,000 miles away. 5G going through these special radio waves is going to make all that possible. It is going to change our lives.

Right now, those radio waves--I will call them the C-band spectrum-- as I said, are owned by the American people. They are being used by three satellite companies--two from Luxembourg and one from Canada--and some other companies. They are satellite companies. They don't own those radio waves. They don't even have a license to use those radio waves. They didn't pay anything to get to use those radio waves. The FCC said they could use them. It is sort of like a month-to-month lease or rental agreement where you don't have to pay any rent.

Some time ago, those three companies came to the FCC and said: Even though we don't own those radio waves you allow us to use and even though the American people own those radio waves, which are perfect for 5G, we are willing to give them up to use for 5G, but here is what we want you to do.

The three foreign companies said: We want you to give us those radio waves, and then we will auction them off to the telecommunications companies that want to use the radio waves for 5G.

This was the kicker: The three foreign corporations said they want to keep the money.

Investment bankers estimate that through that auction being conducted by those three foreign corporations, as much as $60 billion would have been generated. That is how much telecommunications companies would pay to get the license to use those radio waves.

Some people encouraged the FCC to do that. They said that we ought to do it because these three foreign companies can do an auction faster than the FCC can--even though the three foreign companies had never done an auction of spectrum and even though the FCC has done over 100 public auctions for other radio waves that the FCC has auctioned off. In doing that, the fine men and women at the FCC in charge of these auctions--they have been doing it for 25 years--have brought in $123 billion for the American people. That will build a lot of interstate, it will educate a lot of kids, and it will pay a lot of soldiers.

But our three friends--these foreign satellite companies--still said: Even though we have no experience, we can do it faster. If you let the FCC do it, it will take them 7 years.

Well, that just wasn't accurate. I have spoken to the people in charge of doing auctions at the FCC. In fact, on Thursday, they are going to appear before a subcommittee that I chair. We are going to talk about it some more. I don't know where this figure of 7 years came from, but it is just not accurate.

Nonetheless, the FCC came under--there are swamp creatures in the government; we know that. Some of these swamp creatures in and out of government put an awful lot of pressure on the FCC. These swamp creatures are trying to help some of their friends in the telecommunications business. One of the foreign corporations spent about half a million dollars lobbying. I am not saying there is something wrong with that. We all have the right to petition our government. But that is just the fact. I don't mean it in a pejorative sense.

The FCC was under a lot of pressure, but yesterday, the Chairman of the FCC, Ajit Pai, looked at all this. He resisted the pressure, and he announced that we are going to have a public auction. We are going to let every telecommunications company in America that wants to bid on these valuable air waves come forward and bid. We are going to do an auction within a year and probably less, not 7 years, and the money that is going to be generated is going to go to the owner of those radio waves, not the foreign companies that, through our benevolence, are now using those radio waves. The money is going to go to the American people.

I know what you are thinking. You are thinking: Gosh, how was this ever even an issue? This should have been a no-brainer.

Well, that is part of what is wrong with Washington, DC, in my judgment. Sometimes--not always but sometimes--the American people aren't put first. But yesterday, Ajit Pai, our Chairman at the FCC, put them first, and I just wanted to stand up today and tell him a genuine and heartfelt thank-you.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source