Technology think tank ITIF–The Information Technology & Innovation Foundation said the United States should lead an international forum of online stakeholders to come up with voluntary content-moderation guidelines, rather than push for new rules and regulations on targeted advertising or algorithms.

That point came in a new ITIF-penned report responding to what it calls a “crisis of legitimacy” in social-media content moderation.

ITIF issued its report as both Democrats and Republicans call for new regulations on edge providers due to a number of issues, including privacy protections, or the lack of them; targeted advertising; allegations from Republicans of anti-conservative bias; allegations from Democrats of insufficient policing of hate speech; allegations from both sides of insufficient protections of children online; and more.

The report, authored by ITIF senior policy analyst Ashley Johnson and ITIF VP and Center for Data Innovation director Daniel Castro, contends social media companies can’t solve all of these issues by themselves. But Congress is deadlocked, they argued, so solutions lie elsewhere than new rules and regulations on algorithms and targeted advertising.

On the issue of weeding out “harmful” state-sponsored content, ITIF says the U.S. should fund research grants and promote better information-sharing.

And although Congress is deadlocked, the report authors said, the legislature should unlock itself long enough to pass laws “establishing transparency requirements for content moderation decisions of social media platforms and requiring platforms to enforce their content moderation policies consistently.”

That essentially tracks with some of the proposed legislation, but without what tech companies see as a heavy-handed regulatory backstop, such as new Federal Trade Commission rules under its Section 5 authority over false and deceptive practices.

“[S]everal of the structural or technical changes that have been proposed for social media would likely make things worse for both content moderation and other issues impacting consumers,” the report said. ▪️

Critics of U.S. ISPs are always quick to hold up Europe as overperforming its counterparts in price, speed and coverage, but the Information Technology & Innovation Foundation said that comparison does not hold up to the facts about business cases and cost structures.

According to a new report, “Apples vs. Oranges: Why Providing Broadband in the United States Costs More Than in Europe,” any comparison to the respective broadband markets must take into account their major differences.

“Comparisons between U.S. and European broadband prices are meaningless at best and misleading at worst when they fail to account for the difference in deployment and operating costs that must necessarily be assumed, at least in part, by consumers,” the report said.

The report illustrates what ITIF said are several key takeaways within the larger takeaway that U.S. providers must spend 53% more for the equivalent labor, infrastructure investment, spectrum licenses and advertising and taxes, even taking subsidies into account.

1.) The unfair narrative that U.S. broadband prices are exorbitantly higher than in Europe undergirds calls for unbundling and a regulated U.S. marketplace.

2.) U.S. ISPs have to pay more in wages while spending more on infrastructure, neither of which even U.S. ISP critics would argue for cutting. For example, the average wage among Comcast, Charter Communications, AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon Communications is $64,510 while for European ISPs Vodafone, Deutsch Telekon, Telefónica and Telecom Italia is $55,935 (U.S. dollars).

3.) European telecoms are taxed at a lower rate and get more in government subsidies. “In every regard, U.S. providers must pour proportionately higher amounts into essential expenditures,” the report said.

4.) European ISPs actually have higher average profits than U.S. ISPs.

Authors of the report were ITIF research assistant Jessica Dine (who gets top billing) and ITIF founder and president Robert Atkinson.

“The idea that Europe has a better broadband system has been a perennial favorite for critics angling for a strong government role instead of relying principally on the private sector,“ Atkinson said in releasing the report. “But it turns out to be a false comparison, and when you break it down, the U.S. system actually provides better value for the money.” ■

Although U.S. broadband networks have weathered the COVID-19 traffic surge better than most technically advanced nations, the "shortcomings of competitive networks [that] don't adequately" serve customers "should galvanize policymakers to ensure broadband can serve as an essential lifeline for everyone, including low-income and rural residents," according to the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation. ITIF issued its "Lessons From the Pandemic" report on Monday (July 13), showing that home broadband traffic is up by between 20% and 40%, compared to a year ago. It concludes that, "reliance on facility-based competition and light-touch regulation set the stage for the consistent, above-average private investment that sustained U.S. broadband networks through this crisis."

But the U.S. needs "a more robust subsidy program for low-income broadband users that can swell with crises like this one," said the report's author Doug Brake, who directs the Washington think tank's broadband and spectrum policy program. "Most households with school-aged children have broadband available to them, but some lack the resources to subscribe or purchase computers."

"Congress should support, through general funds, a program whereby schools are able to purchase computing devices," the report suggested. "At the same time, tools within the FCC’s E-Rate program could be expanded to reimburse schools for Wi-Fi hotspots or wired broadband installation kits to provide connectivity for students in their homes." ITIF says that that the FCC has such authority today, "but Congress should clarify and put the funding source on surer footing."

Related:  COVID-19-Related Broadband Funding Bill Introduced

"Despite the increased importance of broadband during the COVID pandemic, many still have not adopted a fixed broadband network in their home. This is for a variety of reasons, but usually stems from a combination of affordability, lack of perceived relevance, and the option for close substitutes such as mobile broadband through smartphones."

ITIF's study endorses plans at the FCC and in Congress to meet the "urgent, short-term need for a subsidy that helps Americans pay their broadband bills including the commitment by hundreds of broadband providers not to disconnect consumers when they are unable to pay.

Related: NCTA: Cable Broadband Handling COVID-19 Load

Related: FCC's Pai: Congress Needs to Take Up Keep Americans Connected Pledge

"That current networks so well accommodated the jump in both download and upload traffic indicates there is no need to over-invest public resources to subsidize ultra-fast networks where broadband infrastructure already exists," ITIF said. "The remarkable resiliency of U.S. broadband networks during the pandemic should give us confidence that the basic regulatory framework is sound."

Critique of Capacity Measurements

Unsurprisingly, the ITIF report noted that COVID-19 broadband traffic increases are largely due to more streaming, pointing to studies showing that video constitutes more than 60% of internet traffic, with video game downloads consuming another major chunk of capacity.

At the heart of the capacity evaluation is the data collected from various analytical sources such as the Ookla Speedtest, SamKnows and a BroadbandNow gauge. The Ookla and SamKnows tests show about a 1% drop in U.S. broadband speeds compared with speeds before the stay-at-home orders. It also cited M-Lab’s Network Diagnostic Tool (NDT), calling it "not a reliable measure of network speed" because it is based on a measurement that uses a single TCP connection, which cannot reliably saturate an entire ISP access link.

IITF contended that a variety of factors, such as poor Wi-Fi performance and complaints when viewers sense a slowdown, may contribute to the appearance of network latency. But it dismisses the slight drop as negligible and says they are far lower than the speed declines in most other countries, according to an Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) report. In particular, ITIF noted that the speed drops in many countries stemmed from peering arrangements that were difficult to change on the fly - which is not a factor in most U.S. network architecture.

Citing an array of sources, ITIF acknowledged that "the United States has relatively affordable broadband," but that "the relatively strong price discrimination of U.S. broadband" means that "low-end slower broadband is cheap while high-end faster options are relatively more expensive." The study pointed to "specialized low-cost products tailored to qualifying low-income users," such as Comcast’s Internet Essentials and Charter’s Spectrum Internet Assist, but recommended that because of extensive poverty pockets in the U.S., "the federal government must ensure everyone who wants a broadband connection is able to afford one."

But much work remains to be done to fill in the gaps such a system does not address," ITIF said.

The report characterized COVID-19 as "a cautionary tale highlighting the need to strengthen our public health-care system" and also as "a warning to strengthen and make more resilient a variety of sectors through better use of technology." It cited the value of "investments in technology and digital transformation would ...[create] better and more-efficient education, health care, manufacturing, transportation ... while making the economy and society more resilient should we face another similar crisis."

The ITIF report also cited the absence of messages to reduce internet usage as evidence of the current U.S. broadband strength. Pointing out that politicians in other countries have asked their citizens to cut broadband usage, ITIF humorously included in its report a 1918 advertisement during the Spanish Flu era in which the Bell Telephone company, "the nation’s predominant telephone provider at the time," encouraged customers not to use the telephone. 

The companies who supply information technology said that to combat the COVID-19 pandemic the government needs to invest in IT upgrades across the board and at a level commensurate with the challenge of socially distanced living.

Tech trade associations Information Technology Industry Council (ITI), Alliance for Digital Innovation (ADI), the Computing Technology Industry Association (CompTIA), the Center for Procurement Advocacy, Internet Association (IA), and the Cybersecurity Coalition have teamed up on a set of IT modernization principles they are pitching the Congress and the Trump Administration in letters to House and Senate leadership and the Office of Management and Budget.

They signaled that the pandemic era of "remote collaboration" was the perfect time to make added investments in the IT technology their members supply "to ensure the United States is able to effectively respond to this crisis."

The Trump Administration has signaled that reopening the economy also means giving businesses, schools, teachers and students the equipment, connectivity and expertise to conduct more of their daily lives remotely and online.

Related: Trump Signals Plan for Virtual Businesses, Schooling

They said that money should be spent at the federal, state and local level to:

1. "Provide adequate funds to modernize IT systems used by agencies working on the front lines of this pandemic and future emergency responses, with a key focus on cloud adoption, digital services, scalable IT infrastructure, and technology transformation;

2. "Ensure funds are made available to support to state and local government agencies in need of IT modernization and upgrades that, in turn, will enhance the speed and effect of relief efforts during the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent emergencies;

3. "Support the Technology Modernization Fund (TMF) at an appropriations level that would allow for meaningful investment in cross-agency IT modernization initiatives; and

4. "Ensure that IT modernization efforts include focused attention and investment on strengthening cybersecurity, workforce training, and process transformation.

Related: All the Latest Industry News on Covid-19

They pointed out that the CARES Act COVID-19 aid package indicated that improving digital infrastructure was a critical priority, so spending on IT should match the scope of that challenge.

The CARES Act allocated over $300 million for FCC Telehealth programs, but the commission is seeking more money from subsequent bills for distance learning.

Jason Oxman, president of the Information Technology Industry Council (ITI), took to the electronic pages of Fox to argue that D.C.'s current hits on Big Tech are misplaced, out of step with the rest of the country, and somewhat disingenuous given the platform they use to criticize his industry. 

Related: House Seeks Big Tech Document Drop 

That came in an op ed on the Fox Business web site. 

"[C]ertain elected leaders have launched misguided attacks on tech companies, even arguing that the industry is no longer innovating at the speed it once was," he said. "In a twist of irony, these same anti-tech crusaders share and amplify their opinions through social media postings that communicate with millions with the touch of a button. Decrying technology in one breath and posturing for likes and retweets in another." 

And in a nod to Fox's Middle America base, Oxman wrote: "Meanwhile, outside the Beltway cognoscenti, Americans continue to love and benefit from technology." 

Oxman said he welcomes "leaders" holding "important conversations" about "the good technology can bring," but says that "Suggesting that technology is not innovating as quickly as it once was is not fair to the millions of men and women that are innovating and disrupting industries every day." 

Among those who have suggested Big Tech may be depressing rather than spurring innovation were some members of the Senate Antitrust Subcommittee. That came at a Sept. 24 hearing on whether the government has allowed the largest companies--Facebook, Google, Amazon--to become serial innovation killers by buying up tech start-up competitors before those competitors are large enough to raise red flags with regulators.  

Justice Department antitrust chief Makan Delrahim has pointed out that it is not size that is a problem, but size used anticompetitively, which is what the government is trying to figure out after treating the edge for years as plucky start-ups at the mercy of large ISPs.

The Trump Justice Department is looking into the same issue of "whether and how market-leading online platforms have achieved market power and are engaging in practices that have reduced competition, stifled innovation, or otherwise harmed consumers," the department said in confirming the investigation back in July. The Federal Trade Commission is also eyeing Big Tech.

Washington — Paid prioritization has gotten a bad rap, but the Information Technology & Innovation Foundation is trying to change that, including by looping the Federal Communications Commission back into the network-neutrality regulatory regime.

Paid prioritization has been branded as pay for play, and as fast and slow lanes, by net neutrality activists who oppose that practice. But in a new report, ITIF, whose honorary chairs include both Reps. Anna Eshoo (D-Calif.) and Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), is trying to burnish the brand and head off a push in Congress to include paid prioritization in new net-neutrality prohibitions.

Some ISPs have even suggested they would accept a no paid prioritization provision, though most throw in the caveat “anti-competitive.”

Even activists concede there is a need to prioritize, say, 911 VoIP calls over cat videos. But there would almost certainly be a carveout for that, or explicit language that emergency calls or telehealth video — remote accident-scene triage, for example — would be reasonable network management.

ITIF wants to make sure that is clear, but it also is suggesting getting the FCC back in the broadband oversight business, though not via Title II.

The FCC deeded net neutrality oversight to the Federal Trade Commission when it took ISPs out from under Title II.

ITIF is telling Congress that the FCC should oversee prioritization agreements and that, in legislation, Congress could prohibit exclusive differentiation deals and require that prioritization be offered on similar terms and conditions.

A non-neutral network “can unlock new, real-time services without harming general best-effort traffic and preventing any potential anticompetitive consequences,” ITIF argues.

Washington was reacting Tuesday to the news that Google has been hammered by the European Commission with a record fine for using its dominant position in search to anti-competitively favor its comparison shopping service over others.

Google had not returned a request for comment at press time.

Related: European Commission Fines Google $2.7 Billion

The Information Technology & Innovation Foundation (ITIF), a tech policy think tank, jumped to Google's aid.

"Today’s ruling is bad for consumers and bad for innovation," said ITIF president Robert Atkinson. "The EU has effectively decided that some companies have become too big to innovate. The EU’s actions have created a cloud of uncertainty that will make large tech companies overly cautious about making changes to the user experience and service offerings that would benefit consumers."

The Computer & Communications Industry Association, of which Google is a member, took aim at the EC decision.

“The Commission’s Decision marks a worrying step away from the key objectives of competition law enforcement," said CCIA Europe director Jakob Kucharczyk. "Companies should not be punished for introducing innovative products that consumers and advertisers value. Providing direct answers to users’ search queries is unquestionably a product improvement. All major search engines do it. Courts and competition authorities around the globe have found that there are procompetitive justifications for such product improvements.

“It seems the Commission’s case is mainly focused on competitors who disagree with Google competing on the merits," Kucharczyk continued. "We fail to see the evidence for consumer harm and for quality-related product degradation. If the result of this investigation is to force Google to undo more than 10 years of search engine evolution, EU competition enforcement would clearly not live up to its promise of spurring innovation.

“Leaving aside the commission’s very narrow market definitions, Europe’s e-commerce sector is thriving," he added. "The success of companies like Zalando, Asos or Trivago show consumers have increasing choices to find, compare and buy products online. Investments into e-commerce ventures have steadily increased. All of that is not indicative of a market suppressed by a dominant player.”

Thomas Lenard, senior fellow and president emeritus at the Technology Policy Institute, suggested the EC had gotten off track.

"The focus of the European Commission’s action against Google today appears to be harm to competitors rather than harm to consumers, which should be the focus of antitrust enforcement," Lenard said. "The EC should demonstrate in concrete terms how consumers have been harmed."

Google has maintained that it is simply helping consumers find products they are looking for more quickly and easily.

Scott Cleland, president of Precursor LLC and chair of the ISP-backed NetCompetition, saw it quite differently.

"The EU is right," said Cleland, long a strong critic of the search giant. "Google is a monopoly. It abuses its search monopoly by self dealing and predatorily foreclosing competition. This seven-year EU process has been fair, competent and patient to get it right."

Cleland suggested U.S. regulators should take a page from the EU, and said he expects that they will.

"Sadly the EU is cleaning up the mess created by U.S. non-enforcement of antitrust law caused by obvious political interference and protection orchestrated by Google's outsized political clout," Cleland said. "This decision will trigger a domino effect of additional enforcement against Alphabet-Google in the EU, the U.S. and around the world in search, advertising, Android and Google Play.

"This is the first inning of Google's new official monopoly abuse reality," he added.

“All competition authorities should take questions of platform dominance seriously," said Public Knowledge President Gene Kimmelman. "Although we are not in a position to assess the merits of this particular case, we appreciate the European Commission focusing on these important issues. In these types of cases, antitrust officials must ensure that no company use its market power to foreclose competition, or to leverage its success in one market to gain an unfair advantage in another.

“This case is likely to have much wider implications than the comparison shopping dispute highlighted in the Commission’s statement. We believe effective antitrust enforcement must offer marketplace solutions that benefit consumers and enable competition and innovation to flourish. However this case is ultimately resolved, we believe it is critical that any online platform with excessive market power should not be allowed to discriminate unfairly against competitors while being allowed to develop product and service innovations that benefit consumers."

"Google's market power is one of the most critical challenges for competition policymakers in the world today," said
Barry C. Lynn, director of the Open Markets program at New America. "By requiring that Google give equal treatment to rival services instead of privileging its own, [European Commissioner for Competition Margrethe] Vestager is protecting the free flow of information and commerce upon which all democracies depend. We call upon U.S. enforcers, including the Federal Trade Commission, the Department of Justice, and states attorneys general, to build upon this important precedent, both in respect to Google and to other dominant platform monopolists including Amazon. U.S. enforcers should apply the traditional American approach to network monopoly, which is to cleanly separate ownership of the network from ownership of the products and services sold on that network, as they did in the original Microsoft case of the late 1990s."

Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), the ranking member of the Subcommittee on Antitrust, Competiton Policy and Consumer Rights, said she would be keeping an eye on dominant players.

“Dominant internet platforms increasingly affect not just the products we buy and the information we seek, but innovation and economic opportunities for small businesses," she said following the decision. "I am committed to pursuing these issues to ensure that the internet is an engine to increase economic opportunity and protect consumers in the 21st century economy.”

The Information Technology & Innovation Foundation did not find a lot to like in President Donald Trump's new budget.

Following the final budget's release May 23, ITIF vice president for global innovation policy Stephen Ezell said that it would "slash" investments needed for research and workforce education and skills. He said Congress should declare the budget DOA.

ITIF said the country already has underinvested in science, R&D and commercializing tech innovation.

"Further reducing federal investment in these kinds of foundational goods will set back the country even further," Ezell added. 

Noting the proposed 10% cut in non-defense R&D -- while the budget boosts defense spending -- Ezell said there is a big difference between wasteful spending and critical investments. 

ITIF points to, among other things, zeroing out the Manufacturing Extension Partnership, an 11% cut for National Science Foundation grants, and a 70% cut in Manufacturing USA, as well as the elimination of the U.S. Trade and Development Agency and 21st Century Community Learning Centers.

"Lawmakers should exercise their constitutional power to approve a budget that better meets the nation’s economic need," he concludes.

While the President proposes and Congress disposes the budget, Office of Management and Budget director Mick Mulvaney conceded that the President's budget would not pass as proposed, but signaled the exercise is important in telegraphing the President's priorities.

He said the budget was drawn up with hard-working taxpayers in mind and what programs the government should ask those taxpayers to fund. He said compassion was not defined by the number of programs or dollars but what bang taxpayers were getting for their bucks, plus the need to address a $20 trillion deficit and the need to boost investment in defense and security.

Amid today's growling about media biases, and at the risk of seeming like self-serving omphaloskepsis, here's a study that shows how press coverage of the technology industry has become increasingly more negative. Although cable and satellite technology are not singled out in the analysis by the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, the report's survey of the 27-year period from 1986 to 2013 coincides with the boom in multichannel technology and services starting in the 1980s.  

In other words, the growing public skepticism about cable operations fits into a larger picture that has steered the public and policymakers toward questioning the value of technology, ITIF said, noting that it examined media's role because it "has important implications for public policy."

"Coverage that is slanted in one direction or another can drive public opinion — and thus policymakers — to favor unnecessary, unwarranted, or unwise policy interventions," ITIF said. The group emphasized that public officials often cite surveys of consumer attitudes "as part of their rationale for new laws and regulations for digital services."

As one of the report's charts (pictured) demonstrates, the tone of technology stories has shifted significantly over the years, with more purely negative and far fewer "uncontested positive" information, especially in the past 10 years.

"While coverage of technology in the 1980s and early 1990s was largely favorable, that tone has gradually shifted over the years, with more articles highlighting the potential ill effects of technology," the report said.

Perhaps the best news from the analysis, released on Wednesday (Feb. 22), is that there appears to be more "balanced" coverage in the most recent stories that ITIF evaluated.

"It is important to ensure that technology coverage airs diverse perspectives without giving any side more weight than is warranted,” said Daniel Castro, ITIF’s vice president and the report’s co-author. “If technology reporting continues with the trend we’re seeing toward pessimistic -- and in some cases technophobic -- critiques, it will likely spur policymakers and the public to support even more unnecessary, unwarranted or unwise policy interventions.”

For its study, ITIF conducted a textual analysis of 250 articles from The New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post from 1986 to 2013 to assess the tone of tech reporting. It focused on three primary categories: economics, culture and security. ITIF concluded that there was a decided shift in the tone of commentary from academic sources, away from more neutral, objective and scholarly analysis, toward more pointed, headline-grabbing critiques.

Castro and co-author Doug Allen, a Consortium for Media Policy Studies (COMPASS) fellow at ITIF, contended that this rise in pessimistic coverage did not correspond to a real-world increase in the dangers of technology. Instead, they attributed the less favorable media portrayal of technology to a handful of factors affecting the mainstream media ecosystem, including:

• A significant increase in the number of organizations and "attention-seeking scholars" focused on painting a threatening picture of technology;
• News organizations under increased financial pressure, meaning that reporters may have less time and fewer resources to dig deep into technology issues; and
• Media outlets that count on online page views to generate revenue have an incentive to pursue alarmist stories that generate clicks.

For system operators and technology vendors -- and especially for their marketing and communications staff -- the ITIF findings quantify a continuing problem: how to sell increasingly complex systems to skeptical consumers groomed by daily press reports about the threats from technology. Although ITIF's study was limited to three influential publications, the messages inevitably reached out far beyond the readers of those widely-redistributed newspapers.

ITIF's findings also suggest that the tech industries should move beyond navel-gazing into more aggressive ways to explain the value of technologies.

The 18-page report urged media not to abandon the "responsibility to report all sides of a story accurately or allow for diverse perspectives." But ITIF cautioned that media should not "give more weight to the pessimists and technophobes than is warranted -- even if doing so generates more revenue."

"Media should take steps to ensure its coverage of technology is less biased, and policymakers should be sensitive to the fact that public opinion about technology may be distorted by skewed views," the ITIF report concluded.

Fifth-generation (5G) wireless technologies present "a unique opportunity to radically expand the capacity and flexibility of wireless networks, which will have profound implications for broadband competition and productivity growth," according to a report published on Thursday.

The Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF) evaluation "5G and Next Generation Wireless: Implications for Policy and Competition" urges that national and local  policymakers "should support the development' of next-generation networks by ensuring new spectrum is available and by streamlining deployment of physical infrastructure.

Related:ITIF Report: FCC's 5G Efforts Should Focus on Spectrum, Not Standards

"We will continue to see additional competition in providing broadband access, as the performance of wired and wireless networks converges," ITIF said. "5G networks will also enable a new level of IoT connections, touching key verticals throughout our economy."

ITIF's "5G" triangle (see illustration) focuses on the "confluence of technologies is enabling an adaptable network that effectively provides numerous new functions." It singles out "enhanced broadband," "Massive Internet of Things " and "Critical Communications" as the three major categories for 5G, pointing out the very different capacity, reliability and accessibility of each application.

"Video places an order of magnitude larger demand than most other uses on the capacity of networks, so to enhance mobile broadband, end-user download speed remains the main driver," says the report, written by Doug Brake, a telecommunications policy analyst at ITIF. "For mobile to become a more robust competitor for wireline broadband networks, speeds will need to increase, and in a way that is economical as to see larger monthly data plans."

ITIF expects that "with the right policies in place, 5G will provide wildly increased capacity, allowing for super-high definition streaming of augmented reality; far more numerous, less costly connections, supporting a boom to IoT; and highly reliable connections, enabling critical communications and large-scale industrial automation."

Citing existing circumstances, the report acknowledges that pole attachment and other infrastructure policies for wired communications must be addressed in overall 5G planning. And as part of its extensive contemplation about standards and competitiveness, ITIF warns that "too strong a government hand in guiding technical standards, especially when tied to arbitrary deadlines, can lead to sub-optimal outcomes."

At a Thursday seminar accompanying the release of the ITIF report, officials from Verizon, Qualcomm, Intel, Samsung and other companies evaluated business approaches to 5G.

Charla Rath, vice president-wireless policy development at Verizon, affirmed that, "We have made clear that we want to take an aggressive stance on 5G."

"It's going to be a transition of ...networks of networks," Rath said "It's going to be a lot of different spectrum,"  including licensed and unlicensed spectrum. She noted that "IoT is increasingly about video."

Peter Pitsch, executive director of communications policy and associate general counsel at Intel, characterized the introduction of 5G: "We're going to get spectrum in the marketplace in a flexible way."

"We're going to need low, medium and high spectrum, not just for capacity but because of the differences of capabilities ... for applications," Pitsch explained.

Noting that he's often a critic of FCC spectrum policies, he complimented chairman Tom Wheeler's "astounding effort" to make spectrum available, noting that 28 GHz and 37-40 GHz  will be licensed. Pitsch predicted that because things are moving so quickly already, there will be fast action making  65 -71 GHz bands available on an unlicensed basis.  He said he expects the FCC will make licenses available "in a very flexible, investment-friendly way...[for] long-term licenses with reasonable technical limits."

The FCC should continue freeing up high-band spectrum for next-generation 5G mobile broadband rather than control the standards-setting process, and local governments should help streamline the deployment of new infrastructure.

Those are the key policy takeaways from a new report being released Thursday (June 30) by the Information Technology & Innovation Foundation.

Policymakers on every level of the government should aim to make infrastructure deployment as efficient as possible to see the flourishing of 5G networks," said report author Doug Brake, a telecom policy analyst with ITIF.

"Given the fact that many of the technological components of 5G are still in flux, that deployment scenarios are still being explored, and that there is still a good deal of gas in the LTE tank, government action around 5G should be more stage setting than full industrial policymaking," Brake said in the report. "There is certainly a role for government in encouraging 5G to flourish, but industry-led standard setting better allows discovery of new technologies and a more nuanced understanding of what areas are most economical to explore."

Related:Hillary Clinton says she will push for 5G.

Brake said that given the explosion of data traffic, particularly bandwidth-hungry video, speeds will have to increase if wireless is to be a more robust competitor to wireline. For that to happen, wireless only has a few levers to pull. Finding more spectrum is one, another is increasing capacity by improving spectrum efficacy.

But he says there are limits to increasing that efficiency and network engineers are close to butting up against them. "As hard as getting Congress to pass a new law can be, bending the laws of physics is even harder. There are also trade-offs in any system designed—a protocol designed purely for maximizing throughput may not handle other usage scenarios as well," he said.

Brake gives the FCC high marks for 5G stage-setting so far. "The FCC deserves credit for moving quickly to get high-band spectrum into the hands of innovators, and for not being beholden to international bodies, such as the ITU, who are slow to allocate this spectrum to mobile," he said.

The FCC has set aside 30 MHz of low-band spectrum in the broadcast incentive auction that can potentially be auctioned to competitive carriers at discount prices. But Brake cautions against that model for high-band spectrum.

"Regulators should exercise caution in setting reserve prices or payments when it comes to auctioning high-band spectrum. Unnecessarily high auction prices discourage investment in new, unproven technologies that will have significant deployment costs of their own."

An advisory group to the European Union has said it can't endorse the "privacy shield" proposal agreed to by the EU and U.S. to succeed a data protection agreement invalidated last year, according to the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation.

The ITIF said it was disappointed that the group -- the Article 29 Working Party,  made up of EU's data protection regulators --  could not support the negotiated framework.

"The new agreement offers a host of new protections, obligations and opportunities for redress that affirm the commitment of the U.S. government to safeguard European data and respect the rights of European citizens," the ITIF, a technology policy think tank, said. "Moreover, the agreement has achieved widespread support on both sides of the Atlantic from many policymakers, businesses and advocacy groups for offering an opportunity to move forward after the European Court of Justice invalidated the Safe Harbor agreement in the Schrems decision."

If the privacy shield proposal is approved, it would replace the Safe Harbor agreement that an EU court invalidated over concerns about the U.S. being able to hold up its end of the agreement given the government surveillance revealed by the Edward Snowden leaks. The framework requires companies to provide notice of what personal information is being collected and stored, the purposes it is used for and an "opt out" mechanism.

The ITIF said the fact that the advisory group thinks the agreement needs work isn't a reason not to approve it.

"While members of the Article 29 Working Party should continue to offer suggestions on how to strengthen this agreement — and there are opportunities for improvement — the opportunity for improvement should not preclude official approval of the agreement," the ITIF said.

The Trans Atlantic Consumer Dialogue, civil society groups that also had issues with the shield, said the signal from the advisory committee was clear and should be heeded.

"We hope that the European Commission will take the opinion of the Data Protection Authorities very seriously. It is clear that the Privacy Shield does not adequately protect EU consumers’ fundamental rights," said Jeff Chester, U.S> co-chair of TACD's Information Society Committee. "The Commission must reconsider its adoption. The EU cannot afford to set a precedent like this and allow fundamental rights and values to be high jacked by political and commercial interests.”