US Shares Common Interests With Caribbean Neighbors, Pai Says
The U.S. and nations throughout the Caribbean should work together on disaster response, FCC Chairman Ajit Pai said Sunday in a speech at CANTO 2018, a meeting of the trade association for telecom operators across the Caribbean region. Last year’s…
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hurricanes hit that region hard, Pai said in the Panama City speech. “Disaster response strikes me as an obvious area where we should be working together,” Pai said. “We should learn from our experiences and develop best practices so that we’re all better prepared and more effective in responding to future disasters. We should all be looking at what worked in the past and where we can improve service availability and restoration.” Pai said the U.S. and others in the region also share in interest in bringing broadband to more areas. “What compels me most -- what inspires me -- are the people I’ve met who are trying to make their way in the digital age,” he said. “You may think that a country as large and resource-rich as the United States can’t possibly understand the connectivity challenges of countries in the Caribbean region. But what I’ve seen in traveling around my country, including to Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands in the Caribbean, and hearing from regulators from all over the world is that we do share common challenges.” Pai said in a second speech to CANTO Monday the FCC didn’t wait for establishment of 5G standards “through a government-led process” to make more spectrum available for fifth-generation. “We put our faith in the power of market forces to develop standards through a private-sector led process, as we did with 4G,” he said. Pai also said the U.S. is committed to working with other countries “toward international radio spectrum allocation and harmonization for next-generation terrestrial mobile and satellite” services. “This will help ensure that emerging technologies are promptly introduced into the marketplace, to the benefit of all citizens in our region,” he said.