Carr: Making More Spectrum Available for Industry Is Critical to US Economy
FCC Chairman Brendan Carr said at CES Thursday that making spectrum available for licensed and unlicensed use is critical to U.S. “geopolitical leadership.” When the U.S. frees up spectrum, "the world takes notice," he said, with jobs and innovators coming to the country and new devices and technology launching here first. “It’s really good for consumers.” Carr spoke during a fireside chat with Consumer Technology Association CEO Gary Shapiro.
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In addition to freeing up spectrum itself, the FCC will also keep pressure on licensees to make unused spectrum available through the secondary market. “Just having spectrum out there and lit up on towers isn’t necessarily the best public interest outcome,” he said. “We want to get that spectrum loaded and actually carrying traffic and carrying data.”
During the first year of the new administration, Carr forced EchoStar’s hand to sell spectrum to AT&T and SpaceX (see 2512040003). Without citing the EchoStar/AT&T deal directly, Carr noted Thursday that one carrier saw download speeds set to jump by up to 80% for mobility customers because of a secondary market transaction (see 2511170023).
Shapiro said licensed and unlicensed spectrum are both important to his organization. With everything from garage-door openers to Wi-Fi, “where would we be without unlicensed?” Carr said that during the first Trump administration, the FCC made 1,200 MHz of spectrum available in the 6 GHz band.
Carr also joked that his biggest accomplishment as chairman has been “laying low, staying out of the headlines, below the radar.” Last year was a “whirlwind. It was super busy,” he said, arguing that the way he's presented in the news media doesn’t align with what he’s done as the commission's leader.
In addition, Carr said the number of drones on the CES show floor illustrates that the Trump administration’s goal of ensuring “drone dominance” is working. He pointed to an event he attended Wednesday at the Las Vegas Police Department, where more than a dozen new drones were unveiled for use in police operations. “Tech that you usually just see here on the show floor, you can already see out on the street in Las Vegas.” He also posted about the event on X Thursday.
On AI, Carr said the world is seeing a “fork in the road” between China’s versions, “which are deeply embedded with ideological bias,” and the more transparent U.S. versions. The administration tasked the FCC with starting a proceeding on disclosure and transparency requirements for AI, "so we don’t end up” with “a negative version of a patchwork of regulation,” he said. “We can do this in a smart way.” The agency hasn’t decided when it will start a proceeding, he said, but “we’re going to open it up -- we’re going to hear from everybody.”
Investing in AI
During a venture capitalist panel discussion Thursday, speakers noted that last year more than half of venture funding went to AI startups. Matthew Luongo, managing director at Prosek Partners, said he has some observers inevitably asking if there's currently an AI “bubble.”
“We’re always in a bubble” of some kind, said Rick Yang, head of technology at New Enterprise Associates (NEA). “That’s what our business is built on,” as are innovation and cycles. The question is how long the bubble will last, he said. AI is in a “super cycle,” which “will have its ups and downs” but over time will grow.
NEA takes a “very patient, long-term approach to things, knowing that there will be bumps along the way,” Yang said. Right now, the biggest AI winners are doing well, “they’re adding a ton of value to their customers, [and] they’re generating real revenue, real value.” But capital will become scarcer during the negative parts of the cycle, he said. Right now, money is easy to come by, and companies need to raise capital when it’s available, he added.
Based on the valuation of AI companies, we’re in a bubble, agreed Rudina Seseri, managing partner of Glasswing Ventures. “But there’s money to be made in a bubble, and there’s money to be lost in a bubble.” She said she was an investment banker during the “dot-com” bubble of the late 1990s, and unlike then, AI is “much, much more fundamental and transformative.”
AI models will be different, but the winning companies are the ones “that fundamentally” change unit economics “for the problem they’re solving,” Seseri said. One of the companies that Glasswing invests in reduced calls and outreach by 80% by automating the process, she noted.
George Mathew, managing director of Insight Partners, said one big change over the past two years is that new AI startups are “very acutely aware of the problem that they’re trying to solve” and of “what the foundational models … are capable of now.” The companies try to imagine what will happen in the evolution of the models six or nine months down the road, he said. “They’re always staying ahead of what’s the latest and greatest state of the art when it comes to the foundational models.”