Fiber on the Right Track - Episode 22 of Unbuffered

Christopher Mitchell (00:15)
Welcome to another episode of Unbuffered. I'm Chris Mitchell at the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, and we've got Doug Dawson here, returning guest, champion from CCG Consulting and the proud author of POTs and PANS by CCG.com. Welcome back, Doug.

Doug Dawson (00:34)
Thank you, Chris. And it I still weekly have to explain to people what pots are, so

Christopher Mitchell (00:39)
Yes.

I I had some fun. we did the tribal broadband bootcamp twenty-three this week with Hoopa Valley. And there on the fly, we decided to talk a little bit more about usually we talk about the physical infrastructure and not so much about how data is sent and received. But people were really curious about just binary and how different systems work. And I decided to go a little bit further and talk about

how data is sort of sent and you quote you kinda you keep increasing the number of packets you're sending until you see them starting to drop. And we did it like it was like a baseball game of sorts with a couple people. And then like you know, at some point someone can just drop the baseballs in the middle if their buffer is too full. So it goes back to the show. I was thinking about that a little bit.

Doug Dawson (01:22)
That that's a good example, yeah.

Christopher Mitchell (01:24)
Yeah, I kind of I came up with it in the in the moment and I think we'll probably try to try to get it a little tighter and then use it in the future for people to better appreciate this. I just

My goal is that people walk away feeling like empowered and not like this is magic that you have to have a PhD to understand.

Doug Dawson (01:42)
They do. I've talked to several tribes who've been to your boot camps. They just they come back very loving it and they they do feel they they get energized to go do something. So yeah.

Christopher Mitchell (01:50)
that's

great. Yeah. And w and I mean, you've worked with Hoopa Valley as well. We were just there seeing

Doug Dawson (01:54)
Yeah.

Christopher Mitchell (01:54)
their amazing data center that they've built. it was it was great. I had there's a bunch of stuff that I learned that I was not familiar with and it was just great to see what they've done there. So okay, today we're gonna be talking about one of our old favorite topics. we've got four topics and several of them are are ones we've touched on before.

But one is really exciting because we got good news when it comes to railroads and fiber. And let's just hope that that good news keeps coming as other courts review this, perhaps. that'll be our first topic. we're gonna talk a little bit about public Wi-Fi. Doug wrote about the need for more public free Wi-Fi and how that's kind of disappearing and it's a time where we need more of it. we'll talk a little bit about the future of the Federal Communications Commission in light of the slaughter decision.

which gives a president more authority, clear authority to to fire commissioners. Perhaps there's some that have questions about how clear that is. sorry the future of the FCC with slaughter decision is the final topic. The third topic we're gonna slip in there is a little bit about Starlink becoming a mobile network operator and what that might take. and

we're not gonna go and beat it to death, but I thought I'd wanna since I had Doug on, I want to talk a little bit about it. So Doug, let's start with the railroads. And we've talked before about state efforts to try to introduce shot clocks. That's been turned over by courts then. And generally we've talked about how building a fiber optic network, people always complain about permitting and challenges like that.

Fundamentally, one of the biggest issues crossing railroad right away. It is kind of a permitting issue. It's not anything local governments can do a lot about. But the Seventh Circuit, which includes Illinois, Indiana, and Wisconsin, has made a ruling that made our day. So what's going on there?

Doug Dawson (03:43)
Well, and first let me go back just a little bit in time 'cause you're right. The last big effort to do this came out of Virginia and they tried to do a shot clock and the court said they can't do that because they said they don't really have authority over over setting rules for those rights away.

Christopher Mitchell (03:58)
Right. A shot clock being that that if s if

you wanted to apply for a permit, the railroad had to respond within a certain window. They couldn't just

Doug Dawson (04:04)
Yes.

Christopher Mitchell (04:05)
put you off for two years.

Doug Dawson (04:06)
Yes. Yes. So so and so we thought that was great, but that got shut down because and the ruling was local jurisdictions and states don't have authority over that. This ruling's way better than that. So this ruling was CSX versus Zayo. And so Zayo, now I read the whole order and Zayo act this one actually came about because Zayo just went ahead and built like 10 places without a permit.

Christopher Mitchell (04:32)
Yeah, you get the sense that they

had some internal conversations that involved a lot of expletives and they were like, you know what? We're gonna do this.

Doug Dawson (04:34)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

So it sounds like they had already just gone and built. And so what the what the court ended up ruling was

The the railroad has it is is there by rule of an easement. An easement just says you can use this land for a certain purpose. And what the court said, easements are just for the surface. They said that easement doesn't cover above the tracks for aerial fiber as long as it's high enough to be safe, and it definitely doesn't cover underground fiber. So they said that you don't need any permits at all to build railroads as long as you are safe doing it safely. Now CSX did have one good point, which who knows.

If they're true or not, but they said there was a couple cases where Zayo had had actually damaged some of their underground fiber because they dug into it. And that is a problem because you can't locate fiber that's under a railroad track. Locating is where you have an X-ray that looks down in the ground to see what's there. You can't look under the big giant metal railroad tracks, right? So no, no.

Christopher Mitchell (05:36)
Right, you can't get that signal. So and

and you can't just call 811 if you're because yeah.

Doug Dawson (05:40)
No. They can't locate it either. Yeah. Nobody

and and the railroads have never registered any of their fiber. It it's not on

any it's not on anybody's books

Christopher Mitchell (05:51)
I mean, if they if they had copper

and you made some assumptions, I would think you could back off a little bit. You and if they had a tracer wire in there and you could basically assume

Doug Dawson (05:58)
Yeah.

Christopher Mitchell (05:59)
if you could find it on both sides back a little ways, it was going in a straight line, you might have some guess of where it is.

Doug Dawson (06:05)
I

mean, if I was gonna do one under railroad, I would just go a foot or two deeper than normal. I mean it's only for forty feet. You just go deep and and get it over and done with. But that's the good news is if this holds up, this will certainly be appealed. But if it holds up, then we don't have then we don't have to go to any other we don't have to go and ask the railroad's permission anymore. I would still do

Christopher Mitchell (06:25)
Yes.

Doug Dawson (06:25)
it because I would want to find out if they had buried fiber, but but I no longer need their permission. So

Christopher Mitchell (06:31)
And that's a it's a big deal

because we've talked before about how the railroads can be really hard to deal with. They charge way an unreasonable amount of money. And there's a bunch of rail that's been bought up by companies that exist not to ever use the rail, but just to railroad people with high rates.

Doug Dawson (06:49)
Yeah, they're they've literally bought those easements. Their railroads there hasn't been a train on them for forty years, right? But they still made they s that's the ones who want to charge a lot. So I r

Christopher Mitchell (06:58)
That's it's infuriating.

Doug Dawson (07:00)
I ran into one of those in Oregon who wanted twenty thousand bucks to go across their tracks. It's like, guys, this is a dead railroad. We got bailed out there because the city bought out their easement and made a hiking trail out of it and then we were fine. So yeah.

Christopher Mitchell (07:12)
Nice. Yeah, I mean,

this is where, and I'll just say like from a policy point of view, if you see agreements where like Congress does something for ninety nine years, that is way better than forever. When they gave

Doug Dawson (07:23)
Yes.

Christopher Mitchell (07:24)
the railroads these easements for in perpetuity, which is my understanding of what happened, boy, was that a mistake. you know, it's just they really wanted the railroads to get built and it was just too much of a giveaway though. It was really bad a bad idea.

Doug Dawson (07:38)
Now there are places the very original cross-country lines, in some places they actually gave them the land. So where where they gave them the land, this ruling won't have any effect. And that would just be some of those very, very old original lines of the, you know, of the the first big direct routes. So but

Christopher Mitchell (07:54)
And in some cases, towns were built up on those.

Doug Dawson (07:57)
yeah. Well no railroads attracted. Railroads were the biggest boom to this to in industrialization of the US. I mean, factory towns and

you know, slaughterhouses and just towns

Christopher Mitchell (08:09)
Mm-hmm.

Doug Dawson (08:10)
grew up everywhere along railroads. Yeah. 'Cause otherwise you w th they w that was the first interstate highway. They were awesome, so yeah.

Christopher Mitchell (08:18)
So that was the technology of the past. The the

Doug Dawson (08:20)
Yes.

Christopher Mitchell (08:20)
future we're told is in space. And I don't I don't know. I put a I put a link in our group chat at work here, where there was this some some freaking TikToker had this thing about like fiber optic cables were obsolete now that we have the ability to do lasers in space. And I was just shaking my head, just okay, all right, great. wanna talk about Starlink a little bit and whether or not Starlink

Is going to become an a mobile network operator. So just a quick clarification, you know, I I've talked before about how I get Internet, I get my mobile Internet access through an MVNO, a mobile virtual network operator, which means that I go with a company. In this case, I actually use Mint and Ting, two different companies. One predominantly uses the T-Mobile, mobile network operator network, the other predominantly uses Verizon, their network operator. And

Starlink could very well do that. They could offer a service that they supplement by being a virtual network operator on AT&T, T-Mobile, or Verizon if they wanted to go that route. But they want to actually build, I don't know, hundreds of thousands of access points to be able to offer their own competing service in theory. Like this is one of the ideas that they're kind of, I think, running, running around to see how Wall Street reacts to it. That's my impression, Doug. Is that right?

Doug Dawson (09:44)
That's what he's proposed, but you know, this is one of Elon's he doesn't have small ideas. This is a tremendous idea. So I mean the investment involved in doing that, because what's gonna happen is the other three big ones roam on each other.

So they used to use different technologies, now they don't. So so if you go to a part of the country but and I have and I have AT&T service, but the only one there is T-Mobile, I can still make a call because they have a roaming agreement. The three of the three of them said they're not going to make any MVNO deals with with Starlink. They don't want to let another competitor into the market. So he can't even launch that until he's everywhere. No one's going to buy that. What if they just put those in Minnesota? It's the only place you could use your phone.

Christopher Mitchell (10:27)
Mm-hmm.

Doug Dawson (10:27)
You know, so so he can't do it until he really does it. I I just think it's an I personally just think it's another one of his b big remember he's always trying to get his stock price up, you know, in this brand new company. So I just think he comes he's like every quarter I think he's gonna have a grand new idea. It's really just not it's really not practical. not to do it from space. On top of that, he can't deliver enough bandwidth for the urban places.

He needs fiber for those. I mean they some of those have ten and twenty and thirty gigabit fiber feeds those big cell towers. He can't get that much bandwidth that satellites. He could he could with his new satellites, he could do rural cell towers. But you know, but again, no one's gonna buy his cell service if it's only good for their town. You know, I mean I I yeah.

Christopher Mitchell (11:14)
Right. That's that was this is my thought was that

there's this idea like, well, like he would be very easy for him to put up towers because he just needs to have them be able to have a view of the sky. Okay, but like there's a lot of work that goes into that still, you know. and

Doug Dawson (11:31)
Tow towers are expensive, yeah.

Christopher Mitchell (11:33)
like you said, it would be like, you know, there's not a huge market for people that want to have great Internet great mobile access only in rural areas and not in any cities.

Doug Dawson (11:41)
Right.

Right.

Christopher Mitchell (11:43)
Navigating

the city processes. I mean, maybe he'll just buy Crown Castle or something. I don't know, you know, like or one of those companies to be able to do it. But there's just a tremendous amount of work involved in that. And it's like you said, I think it's more that he's just trying to get people that are bought into the Elon brand to think that his that his company is worth more because in their documents, they claim in the future that they are gonna be basically the telecom monopoly. You can't look at the documents of the revenue that they propose to receive.

without assuming that they are seventy five to eighty percent of all telecommunications revenue in the world, which which is pretty ambitious.

Doug Dawson (12:21)
no the last quarter announcement he said that. He says he's in another ten years he's gonna be the biggest I he's gonna be carrying ha more than half of all the traffic in the world. It's like, really? And that includes like India and China where you're not at? It's like, Really? Yeah.

Christopher Mitchell (12:36)
I mean, I I

will say that like we were deeply frustrated when T-Mobile was allowed to buy Sprint because moving from four competitors in the mobile network operator

Doug Dawson (12:45)
Yes.

Christopher Mitchell (12:45)
market to three significantly lessened competition. I think it has worsened services in a lot of ways. I think that it has driven prices up. And having four competitors would be great. And so I'm not gonna sit here and say, you know, that that it's a bad idea. I just don't think he's likely to do it.

It would be nice to have for the four four real competitors again in the market.

Doug Dawson (13:07)
I just know what all the real hurdles are and that's it's such a long list of hurdles to overcome. It's not impossible. The one thing that he could possibly do, remember that, you know, that you know, we just we had a fourth competitor here for a while, so we you know, we so they just went out of business. So so you

Christopher Mitchell (13:27)
Dish.

Doug Dawson (13:27)
know, Dish, so Dish went out of business recently. So they had a lot of tower sites already reserved. That's not nearly enough to do what he's talking about doing.

I think they had ten thousand sites or something and he's talking hundreds of thousands of sites. So now it would make more sense for him to do that in the third world. I think he could be a huge splash in a place like Nigeria. Hundred million

Christopher Mitchell (13:48)
Mm-hmm.

Doug Dawson (13:49)
people and cellular sucks there. He could actually possibly clean up the market there. So th this seems this

Christopher Mitchell (13:53)
Well I do think it's worth noting.

Doug Dawson (13:55)
seems like a the the here in Europe are really competitive. The rest of the world is not competitive. So

Christopher Mitchell (14:00)
I mean, right

now, just back of the envelope with numbers that and this is not my expertise, but he's got ten thousand satellites up. He's proposed twenty five thousand in the near future. he's trying to get these V three satellites up that will offer much greater capacity. However, in Los Angeles County, I think I was trying to figure this out, and like these numbers are based a bit on AI, but like I wanna say there's like on the order of like one to three thousand macro cell sites.

that he would have to connect, right? And each one of those, like you said, is I'm gonna guess is between 10 and 40 gigabits per second. There are at any given point probably 10 to 15 of his satellites that are in the like in the view of that. His satellites are capable of, I think, up to a hundred gigabits per second in some of the newer versions in theory. But he's still with like the kind of amount he's talking about putting up there, he would not be able to serve Los Angeles cell

Doug Dawson (14:53)
No. No.

Christopher Mitchell (14:55)
cell needs with.

satellite service alone, he would have to have significant local fiber optics connecting those to offer a reasonable service. Just because even though what those satellites are capable of is significant, the numbers just add up too quickly when you have 10 billion people. Sorry, 10 million, 10 million people in Los Angeles County all trying to get on these to on these towers. So you know, that's a it's a it's an extreme example, but it's the same and it's similar numbers in other major cities too.

Doug Dawson (15:24)
He could try to buy his way into the market. He could try to buy one of the MV and O's like you use. But I think the big guys would cut him off. They're gonna go, Well, that that's fine that you bought them. You know, but we don't wan but you can't keep it. After a year we're killing the contract, right? So

Christopher Mitchell (15:38)
Yeah. And I think, you know, even if

they don't take him seriously, the fact that Wall Street, enough people on Wall Street may means that they have to draw a line in the sand, or else investors will

Doug Dawson (15:47)
Yes.

Christopher Mitchell (15:48)
start to question if they don't have a future. And that's this

Doug Dawson (15:51)
Yes.

Christopher Mitchell (15:51)
is all about, you know, this is all about like like a reading the chicken entrails. You know, this is not about actual performance or things like that. This is all Wall Street and the money and the financialization that drives these decisions is about expectations. And so I think t sometimes people don't get that.

Doug Dawson (16:06)
Well he he's taking on

he's taking on every single aspect of the industry. That's a lot of people to tackle. He's making a lot he's making a lot of enemies, yeah.

Christopher Mitchell (16:13)
Yes. Yeah,

and I mean, I'll just say that like people are pretty impressed with what he's done, but when you look under the hood, there's a lot of kind of like duct tape and and paper clips holding things together that may not survive as long as

Doug Dawson (16:30)
Wha

Christopher Mitchell (16:30)
people think it needs to.

Doug Dawson (16:31)
w One last thought he'd probably need fifty thousand Earth stations to do that.

Christopher Mitchell (16:37)
Well, there's I mean, there is one that's popped up here in Minnesota. And I mean, you know, I guess it's interesting because the response to that, it's out in Wright County, which is forty-five miles northwest of Minneapolis. You know, it's near Monticello, Doug. I know you've done work with them in the past. And it's forty acres and they want to put on these like I don't know, you could think of it like they're domes, but they're like the size of like a backyard shed. They're not, I mean, they're they're not hideous or anything, but it's having the same reaction among local folks who

they're mad about data centers and they don't want these ground stations. And so it'll be curious to see wha whether or not there's big fights over the future of more ground stations that'll slow to down, though which is I think is the point you're making.

Doug Dawson (17:18)
Well the well the downside to ground to ground stations are they create a frequency dead zone. W airports do the same thing. I mean none you know, Wi-Fi all sorts of stuff don't work if your house is right next to the airport, you're screwed, right? And so that they do the same thing. So they there's so much frequency being used at that ground station that they drowned out a lot of other stuff. So so people don't wanna be neighbors. Forty acres is probably big enough if it's in the center. So

Christopher Mitchell (17:46)
Mm-hmm. Well, you just you just build a giant metal fence around it for a Faraday

Doug Dawson (17:46)
But but there is that risk. Yeah.

Christopher Mitchell (17:51)
cage, and then I'm sure people would love to look at that. It just looks like a supermax prison or something. So yeah, people

Doug Dawson (17:54)
yeah. Right, right. Yeah. So he he's

Christopher Mitchell (17:58)
have l real concerns about land use, and that's really coming to the forefront on these things. All right, we're gonna talk about the future of the Federal Communications Commission. And in the wake of this decision regarding the Federal Trade Commission, where President Trump

fired two commissioners that he didn't like and did not follow the law that Congress laid out in creating the commission and basically said, I'm the president, I get to decide, you know, who who's a commissioner. And the courts basically said, Yes, you can do that, except for the I lost it with the financial one. What's the Doug, the the F Reserve. Right. The the

Doug Dawson (18:37)
The the the federal the Federal Reserve Bank, yeah.

Christopher Mitchell (18:41)
Board of the Federal Reserve. And

And honestly, like this is one of those things, I mean, I'll just be totally naked with like the court just makes this stuff up. And the court was basically like grasping for a rationale that allowed them to say the president cannot touch the Federal Reserve Board, but can touch other boards. And there's no reason to think that this l reasoning will stand any longer than another court looking at it and deciding they want to change their mind on it. So I'm not gonna put a whole lot of stock in that. But in the short term, it sure seems like a president is able to fire anyone from commissions.

including the Federal Communications Commission.

Doug Dawson (19:16)
Yeah, and and now different agencies have different rules and the FCC has a rule that you have to have at least three commissioners to have a to have a quorum. So, you know, so he has to be careful not to drop below that number. So so you know, right now today, you know, he probably doesn't want to fire the one Democrat, but he's already just not the soon as this r or ruling came out, then they nominated a new Republican commissioner.

and she seems

Christopher Mitchell (19:47)
Right. So

Doug Dawson (19:47)
she seems pretty good. She's all she's already working at the commission. She's got pretty good experience. you know, so it's

Christopher Mitchell (19:54)
Yeah, some of

the some of the people who were put on the commission are people that just seem to be people that didn't really have much of a care for the what the commission actually does. There are people that wanted to advance pet causes like tramp like Commissioner Chairman Carr now wants to trample free speech. I think Symington also wants to just do whatever it takes to support right wing causes. you know, I think Commissioner Gomez, who's the Democrat on there,

you know, she followed more of a traditional path, which is to say she was a lawyer at Verizon and like generally thinks there should be more regulation on some issues, which is what the Democrats usually look for. but also having come from industry. And and and I just it's you know, the commission is supposed to have five members and it's basically three two traditionally, with the three being whatever party is in power.

And the ability of the president to just fire the other commissioners is important. Now, I I didn't think it took me a while to understand some of this stuff. So some of the basics that's helpful to know is that even if we don't have three commissioners, so if tomorrow President Trump fired Commissioner Gomez from the Federal Communications Commission, they would have two commissioners left. They would not be able to act as as the board, as the the commission, but the

Bureaus underneath would be able to make decisions. And so they could approve certain mergers.

Doug Dawson (21:18)
Yes.

Christopher Mitchell (21:19)
They could, they can, the devices would still be approved that go through the pipeline. They would still do a lot of the work that they do, but they couldn't really set new policy until they had three commissioners. And Doug, you've said before, it's not just a matter of putting a third commissioner on and then you're ready to go. There's a, there's kind of a delay. It's people figure out where the parking is and like how to ride the elevators and do all the other stuff related to the job.

Doug Dawson (21:39)
Well, but

but here they've they've nominated someone who's been at the commission for several years. So she already has that learning curve. So so you know, that that was a pretty smart choice. That kinda tells you that he's they're thinking of fire and Gomez is what that says. Doesn't mean they will, but that's certainly a good sign that that's what they have in mind. 'Cause she she'd be up and running immediately. I don't it doesn't g it doesn't gain

Christopher Mitchell (22:00)
You don't think it you don't think it'll make a difference?

Doug Dawson (22:02)
it doesn't make any difference. They already pass every single thing they want.

So what's the what they don't like, I think, is they just don't like Gomez putting out every time they do something she doesn't like, she writes a contrary opinion and publishes it. I think they just don't want her to do that. I I I think it could

Christopher Mitchell (22:17)
Yeah, they're very thin skinned.

Doug Dawson (22:19)
they're very thin skinned, so I think it's really that because they can win. They have the major they have the majority. They can have every single issue. And and they do, they win. When they put it on the agenda for the following month, you know it's gonna pass.

They've they've never put anything on the agenda that didn't pass. It's like, well, gee, what you know, that's a really close vote, I bet. So now now it's funny because in the past the commissions were very bipartisan. There were issues where they would put stuff on the agenda and they wouldn't pass. And sometimes the party in in power it wouldn't pass. I mean, they used to really debate the topics and and have real debates. They don't do that anymore. So yeah.

Christopher Mitchell (22:57)
Yeah,

I I mean I I don't I I have a lot of criticism of some of the glory days, but I do my impression was they did take the job much more seriously. I mean,

Doug Dawson (23:07)
They did.

Christopher Mitchell (23:07)
these this is a communications for the nation. This involves emergency communications. It should be setting the guidelines that will allow businesses to invest for decades to try to figure out how to make the most productive investments. you know, it should be determining whether or not everyone has high quality Internet access. This is

These are issues that will literally change the rate of growth of our economy if we get it right. This the impact on education. We have we have many millions of children. Like I would say between six and eight million kids go home and don't have Internet access at home, right? Resolving that would significantly change the the future of our growth by by giving more kids a real opportunity, giving more adults, frankly, as well, veterans, you know, all kinds of people who.

are looking for opportunities to to engage, to l build new skills and things like that. but they don't take it seriously.

Doug Dawson (24:00)
No, they don't. And and and now you have to wonder if you want to talk about the future of the FCC. There were two other court cases that make you wonder if they're still relevant. I mean it might be time to talk about not even having an FCC. We we need their we need their frequency work and we need them to check all the radios and stuff. Those could be put under commerce or somebody or fair and so and you know

I mean you might remember that there was McClauck I think it was McLaughlin chiropractic versus McKesson and they basically said that nobody has to listen no one has to listen to experts anymore at at agencies. That that experts don't mean anything. That's rip that's a really

short summary of what it said, but it said, you know, courts can make courts can say, no, I don't believe those experts. And so courts

Christopher Mitchell (24:48)
Mm-hmm.

Doug Dawson (24:49)
can override the FCC even though the FCC is experts, right? And so so that that was an unbelievable. And then there was this Looper Bright ruling that said that courts don't have to pay any attention to rulings whatsoever.

They simply said courts don't have to listen don't have to listen to what agencies say. They can rule against them. So essentially every court in the country can overturn an FCC thing. Because of that, every single thing that comes out now goes to a lawsuit. Every single order they make that's unpopular, every single one goes to lawsuit. So yeah.

Christopher Mitchell (25:21)
Right. I think I think some people would say that you're overstating

the case, Doug, but I I think there's a very strong defense for what you're saying in that there is no limiting principle. The argument

Doug Dawson (25:27)
Yeah. Yeah. Not anymore.

Christopher Mitchell (25:31)
about the Bright Loper decision, or Loper Bright, whatever it was, was about, you

Doug Dawson (25:35)
Love or bright.

Christopher Mitchell (25:35)
know, whether or not the courts should defer when there was a lack of clarity in the statute. And I I don't I don't think there's like a sense now that that the courts have to listen at all to the agencies. I've I feel

Doug Dawson (25:47)
No.

Christopher Mitchell (25:48)
like

We've seen a tremendous amount of power over my lifetime moving from Congress, not like stolen from Congress, but Congress is like giving it up. And the courts are grabbing it and the president's grabbing it. And we're seeing a a system that is significantly changing. And that decision is not exactly clear what role agencies have when the courts can just second guess them at every opportunity.

Doug Dawson (26:12)
Well, yeah, 'cause it's down nowadays it's just not even worrying about whether the court people go court shopping. Let's let's go to the court that's gonna decide my way. I mean that's what happened in the USF case. Three different USF case came to the Supreme Court because they went to three different courts and then they got two that said it was okay, one that said it wasn't. They were shopping. And they only they were just looking for one who said the USF is bad. And so you know, that you know, that's crazy. So,

You know, we didn't used to have

Christopher Mitchell (26:41)
Yeah.

Doug Dawson (26:42)
that. It used to be you couldn't do that. So that now it it's kinda like the courts themselves are a free for all. So

Christopher Mitchell (26:48)
I think it's much less predictable. one of the the points that you were making, Blair Levin had also addressed, which is you know, you're saying maybe it's maybe there's not a role for the Federal Communications Commission. Right now, I think there's a lot of concern. We see a lot of the conservative folks who are deeply concerned about what Brendan Carr is doing.

Doug Dawson (27:08)
Yes.

Christopher Mitchell (27:08)
not only on you know, Jimmy Kimmel and and the licenses for broadcast stations where they air speech that he's critical of, but also

when it comes to merger review and things like that. And it does seem like the Federal Communications Commission is following some other agencies' lead and the lead of, if you believe a lot of the reporting that I believe, the president himself. And Blair Levin talks about this as the the market for presidential affection, which is to say that if you have a dispute in front of the FCC over a spectrum issue, whoever might have given more money to the right causes or the right

the accounts that are that reserve that go into the executive branch is more likely to win than the party that the engineers would have picked if they were reviewing it. And this is like our economy grew historically in part because we got rid of a lot of corruption. We had systems that were not perfect, but they significantly prevented the kind of corruption you see in a lot of places around the world. And it allowed businesses to thrive in ways that they can't when you have to just pay off people.

so this is it's deeply concerning some of the signs that we're seeing and and the ability of the the president and not just this president but but especially this president. Like I'm concerned about other presidents, but especially this one when it comes down to being able to put their thumb on the scale or whole hand on the scale.

Doug Dawson (28:34)
No, I'm not gonna do you a disservice and mention Woodrow Wilson. But I but

Christopher Mitchell (28:39)
Ha ha.

Doug Dawson (28:40)
I'm gonna go back a little further. We had horrendous problems here. The Teddy Roosevelt came in and just kicked butt. I mean, we had the the big companies, the big rich people just simply ruled this country completely. It was massive corruption at at a horr at a scale almost equal to what we have today. Today is probably worse, but but it was bad. And so we did fix all that.

You know, so it's taken that's been a hundred years. It took a hundred years and now we're back again. We're gonna have to fix it again. So no.

Christopher Mitchell (29:07)
Yeah, and it was not inevitable. I mean, I've been I've been

digging into that history lately. And Teddy Roosevelt was a particularly thick skinned, focused person. And other people had I mean this was like a forty or fifty year effort to try to deal with some of that corruption.

Doug Dawson (29:19)
Yes.

Christopher Mitchell (29:20)
And it failed and it failed and it failed. And and he was one of the people that helped to to get it through. you never know when that person's gonna come along.

Doug Dawson (29:29)
Right. But we're gonna need that person again. So I thought we had that person at the FTC last time. She now works for New York City. Khan does. That's that's interesting, yeah. So I think she

Christopher Mitchell (29:38)
Yes. Yeah, Lena Khan. Yeah. Yeah. She's young. Hopefully she'll be back. and

Doug Dawson (29:44)
will.

Christopher Mitchell (29:45)
yeah. okay, we're gonna talk last about no, that was it. That was it.

Doug Dawson (29:50)
That was it, that's our list.

Christopher Mitchell (29:52)
We blew through it's 30 minutes, Doug. you're definitely I'm tired. it's been a long week, a really inspiring week for me, but but both of us were able to to keep it on point, it sounds like.

Doug Dawson (30:05)
Well, I we must we have to apologize to everybody for that.

Christopher Mitchell (30:10)
Don't expect it to happen again.

Doug Dawson (30:11)
That never happened again. No.

Christopher Mitchell (30:13)
so well, thank you so much, Doug. And for people who forget to read it, you can sign up and get the the digest. You can get the emails from Doug when he's publishing the pieces if you go to POTs and PANs by CCG dot com and look in the right hand column, last I check.

All right, Doug, we will catch you next time.

Doug Dawson (30:32)
All right. Good as always, Chris.

Christopher Mitchell (30:35)
Thank you.

Jordan Pittman (30:36)
Thanks for listening to this episode of the Unbuffered Podcast. We have transcripts for this and other episodes available at ILSR.org/podcast. While you're there, check out our other podcasts from ILSR, including Building Local Power, Local Energy Rules, and the Composting for Community Podcasts. Email us at [email protected] with your ideas for the show. Follow us on Bluesky. Our handle is @communitynets.

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by Christopher Mitchell with editing provided by me, Jordan Pittman. Until next time, thanks for listening.