President-elect Donald Trump has named Brendan Carr, the senior Republican on the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), as the regulator's new chairman on Sunday.
A veteran of the FCC and telecom regulatory policy, Carr earlier served as the agency’s general counsel. Carr had been unanimously confirmed by the Senate three times and was nominated by both Trump and President Joe Biden to the FCC.
While the FCC is an independent agency overseen by Congress, Trump has intimated he wants greater control over the regulator to use them to punish TV networks that he claims cover him unfairly.
One key concern about Carr is his support of Trump’s stance on social media and technology issues. He wrote a section related to the FCC in “Project 2025,” a controversial plan produced by the conservative Heritage Foundation to gut the federal workforce and dismantle federal agencies in a second Trump administration.
While Trump claims that he is unfamiliar with Project 2025, several themes in his statements during the presidential campaign match those of the incoming president.
Trump praised Carr’s devotion to favoring a lighter regulatory approach.
“Commissioner Carr is a warrior for Free Speech and has fought against the regulatory Lawfare that has stifled Americans’ Freedoms and held back our Economy,” Trump said in a prepared statement on Sunday. “He will end the regulatory onslaught that has been crippling America’s Job Creators and Innovators and ensure that the FCC delivers for rural America.”
Altering the BEAD program
A critical element that a Carr-led FCC could alter is the $42.5 billion Broadband, Equity Access and Deployment (BEAD) program.
Carr has aligned with Elon Musk, dissenting from the FCC decision to reject Starlink's Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF) application.
The BEAD program has focused on building fiber-based broadband networks rather than alternative technologies like low-earth orbit (LEO) satellites and fixed wireless.
During a recent episode of Joe Rogan’s podcast, Donald Trump said he sees potential in using satellite services like Musk’s Starlink as a low-cost option.
"We’re spending a trillion dollars to get cables all over the country, up to upstate areas where you have two farms, and they are spending millions of dollars to have a cable,” he said. “Elon can do it for nothing."
While LEO will have its place in emergencies like the recent hurricanes in North Carolina and Florida, fiber broadband advocates like the Fiber Broadband Association (FBA) point out that LEO lacks the bandwidth and reliability of a fiber-based solution. According to the industry association, fiber passes over 70 million locations with access to better services than the FCC’s FCC 100/20 definition of broadband.
In a recent Lightwave+BTR column, Gary Bolton, CEO of FBA, said that if funds like BEAD favor solutions like LEO, underserved and unserved households could continue to be stuck with lower-speed solutions.
To compound the issue and create noise in a program designed for the public good, some want to manipulate the FCC’s standard to skirt the bipartisan Congressional mandate and leave consumers with technology that has inferior performance and scalability - low earth orbit (LEO) satellite,” he wrote. “By relegating these unserved families to an interim option, the digital divide these funds intended to close will be extended instead.”
Net Neutrality threatened
With the FCC set to have a Republican majority, the future of Net Neutrality is likely to be threatened again.
The five-person commission has a 3-2 Democratic majority until next year when Trump will appoint a new member.
During the first Trump administration, the Ajit Pai-led FCC voted to dismantle the Net Neutrality rules in December 2017. The regulations prohibited broadband providers from blocking websites or charging for premium services or specific content. Also, the federal government would no longer regulate high-speed internet delivery as a utility, like legacy POTS phone service.
This reversed the FCC’s 2015 decision, during the Obama administration, to bring stronger oversight over broadband providers as Americans have adopted mobile and wireline broadband services to access content and communicate.
This potential outcome of Net Neutrality is not surprising. Republicans have long argued that unregulated businesses like telecom will drive innovation and enhance the nation’s economy.
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Sean Buckley
Sean is responsible for establishing and executing the editorial strategies of Lightwave and Broadband Technology Report across their websites, email newsletters, events, and other information products.