2026 Predictions with Blair Levin- Episode 671 of the Community Broadband Bits Podcast

Christopher Mitchell (00:12)
Welcome to another episode of the Community Broadband Bits podcast. I'm Christopher Mitchell at the Institute for Local Self-Reliance in St. Paul, Minnesota. And it's 2026 suddenly. I'm sitting here with Blair Levin, who is most widely known currently, think, for being an Equities Analyst in the telecom sector. You're a non-resident fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies now.

And one of the things that is relevant for this show, you're the Executive Director of the National Broadband Plan back, not quite ancient history, but in the middle ancient history. Welcome back, Blair.

Blair Levin (00:49)
Thank you so much, Chris. Great to see you.

Christopher Mitchell (00:51)
Last year we did a couple of shows that, ⁓ that I really enjoyed our, our audience really enjoyed regarding, ⁓ the looking back on the previous year and then looking ahead to the next year. So I'm glad you could come back. can evaluate some of the things we thought would be trends and, and talk about it. and then I'm, I have no idea how this is even going to look on Riverside. I'm all zoomed in on my face uncomfortably and I don't know what's actually in the background of my shot. I'm in the middle of an office redesign. So we'll see, we'll see how it turns out.

Blair Levin (01:16)
You got a lot of books. You look very

academic. And a couple of hard hats, by the way, which kind of counters. It's a nice balance for yin-yang.

Christopher Mitchell (01:20)
good. That's what I'm looking for.

Yes. Yes. And if you look over there, there's few things like there's a, you get, I've got the, the stupid, stupid thermoses or no, those are, these are tribal. No, yeah, those are the stupid ones from David Eisenberg. And then I have a stupid mug, which is, for people who aren't familiar, David Eisenberg talked about the stupid network, which is, contraposed with the, what AT&T wanted to do with a more intelligent inside the network where the ISP would make more decisions as opposed to just passing along packets.

Blair Levin (01:33)
Yeah, right.

Christopher Mitchell (01:52)
And the stupid mug is designed because you can put any liquid in there that you want, hot or cold, and it just keeps it the way it is.

Blair Levin (01:57)
yeah.

Yeah, I had the

pleasure of working with David. I invited him to join the team that did the.

It turned out that his vision turned out to be correct, not necessarily because of policy, but I think AT&T in their failed attempt to own both DirectTV and more importantly, the asset that is now being sought by Paramount and Netflix, which is to say what was then Time Warner Entertainment, they have recognized that their real profitability is being a very effective and efficient stupid network.

Christopher Mitchell (02:31)
That makes sense. And as you were saying, I was thinking back to some of The Verge coverage of this and I was just riffing in my head that I feel like it might turn out that Time Warner's assets are sort of like cursed. If this was a supernatural story, it feels like everyone that touches them ends up worse off.

Blair Levin (02:47)
Yeah, absolutely right. With of course, the biggest one being Time Warner shareholders who basically gave away their company to buy AOL in the worst corporate deal of all time. But AT&T buying DirectTV and AT&T buying Time Warner, if you look at the return to the shareholders, those are pretty high up too.

Christopher Mitchell (03:07)
Yes, exactly. So we're going to talk a little bit about media policy and what's going on there. We're going to go through this and I don't know, I put them in a rough grouping, I think. I feel like you did really well, Blair, in terms of the trends that you expected. ⁓ There's a few oversights, but I think it's going be interesting to talk about them. One was that...

Blair Levin (03:19)
Thank you.

Can I just say one thing really quick?

Wall Street is a really interesting place, but I would say if you have a choice between reading what Wall Street analysts say and what people in DC say, you should always go to what people in Wall Street say, not because they are morally superior, but Wall Street is a reality-based community. There are definitely moments in time, the tulip bubble being the classic one, where markets get wildly wrong.

but there is a discipline about Wall Street that does not exist in other places like the Sunday morning talk shows where people lie with wild abandon.

Christopher Mitchell (04:03)
Yes,

and I think that's, I always come back to incentives. And if you're trying to figure out what a system is, and there are often penalties, some legal, some monetary, in terms of getting things wrong and lying on Wall Street. With the exception of the Wall Street Journal, if you're on the editorial board, apparently there is no penalty for being wrong.

Blair Levin (04:08)
Right.

The editorial board is different,

though. It's interesting and I think worth reading. But yeah, but the news, the Wall Street Journal news is great.

Christopher Mitchell (04:30)
Absolutely. In fact, what are the few places that still covers telecom? And we're going to talk a little bit about the downfall of telecom policy, think. Regarding our expectations for the year, we talked a little bit about what we knew about the Trump administration's priorities coming in. And they talked a lot about deportations and tariffs. And we tried to talk about those as they related. I said, I felt like we were not going to see much in the way of tariffs. And you said, prophetically, that you thought the tariffs were going to be more significant because

President Trump would see them as an opportunity for him to make a deal and exert his will where he could decide without anyone else's input or, you know, to just basically decide by the terrorist will at war. And then he would be able to strike deals in ways that he felt were appropriate. I feel like you nailed that one.

Blair Levin (05:13)
Thank you. I appreciate that. I would say the most significant global economic

idea is that we're replacing the free market with the market for Trump's affections. And that is what tariffs are. And anybody who says there's ⁓ an economic theory behind it, think it's, know, look, if we're imposing tariffs on islands that are the only population is penguins, this isn't about economic theory. Yeah, this is about Donald Trump saying, I want to be in a position where people have to bend the knee and kiss my ass.

Christopher Mitchell (05:36)
They're not taking it seriously.

Blair Levin (05:44)
And he does this in lots of things that aren't global, but he certainly is doing that in global. He makes this argument, by the way, I would predict today, the Supreme Court will overturn the tariffs and that will be the biggest disruption to the market. But there's both upside and downside to that happening. The upside is a lot of prices will go down. The downside is there'll be chaos for a while again.

Christopher Mitchell (06:05)
So what would you say the impact of the tariffs have been? Because I feel like most analysts are shocked at how little the economy has changed, how much we can detect in terms of changes in inflation from tariffs. Doesn't seem like there's as much dislocation as one would expect for the significant increase in tariffs.

Blair Levin (06:24)
Yeah, you know, that's a question better addressed to a macro economist than me. What my reading indicates is there are lots of things, there was a lot of pre-buying that limited the effect of the tariffs because people were expecting them. Early on, the companies were essentially, they didn't want to be in a position where they would raise prices and then get to lower them again. So they were kind of eating the tariffs for a while.

I think there has been an expectation, not in the popular press, but on Wall Street, that the courts would overturn the tariffs. And so we just have to wait for that. And remember, tariffs matter, but they're not everything. They affect, I think, about a third of the economy, but it's really complicated. But the big point is, for small businesses, it has really been a disaster.

It's not the areas that I cover, it's, and what the Trump administration either didn't care about or didn't understand is that a lot of the manufacturing we do here requires inputs that come from other countries and therefore makes it more expensive. Look, China has the biggest trade surplus they've ever had. Mexico is doing great. That was not the purpose of the tariffs.

There was you know, manufacturing jobs are going down. If any, so I would not blame the economists. I would just say that the economic thinking behind the tariffs has been proven wrong time and time again. But I don't think it matters because it's not about economics. It's about power and dominance and Trump being able to exercise it.

Christopher Mitchell (07:57)
So in the telecom sector, would you expect tariffs in 2026 to have a material impact on levels of investment and things like that? And I say that in part because there's two things. One is whether or not the tariffs would affect them. And two is whether or not the tariffs will be there because there's an expectation the Supreme Court will strike them down, but that the Trump administration says it has multiple tools for reestablishing them using other authorities.

Blair Levin (08:06)
No.

Yeah, they do. But it takes longer and you actually, you've got to prove that there's a national emergency. It's a very complicated thing. The telecom sector, I think, is largely not affected. There are definitely parts that are affected and where the costs go up, but compared to other businesses that use wood or certain other kinds of things. mean, the phone manufacturing business, Apple and Samsung,

potentially much more affected by tariffs than the carriers, which are largely domestic business.

Christopher Mitchell (08:53)
The other thing we talked about was deportations. I feel like there's more deportations than we expected based on our comments from a year ago. Certainly we have been, okay.

Blair Levin (08:55)
Yeah.

I'm not sure that's right,

but the nature of the deportations is very different than I thought. But the big thing here is the United States, believe for the first time ever in the year 2025, or I should say in the year 2026, we will begin the year with fewer people in our country than we had at 2025. And if you're in the business,

where your total addressable market, which is a key metric for any company, is not growing. You have a problem. In the past, in February, my firm looked at the impact of the last several years of immigration during the Biden administration. And you can say all kinds of things about the policy and the politics of it, but it was great for the wireless industry.

Because you know what the first thing somebody buys when they cross the border? A wireless phone and a service. there were significant excessive ads, excessive being defined in various ways. We're not going to see that. That's a negative for the industry. They're not going to complain. But that's a problem.

Christopher Mitchell (09:50)
Wireless phone I'm guessing

I think it's interesting that the population is shrank. I think it's devastating, frankly, as someone who, I don't know, would like to get Social Security to the extent that I'm owed it and a variety of other things. My parents are, know, for me it comes down to just the math of how many workers are there versus retirees and more people working, of working age is pretty important. So, but in this case,

Blair Levin (10:30)
Yeah, of course I'm much older than

you, so we worry about in-home healthcare people. You know, the people who do that are almost all immigrants. Who's going to be doing it for us in 10 years? But you're right, you I would have already been collecting Social Security.

Christopher Mitchell (10:40)
Yes. No, right.

And regarding telecom, we talk a lot about rural healthcare. And one of the things that has a significant impact on rural healthcare is bringing in doctors from other countries who then will serve in rural areas as we're closing down these hospitals and clinics. There's fewer places for them to serve and we're not letting them come in in order to do those jobs, which then forces us to rely on telemedicine, which many people cannot access. So,

Blair Levin (11:06)
Yeah. Well, one thing

we didn't talk about last year, but I think will be a big phenomenon in 2026 is related to that, which is the One Big, Beautiful Bill. Very positive for the telephone companies, I should say, you know, because of ⁓ some of the tax treatment of the investments. But a massive negative in a way that I think the market has not really fully understood. Not only do we have no growth,

There are a number of people, my friend John Horrigan, who's probably the leading expert in low-income adoption of broadband, estimates that about five million Americans are gonna move to what he calls broadband insecure because of cuts in Medicaid, in SNAP, and in other ways. People have to decide, am I gonna pay this month for broadband or am I gonna pay for food? They're gonna pay for food. And maybe they cut off the broadband or maybe they just don't pay.

creating a collections problem, all kinds of things. So the so-called K economy where the upper 20 % are doing great and the bottom 80 yeah, that's a big deal. And that's a negative for the ISPs as well, but not in a way that I think is commonly understood.

Christopher Mitchell (12:04)
Yeah, if you can buy a boat, you're doing great.

I do think there's been less dislocation than I expected. I expected that if the Trump administration went after people in the way that it has, which is to say not people who have broken laws aside from entering without paperwork, I expected there to be a more significant impact on the labor market. I'm starting to see more articles now about certain areas of the country where roofing and other jobs are significantly challenged.

I'm not expecting to see an article about telecom labor because we see so few articles about telecom. But I haven't heard, and I don't know, I haven't been going to as many conferences, but I don't know, I don't have a sense that the telecom labor market has been significantly disrupted to date.

Blair Levin (12:52)
Yeah, yeah, it's a great question. I wish I knew the answer to that, but I don't get the sense that they've done that. Part of the reason why we might have not done that, heard about it. There's a lot of private investment in fiber and secondary and tertiary markets. But what we were expecting this year was a approximately a $20 billion investment by the federal government into broadband deployment.

So between 20 and 30 billion. That got delayed by a year.

And the Trump administration is claiming, you in the Wall Street Journal claims, this is a great victory for America because we saved $20 billion. I'm not sure that's right. In fact, I'm pretty sure this is wrong. But I will tell you, and this part, again, it just totally cracks me up because the, well, the Department of Commerce talks about the benefit of the bargain. The benefit of the bargain went to Elon Musk. He benefited enormously.

Christopher Mitchell (13:32)
No, no, I mean, I've been-

Blair Levin (13:47)
The delay by one year allowed him to get hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of rural broadband subscribers without facing competition. Now that competition is not coming online for another couple of years anyway, but the point is instead of it being two years away, it's three years away, right? But he's already in that market. The neat trick, the one really cute trick,

Christopher Mitchell (13:59)
Mm-hmm.

Blair Levin (14:10)
this year that should win some award is the Department of Commerce saying, as to mapping what is an unserved location, we don't count satellite because it's not broadband. But as to delivering broadband, we're going to say broadband of the satellite is equal to wired. I don't know how you logically say that, but I totally understand how you politically say that.

Christopher Mitchell (14:33)
Right. This is

back to DC versus ⁓ New York City with Wall Street in terms of penalties for lying and that sort of a thing.

Blair Levin (14:40)
Right, right. Starlink, look, it's a great service, but it's also a huge winner. And that is the most significant thing was the year delay.

Christopher Mitchell (14:42)
Yeah, one of the things that...

I was amazed by the Wall Street General editorial, which was at the end of 2025, in which they talked about the savings using the same language that the Secretary of Commerce and ⁓ Arielle Roth, the head of NTIA have used in terms of it being a savings. And I just say, I don't know if anyone's ever seen, if you've driven on the highway where you're both on one side of, of totally reconstructing the other side. And it turns out that if you're building an interstate highway,

It would be cheaper to just grade the dirt and then leave it as dirt. That is not the only measure of success, whether or not you've saved money if you stop at that point.

Blair Levin (15:23)
It's a great analogy. It's a great

analogy. No, if we were basically saying we want to get everybody a new car of let's call it Camry level, and then we're going to save a bunch of money by getting a really cheap used car, which or a bicycle, you know, sure, you save money. There are tradeoffs in life. And one of the things that I think in my two stints in the government that I'm

Christopher Mitchell (15:37)
Or a bicycle.

Blair Levin (15:47)
proud of is I think we were much more honest about what the trade-offs are.

Christopher Mitchell (15:51)
You were a sucker. Yeah. think that's where we're at right now. So you believed, and I thought this made sense, that Trump or Elon Musk would declare the Internet job is done and everyone is connected. I don't think that happened.

Blair Levin (15:52)
That's the way of saying it. I'll take that as a compliment.

Yeah, they haven't got it yet,

but they've become really close and they will.

Christopher Mitchell (16:07)
I ⁓

think there's a model misalignment though in that we thought they cared and I don't think they care at all about that. I don't think they notice it. I mean, think, you know, it's sort of like for them, it's like, why talk about this? No one cares. And I feel like for me, 2025 was the year of recognizing that like nobody cares about this thing that I've spent my life working on.

Blair Levin (16:26)
I

would disagree with you. It's not that nobody cares. They just haven't... I think it'll happen in the first quarter of this year where Trump, and he can't help himself, will say, you know, for 25 years people have been talking about the digital divide. I solved it in less than a year. You know, like the number of factual errors in that statement are massive. But having said that, that's particularly what he will say. Now, in a way, we shouldn't care. In another way...

Christopher Mitchell (16:42)
Mm-hmm.

Blair Levin (16:52)
we should because this has significant ramifications for the future of universal service. It also has significant ramifications for rural America, which, you know, there has been no administration, whether it be tariffs with farmers, rural hospitals getting screwed by changes in Medicaid, rural America. I mean, the thing that, of course, Ludnick and Trump are ignoring is that you bring fiber into homes. You're also creating that fiber for enterprises.

⁓ Whereas if everyone's just taking satellite, what kind of connectivity does the local business have or the school have or whatever? So, you you ignore those benefits. But, you know, I think one of the big things, I don't think Congress is gonna do anything about universal service for several years, but we're gonna reach a moment where we have to reform it. And Trump and Musk will create

Christopher Mitchell (17:18)
Mm-hmm.

Blair Levin (17:42)
a political environment in which supporting universal service will be difficult for Republicans because they will have declared that it's solved. So why are we spending money on a problem that is already solved?

Christopher Mitchell (17:54)
Yes. Well, the Wall Street general editorial that came out said 99 % of Americans already have this access. So it's right along the lines of what you're saying. I don't think there is any concern about those who cannot afford it. The ACP is dead and remains dead. There's no hope on the horizon. So, okay.

Blair Levin (18:07)
with that.

I disagree with that.

But not for several years. Look.

Christopher Mitchell (18:15)
Far Horizon.

Blair Levin (18:16)
Yeah.

There are a number of different problems that Trump and Musk are ignoring. I don't think in a long run we could ignore those. The big story last year, this year, the next few years will be AI in a thousand different ways. But one of them is if we want to lead the world in AI, it's not just about Sam Altman getting rich.

It's about how Americans use it. You can't use it without a certain kind of broadband, but you also can't use it without being digitally literate and being able to afford broadband. So I think that, you know, in the same way that over time we have had a political consensus that heating bills need to be subsidized or electricity needs to be subsidized to a certain extent, I think an ACP-like thing makes a comeback. And I might note that

⁓ I testified in the Senate on this just before it went away. The leading Republican supporting the ACP was JD Vance. It was several months before he became the VP.

Christopher Mitchell (19:20)
And he

never changes his mind about anything, so we should be good there.

Blair Levin (19:25)
No, I think, yeah, no, as to JD Vance, I totally agree. But I think that the Republicans, I mean, it'll be very interesting to see what happens in 2026. But I think that there are some Republicans who, Josh Hawley, Marjorie Taylor Greene, some others who are gonna say, we're a working class party.

Christopher Mitchell (19:26)
You're going to resist my cynicism. I love it.

Blair Levin (19:47)
And we are not doing anything to help the working class.

Christopher Mitchell (19:50)
Right,

there's been a significant shift and the white working class is much more interested in Republican in the past. I think the white working class feels like no one speaks for them and they're casting about. And so I think what you're saying is that smart Republicans that would like to keep their interests would perhaps make this more of a campaign point than we've seen in the past, right?

Blair Levin (20:10)
Where I think it's again, not till 2029 or something, but there will be an effort to bring back what we might think of as the ACP.

Christopher Mitchell (20:20)
Mm hmm. I think so too. I mean, just in the sense that like we can't continue to ignore this and I'll just say it's people like me. My job is to bring this back in. So we'll be working to bring it back up and working with the states. We didn't see as many states enact it last year as we hoped. I think it'll be a talking point for more states this coming year and we shall see what those states do. You've

Perennially mentioned, we won't spend a lot of time on this, don't think, but you mentioned, I think, first two years ago on this show about gambling being a significant issue. Last year, we saw that it was starting to be an issue, but still it felt like no one was really talking about it. This year, there's a lot more people, I think, are talking about it. We see more studies. The median wealth of states goes down after they introduce gambling. Bankruptcies significantly increase after gambling laws are loosened.

Blair Levin (20:51)
Thank you.

Christopher Mitchell (21:08)
I feel like people are starting to pay attention to the problem of instant gambling on the phone.

Blair Levin (21:14)
Yeah, I hope that's true. You know, when the Supreme Court ruled, I think back in 2018, that states couldn't ban gambling, overturning a federal law that famously then Senator Bradley had put forward many years earlier, I wrote, you know, gambling will be one of the biggest businesses in America. But it's a big problem. I think we're seeing those problems now.

Christopher Mitchell (21:36)
extraction.

Blair Levin (21:39)
America's turning into a gambling society and it's not just gambling on sports. It's gambling on everything and you're teaching young people, particularly young men, that the way to wealth is, you know, at that little edge. And of course, as you know, any economist would tell you, most people are going to end up being losers. That's the way gambling works.

Christopher Mitchell (22:01)
Well, especially if the regulations work that you can kick off the people who find the edge.

Blair Levin (22:05)
Right, 100%. But I care less about that than the many people. I don't care whether the gambling companies make money or not. What I care about is all the people whose lives are being destroyed.

in the same way that smoking used to destroy lives much more and we as a society realized, yeah, we at least need warnings, but we need a lot of other things. need to campaign.

The biggest story I would predict politically in 2026, other than a thousand things that Trump will do and reactions to them and all that, but the anti-AI story is actually an anti-tech story. And it relates to this. One of the things I've been thinking about a lot as we come up to the 30th anniversary of the 1996 act, I was chief of staff at the FCC then.

When we did the 96 act and we're implementing it, 100 % of America was pro-tech. I may be exaggerating slightly. They all were excited about the opportunity of faster, cheaper communications and the rise of the Internet. When I was doing the National Broadband Plan 2009 and 10, most Americans were pro-tech. They were excited about what faster, better, cheaper broadband would mean. Starting in about 2012,

there started to be an anti-tech movement. It has not resulted in federal legislation. It has resulted in massive state legislation, particularly on banning phones in schools. That is fundamentally an anti-tech point. And it's very bipartisan, but you're gonna see it, you see it in the polling numbers in terms of, I mean, 75 % of America opposes the moratorium on state AI legislation.

I think 80 % of America either is unexcited or scared of what AI will mean in the future. I think the executive order that essentially said states cannot adopt onerous AI legislation, whatever that means, the tech industry regarded that as a great victory. I think...

They will look back on that the same way the Japanese on December 8th, 1941 thought that Pearl Harbor was a great victory, but there was one admiral who allegedly said, I fear we have woken a sleeping giant. I think as the states play out, America's are not, they are not pro-AI.

Christopher Mitchell (24:12)
Right, no, if you look at like Marsha Blackburn, who is someone that I would say is unquestionably pro-tech in a lot of ways. I think she obviously is very pro-AT&T and pro-big platforms in a lot of ways. She was very upset about this because of the threat it represented to Nashville and the country music industry, as well as other industries in Nashville because of the way AI can devalue their products. And so I think there's interesting reactions to this.

Blair Levin (24:14)
Yeah.

Well, look, I was on the phone with a bunch of investors and one of said, basically, why are people so upset about these data centers? Why are some people so, you know, like, we need the energy, we need to lead an AI. And I said, well, look, you can disagree with what I'm about to say, but I think what I'm about to say represents the view of most Americans about AI. They look at AI and what they say, what they hear is AI is offering the following deal.

A few people in Silicon Valley get really rich in exchange for which you pay more for energy, you pay more for water, and your kids never have a job. Why would anyone think that's a good deal?

Christopher Mitchell (25:10)
Because you can have a friend that will still be there for you telling you that you're amazing even as the rest of your life falls

Blair Levin (25:15)
I guess.

Christopher Mitchell (25:16)
so this, this leads right into something we talked about with, chairman Carr at the FCC. we talked about at that point, I think we were more focused on the way in which, Carr and President Trump were expected to be anti-big tech, that was, we recorded our show, I believe before January 20th, when all of the tech leaders were there giving Trump money. And there's been a lot less anti-tech sentiment, since then, especially since it seems like they own everything.

Blair Levin (25:31)
yeah.

There's a lot more anti-tech sentiment in the country, but there is, what the tech community essentially decided, in my view, is we no longer need to persuade the public of the value of what we do. And we don't need Congress. We need one guy and he's transactional. We can buy him. And so why don't we just do that? And I didn't see that as much, but...

Christopher Mitchell (25:43)
Right.

Blair Levin (26:02)
I never thought they were serious about some of their anti-tech stuff, you know, the TikTok. I mean, one of the greatest scandals that's gonna emerge in 26 or 27 is that one of Donald Trump's friends who is allowed to buy interest in TikTok at a ridiculously low valuation will turn around and sell that amount for whatever. And it'll be like, make 500%.

Christopher Mitchell (26:06)
car wasn't among the present.

Blair Levin (26:25)
in a year. Now, if you and I made an investment in Nvidia three years ago and we made a lot of money, no one would say, well, you just bought it on the open market. That's not what's happening here. To get a share of TikTok at the ridiculously low valuation, you have to be a friend of Trump's.

And the tech community just made that deal. I think it's a bad deal for them in the long run, but they're in a better position to evaluate that. But it's a bad deal for the country. But also, gee, all that discussion of digital fentanyl that Brendan Carr and other Republicans were saying, all that concern about China control the algorithm, which my understanding is they'll still control, that's gone away at the federal level.

Christopher Mitchell (27:05)
It's gone away. And

Blair Levin (27:07)
at

Christopher Mitchell (27:07)
the Democrats haven't done anything either. All the Democrats voted to national, to basically put the ultimatum to TikTok for similar reasons. ⁓ They've found other things that they're focused on perhaps, but I do feel like all of Congress decided not to fight on this blatant ⁓ unconstitutional power grab by President Trump to decide not to follow the law.

⁓ no one is acting like this is a big deal. It's, know, it's one of the first things that happened was Trump came in and said this law that Congress passed that President Biden had signed that the Supreme court said was constitutional. I'm just not going to do it. I'm not going to offer an excuse. I'm just not going to do it. And, and everyone was just like, all right, cool. We're going to focus on other things. It was a, it's a remarkable story.

Blair Levin (27:44)
It's the same with the release of the Epstein

files. They are violating the law. The problem is they are the law enforcement mechanism and Trump recognized in TikTok, you you and whose army.

Christopher Mitchell (27:55)
Yes, exactly. And that's that I feel like that is the bigger story for me, which is one of ⁓ rules and and just the idea that there are no rules currently. And it's something that we just see played out in this industry. But it's the larger story that is linking, I think, all industries is that there are no rules and there's it's not really clear how we get back to a rules based order. And I expect that we will. I mean, I'm not hopeless on this, but ⁓ there's no roadmap currently, I don't think.

Blair Levin (28:23)
No, yes, I think history will record that one of the things, whether it be deportations without due process, TikTok, I would go with antitrust, whereas a Trump official from this administration testified a couple of weeks ago that there were lobbyists who basically are saying, don't worry about hiring antitrust lawyers or economists, hire me for $225,000 a month.

and I will get your deal done. And if the Antitrust Division doesn't like it, we'll just go around.

Christopher Mitchell (28:52)
Yes. So it's going to be interesting to see where that goes. Cause I think that's another thing that's building there's anti-tech, but it's tied up in antitrust and anti-monopoly feelings, which I feel like are an inevitable rise of the centralization of power. Just through history, we see when, whether it's the government or whether it is private industry gathers too much power, there is a natural reaction to it. That's going to continue. I think.

So regarding the FCC still spectrum policy, we didn't see a lot of changes. I think we thought that the AWS three auction would happen that hasn't happened yet, but certainly seems to be in motion. Okay. I'm thrilled that we're still debating a tribal licensing window. I think that's a terrific move by the FCC to keep that in play. I think it's an important thing for moving forward to make sure that our spectrum is used efficiently.

Blair Levin (29:23)
It's supposed to start on June 2nd, so yeah.

Christopher Mitchell (29:39)
What else happened last year in Spectrum? Dish obviously was a huge deal, I think, regarding Spectrum.

Blair Levin (29:43)
Yeah, the biggest

story on Wall Street involving the FCC was not Jimmy Kimmel. That was the biggest story in terms of the public. The biggest story was in May, Brendan Carr essentially started two proceedings against Dish that would have undercut the value of their spectrum licenses. At the time I wrote, as to both proceedings, we know what Carr wants.

If Ergun had two to three years to litigate them, he would likely win in court, but he has to refinance everything in the second quarter of 26. If there's questions about the value of the spectrum, he's screwed. And so what Carr successfully did was forced Ergun to sell. This was a huge boom by the way for shareholders. I think their stock was up much more than any of their telecom. I it was like 300%. My recollection beginning of the year was like,

Now it's a 108 or something close to 400%, whatever. That was the biggest move. And in terms of spectrum, that's the biggest move. You know, the Trump administration is bragging about, we've got a spectrum plan and we're looking at all these things. Their spectrum plan is basically the same as the Biden plan, which was too little and too late, but they're basically adopting the same thing and they're looking at various bands. But the only activity that we're likely to see by the end of

Trump administration that puts spectrum into new uses. There's the AWS 3 re auction starting in June and then in the second quarter of 27, the upper C band auction between 140 and 180 megahertz. I don't think they're gonna be able to reallocate any other spectrum and auction in 2028 could be wrong, but you know.

Christopher Mitchell (31:17)
The BBB

does demand it though, so that'll be in motion.

Blair Levin (31:20)
Right, right, right. And there was what to me was a hilarious executive order that came out at nine o'clock on Friday.

9 in the evening. It was the same day as the Epstein file release or the initial one. An obvious attempt to distract people from the Epstein files didn't really work. But as a practical matter, everything that he was announcing had already been announced. And it's all about 6G. And I'm frankly skeptical that 6G will be a meaningful contributor to anybody.

Christopher Mitchell (31:48)
No, yeah, from

one G to two G huge, two G to three G huge, three G to four G huge, four G to five G, maybe on the edges, yeah, yeah.

Blair Levin (31:54)
Yeah, and 5G to 6G, you mean?

And there's a larger story here, which is really about connectivity sufficiency. One of the biggest problems I saw but did not articulate for various reasons at the broadband plan was the speeds at that time suppressed applications. You couldn't do certain things. We thought, you know, we'll see what happens if you increase speeds, and Google Fiber was part of that and all that. And it turns out there seems to, you know,

There may be some applications, particularly in the enterprise, that require much faster speeds, but for consumers, it hasn't happened yet, and maybe it doesn't. And if it doesn't, kind of we're sufficient. But the big story, I think, in Spectrum this coming year will be also related to the biggest market story, which is to what extent do satellites say, we're not just going to compete for broadband in approximately 5 to 10 % of the

where A, there aren't any other competitors and B, it's rural and.

very low density, to what extent do they move up the stack? What Carr said after he essentially ended Dish's effort to be the fourth facility-based competitor, he said, no, satellite's gonna do that. Well, big if true.

Christopher Mitchell (33:08)
Well, Starlink has picked up a bunch of people on the phone,

Blair Levin (33:11)
Yeah.

Christopher Mitchell (33:12)
I don't have a sense of how it works, ⁓ but I was just visiting my father-in-law and he said he keeps seeing ads. He's a big YouTube guy and he sees ads constantly about it. Has a sense that a lot of people are starting to use it out there in rural central, northern central Minnesota. And I was kind of surprised because it hasn't really been a part of my world. I kind of knew that it was out there. I kind of thought it was cool for, if I was to go on like long hikes or something, I might want to that available, but like.

You know, it didn't really touch my world, but for him, it's something that people are taking seriously.

Blair Levin (33:42)
No, look, for 5 to 10 % of this country, it's an extraordinary thing. And if the Trump administration had said, hey, we don't need to do anything with BEAD at least that would have been logically consistent. But what's going to happen, I think, this year and the following year is a satellite, not just SpaceX, but led by SpaceX will say, we could provide much more broadband for many more people if you just give us

this much more spectrum. And if you increase our power levels, and that creates all kinds of complexity, and it basically pits the satellite guys versus the incumbents. And for Carr, this is actually tricky, you know. The hardest thing in that job is not saying no to your enemies. It's having to decide between friends. And Carr is very close to AT&T and Verizon, and very close to Musk. And that'll be an interesting battle to watch.

Christopher Mitchell (34:23)
Mm-hmm.

Blair Levin (34:31)
Most of what Carl's done has been very predictable.

That one is lesser.

Christopher Mitchell (34:34)
SpaceX seems like it's had a great strategy on spectrum, on figuring it out, on working the process. The criticism I hear from people about Kuiper is this question of how are they gonna be competitive? Their satellites, their design seems cool, they have a different approach than SpaceX, but they don't have the spectrum assets is what I hear. So what should we expect from Kuiper this coming year?

Blair Levin (34:56)
Yeah, no, I think the two biggest market questions are number one, to what extent does satellite expand its horizons in terms of what it... No, no, no, right, right, right. But the other is to what extent does the FCC decide it's not just about satellite, we need more satellite competition. So in other words, do they make those decisions that kind of even the playing field of...

Christopher Mitchell (35:02)
Sorry, I said Kuiper, whatever, Leo.

Blair Levin (35:16)
That's a big problem for the commission as well. I could argue with, you know, these are just lots of different trade-offs. Let me put it to you this way. In the year 2030, would you rather have one satellite provider that is capable of really serving not the bottom 10%, but the bottom 40 % versus two to three, which served only the bottom 15%, but at a lower price point?

Christopher Mitchell (35:42)
Yeah. Let me ask you this as an Equities Analyst, should I have my finger ready for the first Low Earth Orbit collision when SpaceX's public stock takes a dive suddenly and people freak out against it and hope that it's gonna recover? ⁓

Blair Levin (35:57)
Number one, I never advise about particular stocks. This is what I do.

Christopher Mitchell (36:00)
I only make bad decisions anyway on this, so it's okay.

Blair Levin (36:02)
and by the way, you know, this goes back to something we talking about. You can now bet on those things on prediction markets, right? Which is gambling, but then if you can affect, you know, if your brother-in-law, you're a major league pitcher and the brother-in-law says, I'm betting on you throwing pitches below 80.

Christopher Mitchell (36:10)
Right, which is gambling, but not clear that...

Blair Levin (36:21)
miles per hour, is unusual for you, but just for a couple innings if you'll do that, you know.

Christopher Mitchell (36:26)
Right. Well, this is the question is, is what I've heard people talking about this, and we'll just go back to this for one second, but it's fascinating. Prediction markets are not gambling according to the law currently, right? And, but it's not really clear how one would fix that without also dealing with the fact that, I don't know, the NASDAQ is a prediction market.

Blair Levin (36:42)
It's a really big problem.

Christopher Mitchell (36:43)
So let's see. No one has a plan, you said last year. This is one in which I think you're looking pretty good. No Democrat or Republican has a plan to increase competitive intensity regarding, I believe we were talking about residential Internet access. ⁓ That I think remains true.

Blair Levin (36:57)
Yeah.

That's 100 % true. Now, Carr would say it's gonna be satellite. Elon Musk would say it's gonna be satellite. But number one, given today's technology and today's spectrum, it's really only for five to 10 % of the public. But they will argue that it's gonna be more and technology does change, maybe more. But as to the competitive intensity, no, there's not.

Christopher Mitchell (37:21)
We've seen a significant reconfiguration of media ownership, feels like. I mean, certainly, I don't know, like maybe I'm just fixated on CBS and the remarkable change there that we saw, especially at end of the year, the evidence from 60 minutes.

Blair Levin (37:32)
That's not really a media ownership

issue, but it's related, right? The Skydance buying pyramid didn't change concentration. It did demonstrate that, again, the market for Trump's affections is what matters. Brendan Carr went around saying, Trump's litigation against CBS has nothing to do with our review. We're just looking at the public interest and all, blah. What I said to investors, I did not say he's lying. I said...

The deal will not be approved until CBS pays off. What you can interpret as saying he was lying, but do like whatever. We try to be civil. But it does demonstrate and this is, you see this now with what is concentration, the battle over Warner Brothers. You also see it in the next Artegna deal. The market for Trump's affections is the key driver of...

whether these deals are approved or not, as opposed to traditional antitrust metrics of HHI.

But one of the ironic things, I think this is, know, there is gonna be concentration. The broadcast ownership rules will be changed. The fundamental market driver of a deal to consolidate broadcasts or consolidate cable channels is to leverage that to get more money from the multi-channel video providers, distribution platforms, which will raise the cost and then cause greater

cord cutting and eventually we will get to a moment where again the the multi-channel video providers say You're all on your own. We'll transmit the bits. We get our money from paying for the Internet access You all figure out what to charge the consumers and that will lead to massive changes in what we think of as the media

Christopher Mitchell (39:06)
Regarding something you said earlier, I want to make sure we touched on, which is the role of mobile wireless and connecting residential homes with a fixed connection, effectively a fixed wireless connection using the mobile system. We, feel like I read, I know, three years ago, ⁓ one of your pieces from New Street Research that suggested that there was an expectation it would cool off. And then I read another piece that expected it to cool off in terms of the number of people that were switching over earlier on this.

you mentioned, you felt like at a certain level of capacity when people have, they're kind of indifferent to more. I think that's what we're seeing to some extent with what 10 % or more of the.

Blair Levin (39:40)
No, that's a good point. And let

me actually say, I made a mistake earlier when we talked about competitive intensity. It is not really a matter of policy, but it is a matter of markets that fixed wireless continues to grow. Now, how far it'll go, it will become a matter of policy because spectrum determines the ability of that market to succeed. Brendan Carr would say, and he's not totally wrong about this,

forcing Dish to sell to AT&T will increase AT&T's ability to do fixed wireless competition with cable. But that's a little ironic because AT&T is also a big fixed wired. And what it's really gonna do is it's gonna change the math for them. Should we build fiber or just use fixed wireless? They're gonna do more fixed wireless. Is that competitive intensity? It's a complicated thing. But the cable industry is now being squeezed by two things and this does go to competitive.

fixed wireless from below, you get an inferior product but at a superior price and fiber from above where you have similarly priced but a superior service. So that's the dilemma for cable and why cable stocks have been kind of flatlining or going down at a time when most stocks are going up or not, I'm sorry, not most stocks, the market overall is going up. Cable's not.

Christopher Mitchell (40:52)
Well,

let me ask you about that because this is one of the things I'm, you know a lot more about the market. And my impression is, that the market has more or less been stable with the exception of the Magnificent Seven or whatever. Is that not correct? I mean, the cable companies are clearly losing value, but the rest of the market, I think is more or less treading water while we look at the market indices growing, but that's entirely because of an artifact of seven wildly profitable companies.

Blair Levin (41:16)
Yeah,

that is basically correct. AT&T is up a bit because the market is appreciating their focus on what they do really well. T-Mobile is up a bit. Yeah, right. But cable is fundamentally flattened down. And you would think of them as being.

Christopher Mitchell (41:24)
Which is not content.

Right. Now, what else should we be thinking about in 2026 that we haven't covered? Are there other aspects we mostly focused on last year and how that leads into this year? But what are the things coming out of the blue that we should be thinking about perhaps?

Blair Levin (41:36)
Wow.

Look, the big story will remain AI. There is a lot of debate about whether it's a bubble. Every time there's a big technological change, there is a lot of investment, whether it be railroads or cars or computers.

There's a lot of investment that turns out to be wasted. That doesn't mean the assets are wasted. We had a big investment in fiber the early part of the century.

people who invested in that, they got crushed, but Google and Meta and others benefited from that fiber and blah, blah. This happens in real estate. There's an old saying, it's the third owner of any real estate who makes the money. So that part, that's complicated, that's AI is the big story. But it's a macro story in the sense that it's gonna affect every other business. Every law firm I know is not hiring as many people as they would have. They're all doing really well, but they're not hiring.

because they're using.

Christopher Mitchell (42:29)
You'd think that would increase

national happiness to know that lawyers are suffering.

Blair Levin (42:33)
That could

be, that could be. But it's, I guess I know too many young kids in law school to feel. Yeah. But I think that that's, but there's that bigger story about the tech lash because tech has not delivered for Americans, it has not delivered greater happiness. I think anybody with young kids struggles.

Christopher Mitchell (42:40)
indeed. Yeah, no, it's a terrible joke. mean, ⁓

Blair Levin (42:57)
and the states are being much more responsive than the federal government. But in terms of like the segments we cover, the big question is will AI matter to the business of delivering bits? Is there a new revenue stream?

Christopher Mitchell (43:10)
Well, you were in the middle of all of this in the run up in the 90s that you just alluded to. You paid very close attention to it. Let me ask you to give me a couple of things in which the AI bubble seems bubble-ish-ous like the fiber bubble and ways in which it doesn't. So what are your thoughts on that? Where is it similar and where is it not similar? What you're seeing today to what it was in the late 90s.

Blair Levin (43:13)
Mm-hmm.

⁓ So what I think is similar is there is a massive wave of optimism on Wall Street, commonly said pessimists are right 99 % of the time and the optimists make all the money. Everybody was an optimist and lots of people lost lots of money, but there were optimists who made the great fortunes of Google.

and stuff like that. So what's clear is this level of optimism driving a lot of investments. There started to be, particularly in the fiber world in the late 90s and early 2000s, these deals where the suppliers were essentially financing on behalf of the buyers. And you see that happening with data centers and other things. You see proclamations by CEOs that will never be true.

about what it will do and what, know, some of the things Elon Musk says about, well, you know, no one will have to work and stuff like

The number of predictions that Elon Musk has made that turn out to be completely wrong.

Christopher Mitchell (44:24)
Yeah, I've been fascinated that Levin, some of them are just, he knows that they're wrong and he's lying. I thought a lot of times he was just exuberant, but there's a number like Hyperloop was a giant scam from the start apparently. And when you learn more about some of this stuff, you get a sense of maybe he's not just exuberant, maybe he is quite cynical with some of his claims. But anyway, go ahead.

Blair Levin (44:40)
Yeah. Yeah.

No, I mean, I think people do not understand the extent to which his lying about DOGE undercut the credibility of everybody in the tech industry. And what we're going to discover in the next several years is not only did DOGE not make its economic promises, but it was fundamentally about the capture of data, personal data for problematic purposes. And that's going to undercut

faith in tech community and AI and some other kinds of stuff. I don't think anyone cares.

Christopher Mitchell (45:09)
Well, additionally, you can also hear

Steve Bannon talking about how frustrated he is that they feel like they put all this time and credibility into it and it was a nothing burger for what they actually wanted. So I think what you're saying is true in terms of the data being important for a small group of people, but there's a much larger group of people who expected more out of Musk and he really under delivered and, and used up a lot of time where they would have liked to push their priorities forward. which is just, it's a fascinating argument within their circle.

Blair Levin (45:37)
Yeah, no, the inner MAGA debates are quite interesting. They don't affect telecom policy as far as I can tell. Or media policy. I think everyone in MAGA world is quite happy with Barry Weiss as head of CBS News. And I was looking forward to her heading CNN.

Christopher Mitchell (45:52)
Well,

I mean, think the thing with Musk though is that like it was the, the, the, I don't want to say the piece of hay that broke the camel's back is much more than a piece of hay, you know, whatever. might be mixing things up the straw that broke the camel's back, but it clearly, I mean, I do think, you know, as it becomes more clear, the hundreds of thousands that have died from USAID, being gutted, ⁓ just when you look at like what future problems the veterans administration will probably have serving people, all the, these things.

I'm not sure how much of it will actually correctly be attributed to Musk. Like it might be people might not realize that's why their government services suck so much more now. but it's clear that there was a major role there. There's like Musk went from, think, being this inventor and, and, and, and person that was doing, ⁓ you know, two or three years ago, he was quirky and a lot of us started to have problems with him, but then he went and he inshittified the government, ⁓ effectively and

I feel like that's gonna be one of the things that will be his major downfalls, which does impact what he does with what comes next in tech and telecom, I think.

Blair Levin (46:54)
I wouldn't necessarily predict this downfall. I would say that from the perspective of the early 30s, when historians look back as like the two most emblematic tweets or posts or whatever you want to call them, we'll put aside the President trashing Rob Reiner as a reflection of kind of the meanness and coarseness of American culture at this time. One was Elon Musk tweet, I spent the weekend sending USAID to the wood chipper.

Christopher Mitchell (47:17)
Mm-hmm.

Blair Levin (47:17)
missed a

lot of great parties, well. Making a joke out of taking an action that was completely thoughtless, I'm sure there was waste at USAID, but eliminating it, who was calling for that? And he will have caused the death of hundreds of thousands of people, if not millions of people. And by the way, as far as I can tell, not a single pro-life organization objected to it. I hope I'm wrong. But the other one was,

Mark and Greesen criticizing the Pope for suggesting the tech should actually serve people. I'm just saying these guys are living in a space, they are in such a bubble about the implications of their work and an understanding of what's.

Christopher Mitchell (47:52)
I think that here's

a prediction for you related to that, which is I think the American Pope leads to a significant Catholic and perhaps larger religious uprising against tech and AI. Fitting with what you're talking about, that wave against it. I mean, it's starting.

Blair Levin (48:06)
Yeah, I think that's right. And I think that's the big political story. And I think it's an interesting question of who will end up being more anti-AI, the Republicans or the Democrats. We don't have time to argue about that. Now, but I would say in 2027, you're gonna see, you're not gonna pass an AI law this year, ⁓ but in 27, the number of anti-AI people in Congress will be greater on both sides.

Christopher Mitchell (48:22)
Mm-hmm.

Blair, that's a lot ⁓ of food for thought. I hope people got a lot of different things out of it from how the markets work to what to expect next year. ⁓ So thank you so much for once again coming on. We look forward to having you back at the end of the year, but also in between as any notable things come up that you can help explain.

Blair Levin (48:47)
Chris, always a pleasure to chat with you and to everybody who's listening, happy new year. Let's hope for a peaceful, prosperous and healthy new year for everyone.

Christopher Mitchell (48:55)
Yes, let's hope the Trump administration ends with a stirring success of making America great again. That would be a surprise.

Blair Levin (49:02)
Well, as the grandfather

of five, I will simply say that the making America healthy again agenda, when you look at the numbers of measles and vaccinations and other kinds of things, don't think it's working the way we want it to work.

Christopher Mitchell (49:17)
No, but there is always hope that people will recognize what they've lost once they start to lose it.

Blair Levin (49:21)
Yeah, Let's hope.