Greg Walden

Mr. WALDEN

Mr. WALDEN. Madam Speaker, I rise today to congratulate the La Grande American Legion Post No. 43 on 100 years of service to eastern Oregon, and for their continued support and leadership in my home state. In Oregon, we understand how important it is to support our veterans. The La Grande Post No. 43 has been a steadfast partner in this effort. With over 117 Posts and 17,000 fraternal members in Oregon--and over 2 million affiliate members--the American Legion is a strong advocate for the veteran community in our great state of Oregon and across the country. The La Grande Post No. 43 has been a vital part of the community during these last one hundred years. They place American flags on veterans' graves on Memorial Day and organize and participate in local veterans' parades. They also lead donation efforts for local firefighters' organizations, make monthly visits to veterans in retirement homes in our community, mount up the Patriot Guard to attend funerals with aims-firing details, and volunteering thousands of hours at VA medical facilities. A little over a year ago, I had breakfast with a group of veterans-- some of whom are members of Post No. 43--that spend time every week serving ice cream to disabled veterans throughout La Grande and the surrounding community. They call themselves the ``Vets Ice Cream Patrol,'' and the time and energy they spend with veterans every week is a simple, but powerful, gesture of camaraderie and service. Over the past 100 years, the American Legion has assisted over 700,000 veterans and families across the nation in collecting their benefits; honored our veterans and led memorial tributes for fallen comrades; and volunteered thousands of hours at VA medical facilities. La Grande Post No. 43 has been a valued part of that tradition. Being a champion for our veterans is an endeavor that transcends party lines and is a small expression of gratitude for all they have done to protect our freedoms. The American Legion has led the effort in this, with an emphasis on service to the local community and volunteerism to improve the quality of life for Oregon veterans. In celebration and gratitude for all that they do, I ask my colleagues to join me in congratulating the La Grande American Legion Post No. 43 on 100 years of unwavering service to Oregon veterans.

Mr. WALDEN

Mr. WALDEN. Mr. Chairman, I claim the time in opposition to the amendment, although I don't think I am opposed to the amendment.

Mr. WALDEN. Mr. Chair, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Chair, I appreciate the gentlewoman's amendment and the gentleman's comments. We can figure out how to work this out, I think. But clearly, we have to fix the maps. Even the industry has told me, at least--they admit the data, the way it is collected and everything else, is not an accurate representation. They would like our help in this as well. Hopefully, we can move forward on an NTIA reauthorization as well. We marched through a number of agency reauthorizations and programmatic reauthorizations that hadn't been done in decades in the last 2 years. We should continue that important work as well. We stand ready as Republicans to join our colleagues to get that done. Mr. Chair, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. WALDEN. Mr. Speaker, I have a motion to recommit and it is at the desk.

Mr. WALDEN. Mr. Chairman, I don't disagree with my colleague from Virginia that the maps showing broadband deployment in the United States can and must be improved. That is why, when Republicans held the majority for the Energy and Commerce Committee, we held numerous hearings on how to do that, how to improve broadband mapping at the FCC. We also shared legislation with our Democratic--then minority-- colleagues to bring in the expertise of the National Telecommunications and Information Administration to aggregate granular data beyond the carrier data that the FCC uses for its maps. Unfortunately, our colleagues on the other side of the aisle didn't want to work with us to improve mapping last Congress. I am more hopeful this time that we can engage--we are ready, willing, and able to do so--and that we can address this matter. Mapping is clearly important--I think we all agree on that--and it is where we should focus our limited Federal money on broadband support. But rather than help spur broadband deployment and provide more granular data, the underlying legislation would make it more difficult on broadband providers to deploy broadband. We just discussed how investment in broadband, especially for our small providers, suffered under title II. They came and testified to that. But my reservation on this amendment, Mr. Chairman, has to do with the conflict that I see between the Wexton amendment, No. 5, and the Spanberger amendment, No. 11. I wonder if the gentlewoman from Virginia would care to comment about that, and I would be happy to yield. I didn't have a chance to talk with her. It may not be fair. The issue here is the Wexton amendment, which we did not oppose, requires the Federal Communications Commission to submit to Congress, within 30 days, a plan for how the Commission will evaluate and address problems with the collection of form 477 data. I believe those are the same data we are talking about with your amendment to have the GAO do this investigation and report to Congress as well. The conflict I see is, on the one hand, we are telling the FCC to go do its work and report back in 30 days, but in your amendment, we are telling the GAO to go do its work and tell us eventually where the problems are. They can do that, but we have already told the FCC to report back its answers. I am not going to oppose the amendment, but it seems like there is kind of a conflict here, potentially. Because we want to get it right, it seems like we would wait to have the FCC report back until the GAO had completed its work. Then we could work with the FCC to say, okay, now that we know what the GAO has found and informed us on, then, FCC, go and report back. I might have structured this a little differently had we had time to work out some of that. I am not going to oppose the gentlewoman's amendment. We have to get the data right. We have to get the mapping right. When the stimulus came out in the Obama administration, I argued this very point in the committee. We were in the minority then, so of course, I lost. But they were spending money that was being set aside in the stimulus to build out broadband in America before they had the maps to figure out where people were underserved and unserved. It seemed kind of backward then, and I think it was. We didn't get the maps until after the money was allocated. The time to do the audits and evaluations of how that money was spent, the money for that ran out before the build-out was finished, so we had to come back to look at that. Then we did find limited cases of fraud and abuse, not much, frankly, but enough. It is taxpayer dollars. I won't oppose the gentlewoman's amendment. I think we can work out these things if this bill were to move forward, but the timing is the issue that I have some reservations on. Mr. Chair, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. WALDEN. Oh, my gosh, Mr. Speaker, in its current form, yes.

Mr. WALDEN. Mr. Chair, I thank the gentleman for his comments, and I yield myself such time as I may consume. I again thank the gentleman from Utah for bringing this amendment. I guess my suspicions were right: It is merely restating what is already in the 2015 order, which is what this bill basically reinstates into law. Mr. Chair, I thank my staff as well for the great job they have done. I appreciate both sides as we work together on these complicated and sometimes controversial issues. I would point out that, under sections 223 and 201, you are again opening the door to vast new regulation of speech and content, I believe and our attorneys believe, by giving the FCC this authority. I am a First Amendment guy. I have a degree in journalism. I believe in free speech. Sometimes, I don't like that speech. Sometimes, I find it offensive. The stuff that is illegal, you bet, we are all together on. But there are some interesting stories coming out around Europe and elsewhere where countries now, especially some of those in the more authoritarian parts of the world, are using this argument to crack down on political speech they find offensive. I think we have to be very careful as Republicans, as Democrats, as all Americans to try to find that balance between the obvious and the speech that really is about protecting the powerful. I think we can find common ground on that, but I do wince a bit that we are opening the door, or you all are with your bill, to giving the FCC the power to tax the internet, the power to regulate speech on the internet by going through a rulemaking. I think that heads us in a little more dangerous direction and, meanwhile, does not address some of the issues I hear in townhalls. I have done 20 of them in every county in my district this year. When people begin to step up and have issues, it is not the ISPs they are complaining about, other than speeds and connectivity, that sort of thing. It is what is happening on some of the social media platforms, which are not addressed by this bill. Mr. Chairman, I support the gentleman's amendment, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. WALDEN. Mr. Chair, may I inquire as to how much time remains.

Mr. WALDEN. Mr. Chair, I appreciate both my colleagues' comments, but the nationwide numbers of investment obscure what happens in our smallest investors, among those that are out there, like Joe Franell in Eastern Oregon trying to build out. What we do know is he came back and testified to the problem he encountered individually as one who is very progressive and active, trying to connect really difficult places to get to with the highest speed broadband possible. I have met with him before; I have met with him during; I have met with him afterwards. He came back on his own dime to make the case that, when these rules were in effect, he had difficulty getting loans; he had difficulty building out; he was burdened more than he had ever been before, and that diminished his ability to build out. His numbers probably are dust in terms of investment that the big companies have, but that is who I care about are the little operators that are so pushed down by this heavy hand of government overregulation. So that is, I think, what we have to maintain our focus on. Again, title II gives these vast unprecedented powers to the FCC to regulate the internet like it has never been regulated before. People who have no Gs need our help, but people waiting for 5G don't need us to pass legislation that will screw it up and diminish innovation, and that is one of the reasons I am opposing this version of net neutrality. We could agree on no throttling and no blocking and the paid prioritization issue as well. The other thing I found interesting, Mr. Chairman, is, throughout the course of all of our hearings, there wasn't a witness panel of people who had faced all of these parade of horribles we have heard about from ISPs. There weren't any witnesses. They didn't bring anybody. I don't know if they are out there or not. They didn't bring anybody who has been affected by the edge providers, however, and that is another subject for our conversation going forward. Mr. Chairman, I support the amendment, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. WALDEN. Mr. Chairman, again, I support this amendment to require the GAO to look into ways to promote deployment of broadband to our most rural and underserved areas. It is a very worthy subject and one on which I think we can find some really broad bipartisan agreement. It is a top priority of mine and has been, so I won't oppose the amendment. We are obviously delegating a lot of authority to the GAO, which is a wonderful organization, but we all have had hearings and know what really needs to happen, I think, going forward to get broadband built out. However, if you are really concerned about deployment to rural and underserved areas, you should be extremely concerned about the impact the underlying bill is going to have on our ability to get broadband out to these areas and close the digital divide. Title II is a proven investment killer, period, hard stop. This is shown not only in the overall nationwide investment numbers going down during the only 2-year blip these rules were in effect. Remember, my colleague from New York, these internet rules you are about only existed for less than about 2 years. That is it. The whole growth, the expansion of the internet and broadband occurred during the period of the 1990s to 2015. Then the internet order was put in and investment went down, and then the internet order was repealed and investment is going up. The head of the Eastern Oregon Telecom Company, Joe Franell, came back to Washington and testified before our subcommittee and said, under title II, his investors lost interest; deals dried up; the bank wouldn't even give him a loan. It was an extremely compelling story from somebody who is on the front lines of getting broadband built out to the very areas you and I would agree need service. And we heard from many other small rural ISPs as well with the same stories. They are the ones that take the worst hit under title II that is in this bill you support. Now, I submitted an amendment to the Rules Committee to do something real to address the worst uncertainties that these small carriers have to deal with under title II. Title II opens the door to government control of private networks. It opens the door to government taxation of the internet. It opens the door to government regulation of speech online. My amendment would have closed all of those doors. Unfortunately, the Democrats, again, who control the Rules Committee, Mr. Chairman, 2 to 1, would not find a way to even allow us to bring that amendment here for a vote or debate. I have to say, under title II, our smallest rural ISPs would have a really tough time, and we have seen a lot of evidence of this in the past. So I hope my friends will consider that, when we are voting on this underlying bill, we are actually going to cause those small ISPs more harm than good, and that will delay deployment into unserved and underserved communities. A GAO study on deployment will have no impact whatsoever on deployment-killing excesses of title II, but it will give us some ideas about how to build out broadband, so I won't oppose the amendment. I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. WALDEN. Mr. Chairman, I claim the time in opposition to the amendment, although I am not opposed to the amendment.

Mr. WALDEN. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Chair, I appreciate my colleague's concern about the accuracy of the FCC's reports on deployment. I share those. And with his broader concern about broadband generally, I agree with that. In fact, many Members on both sides of the aisle share these concerns, especially when it comes to the unserved Americans in our most rural areas, like my district that would stretch from the Atlantic to Ohio. It is a big district. So, I will support this amendment. However, I would ask my colleagues to seriously consider, Mr. Chairman, the negative impacts of giving the FCC power to regulate rates on rural broadband deployment. Mr. Kinzinger's amendment to block any sort of rate regulation was actually blocked by the majority from being considered today, and that is unfortunate. At the full committee markup, Mr. Kinzinger highlighted a memo from the Congressional Research Service that noted there is nothing permanent to the forbearance that the majority claims to be doing when it comes to controlling the prices providers charge consumers. So, we could get into rate regulation through the FCC, and every ISP would have to come back here and beg and explain their rate structure and everything else. And we have got thousands of them. The majority attempted to remedy this flaw with some additional language purporting to lock in the FCC's forbearance on this matter, but the actual effect of that language is still unclear. Most importantly, they left open the broad authority of sections 201 and 202 of the Communications Act and other authority that gives the Federal Communications Commission, all five unelected officials, plenty of leeway to regulate rates under title II. The legislation we have before us clearly leaves the door open to rate regulation. If this were not the case, then the Kinzinger amendment, I would think, would be before the House today or would have been approved in committee when we had a chance to do that. This is no way to conduct business in the internet age. These title II regulations were originally implemented for railroad monopolies in the 19th century. So, if you really believe in a competitive, open marketplace and a competitive, open internet, you don't turn it over to unelected bureaucrats in Washington to micromanage. As they were applied in their original incarnation, the requirements of just and reasonable practices under section 201(b) and no unreasonable discrimination under 202(a)--which, by the way, sound perfect--provided sufficient authority to impose price controls on railroads. So, by opening the door with title II and these other sections of law, you are now giving this vast power to basically three unelected officials at the FCC. You just need a majority to decide how the whole internet runs. I think that is a problem. Mr. Chair, I support the amendment, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. WALDEN. Mr. Chairman, I have no other speakers, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. WALDEN. Mr. Chairman, I claim the time in opposition to the amendment, but I am not opposed to the amendment.

Mr. WALDEN. Mr. Chairman, I will be brief here. The only effort to nationalize 5G and to fully regulate 5G is contained in the Democrats' bill. That is where it is happening. We had an amendment in the Rules Committee to prevent that, and the Democrats who control the Rules Committee by a 2-to-1 margin refused to even allow us to debate that amendment here on the floor. Finally, the President never said he was going to nationalize 5G. Somebody leaked a memo out of the White House that said that is a good idea. I oppose that. Right that same day, within hours, they had been clear on that. Let's be clear here. The facts of the matter are that this legislation nationalizes and regulates 5G like it has never been done before and threatens innovation and development of this exciting new opportunity for American consumers. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from the great State of California (Mr. McCarthy), who is the Republican leader.

Mr. WALDEN. Mr. Chair, I claim the time in opposition to the amendment, although I am not opposed to the amendment.

Mr. WALDEN. Mr. Chairman, I share similar concerns to Mr. Stanton about promoting broadband deployment on Tribal lands. I have visited a number of reservations around the country, including in Arizona, as well as, of course, in my own State of Oregon and elsewhere. This is a big issue, and the data are not complete. I agree with you that we need to do better. In fact, that is true, and I think we would all agree that the data the FCC gets, has, and uses has been a problem for a very long time. We have to get better so that when we allocate these funds to do the build-out and everything else, we are getting funds to the people who really need them. That is especially a problem with our Native American friends. In fact, while I was presiding over the Energy and Commerce Committee last Congress, we accomplished landmark legislation with the enactment of RAY BAUM'S Act. That reauthorized the FCC, and it included language to improve services on Tribal lands, Mr. Chairman. We need to make sure that the policies we impose on the internet support broadband deployment, especially deployment in Tribal, rural, and very rural areas. Oftentimes, the Tribal areas consist of rural areas where we have very small internet service providers providing access to the internet, and they are desperately trying to find funding to expand their service footprint. I was a small business owner with my wife for more than 20 years. I will tell you, you are trying to grow your small business, and then the government comes in and says: Oh, we want more information. We want more requirements. And we are going to regulate you more. Mr. Chairman, all that does is take your money and your plan to invest and diverts it. You don't get to do as much as you had planned to do. That is why I supported an amendment to the underlying bill that would have specifically protected a small business from the heavy hand of overreporting. That amendment would have included the language of my bill on small businesses that was passed unanimously by the House in each of the last two Congresses--unanimously, right here on this floor. It would have extended the exemption for small ISPs from President Obama's FCC's enhanced transparency rules for 5 years and expanded the exemption to include businesses with 250,000 subscribers or less. This was based on a bipartisan compromise that the FCC's original exemption was not enough to protect small ISPs. We all agreed to that. We negotiated that and twice passed that unanimously in the House. I agree that all consumers should be protected, but the enhanced transparency rules could deter broadband from being deployed further on Tribal lands and reaching consumers in the first place. That is because these enhanced disclosures place an unnecessary regulatory burden on small businesses and distract them from working to bring broadband internet access to customers across the country, especially on Tribal lands. As a reminder, my amendment would not have let ISPs skirt transparency. It did not do that. We are just talking about really costly reporting requirements. Instead, they would follow the less onerous transparency rules adopted by the FCC back in 2010 so consumers would still have access to information needed to make informed decisions about their internet service, and ISPs could focus on providing service rather than cumbersome regulatory requirements. There is bipartisan consensus in improving broadband deployment to Tribal lands and, I think, our rural areas and our urban areas that are underserved. But it seems my colleagues across the aisle don't support this as much as we claim and they claim. Otherwise, I would have expected the amendment I had, which reflected exactly what we twice agreed to, to be part of the underlying bill. It is not, and that is unfortunate. But Mr. Stanton's work is valuable, and I support it. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. WALDEN. Mr. Chair, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. WALDEN. Mr. Chairman, I claim the time in opposition to the amendment, although I am not opposed to the amendment itself.

Mr. WALDEN. Mr. Chair, I support the goal of this amendment in assessing the broadband marketplace and how the government can increase competition, lower prices, and improve the quality of service. This is a worthy subject for GAO to look into, and I think we can gain valuable insights. This is something we could have approved in the Energy and Commerce Committee had it been brought to us, but we accept it here on the floor. But if we were really looking for ways to increase competition, Mr. Chairman, in the wireless broadband marketplace, then I am baffled why Democrats did not find the need to examine how 5G networks will be severely threatened by their bill. Numerous reports from entities not even in the tech space indicate that title II, this overreaching government takeover and the incredible power being given to the FCC to take charge of the internet, presents serious challenges to 5G deployment and its amazing potential for technical improvements. These reports come from Barclays, which focuses on investment and banking, Oracle, and even the IEEE, which is the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, so it is not a bunch of politicians talking about this, Mr. Chairman. These are certified smart people, otherwise known as the real engineers, that we went to. To quote their analysis, ``5G networks face the challenge of being developed in a context of high uncertainty, where most of the services that underpin 5G business models appear to be unlawful under current rules.'' One example of the efficiencies that can be realized in a 5G network is network slicing which will allow operators to provide different services with different performance characteristics to address specific use cases. Because 5G is being designed for a wider range of use cases than prior technologies, it is critical that quality of service management be employed. Applying net neutrality to these new 5G networks would cripple the performance of this incredible new technology. Mr. Guthrie, a Republican from Kentucky, offered an amendment to address our serious concerns about the impact of the Democrats' bill on 5G, but that amendment to preserve the growth of 5G was not given an opportunity to be part of today's vote. Sadly, we can't even debate it. It is not here. New 5G wireless networks will not only one day support apps and web pages, and texts, and chats, and video streams, but will also support a wide range of new technologies, from autonomous vehicles, augmented reality, innovations in healthcare delivery and education, to all other kinds of new advances, Mr. Chairman. These new innovations, let alone the innovations beyond 5G to come, would be simply impossible, we now believe, and I think others believe independent of us, with these heavy-handed proposals that will result from title II power being given to bureaucrats in Washington. That is what the underlying bill would do. It is worth remembering that until 2015, the Federal Communications Commission treated wireless networks differently when regulating net neutrality, because it did not want to impede the growth of a nascent technology. If we were to apply that same logic today, we should not burden developing 5G networks with onerous and outdated regulations, as these 5G networks are even more in their infancy than wireless was back in 2010, Mr. Chairman. So we need to make sure that we don't handicap this next generation of technology with rules designed for rotary telephones that could cause us to delay or lose a global race to widely deploy 5G. Mr. Chairman, those are my remarks. I support the underlying amendment, the Davids amendment, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. WALDEN. Mr. Chairman, I don't have any other speakers, I don't believe. I will continue to reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. WALDEN. Mr. Chair, I yield myself the balance of my time. Mr. Chair, I would recommend that my friend from Pennsylvania read this Barclays piece on what the bill likely could do to diminish the growth in 5G build-out, which I include in the Congressional Record. [From Barclays, U.S. Cable, Telecom & Internet, March 25, 2019] Net Neutrality: Blunt Tool for a Fast-Changing Ecosystem More heat than light in present Net Neutrality debate: While Net Neutrality and related issues have evoked strong passions since the early 2000s, very little of the discussion has evolved despite significant technological and economic shifts. The issue has come back into focus with House Democrats introducing a new bill to reinstate the 2015 Internet Order which was repealed by the FCC post the election of President Trump. The issue is also making its way through the courts with 20+ states and tech companies predictably suing against the FCC's repeal. Therefore, this issue is likely to remain in the headlines especially given elections next year. Reinstating 2015 Open Internet Order may make it tough to realize full potential of 5G: We believe that Net Neutrality formulations as proposed in Congress are blunt tools to deal with a fast-changing technological landscape. The entire premise of 5G is the ability to enable different network capabilities for different applications. The 5G standards development body, 3GPP, has outlined three major use cases for the technology: enhanced Mobile Broadband, Massive IoT, and ultra-reliable low latency. While all three are likely to be used for consumer-facing applications, two of the three major use cases are also being targeted at industrial users. Dimensions of data use will also be more varied than just speed or volume. Some applications will need to transmit small amounts of data at constant periods (e.g. smart meters) while others will need bursts of high bandwidth consuming traffic (e.g. fixed wireless). Therefore, if implemented, the 2015 Open Internet Order framework (ban on paid prioritization and throttling) without accounting for emerging technological capabilities and applications is likely to become a roadblock to 5G monetization. Title II could have a bigger operational impact than Net Neutrality: While the Open Internet Order has implications for future business models, if adopted as law, a more immediate concern for Internet service providers will be the push to redefine broadband as a Title II service. Operationally, this could constrain the degrees of freedom around variables such as pricing a lot more than the Open Internet Order itself. Overall, while the need for some framework on Net Neutrality is agreed to by both sides of the political divide, the current set of proposals are, in our view, inadequate with material limitations on future business models. The issue requires a comprehensive look at the entire value chain including the edge, but divided regulatory jurisdictions and a split Congress make this difficult to achieve. Therefore, for now, we believe the issue will be resolved by courts and is likely be a headline risk for telecom and cable companies. While Net Neutrality evokes strong passions politically, very little of the discussion has evolved despite significant technological and economic shifts. We believe that Net Neutrality formulations as they exist today are blunt tools to deal with a fast-changing technological landscape. For instance, the entire premise of 5G is the ability to enable different network capabilities for different applications. The 5G standard development body has outlined three major use cases for the technology. enhanced Mobile Broadband (eMBB), Massive IoT (mIoT) and ultra-reliable low latency (URLLC). While all three are likely to be used for consumer facing applications, two of the three major use cases are also being targeted at industrial users (mIoT and URLLC). Data use across these applications is likely to be quite varied. For instance, smart meters will need to transmit small amounts of data at constant periods while consumer broadband works on bursts of high bandwidth consuming traffic such as video. Applications such as autonomous cars and remote surgery may value lower latency and higher edge computing capacity compared to, for example, checking email or watching video. This is quite different from previous generations of wireless standards which thus far have been largely focused on consumer applications. The way Congress appears to be looking at Net Neutrality today or the way the FCC has looked at this in the past would effectively result in operators being forced to provide the same level of service to every application which will not only result in waste but also limit the impact of 5G. In fact, if the promise of 5G is realized the way it has been outlined by operators globally, the whole meaning of what a telecom `service' means (is it latency? is it speed? it is edge compute?) and how it is measured is likely to change meaningfully. Some conditions included in the 2015 Order such as paid prioritization and throttling could in theory make it impossible to deploy and monetize some of the features that make 5G a bigger shift than prior generations. In a 5G world, this would make it impossible in theory to prioritize latency for, as an example, a driverless car versus somebody watching Netflix. Of course regulators can fine-tune these definitions but that is not what the House bill seeks to do. It effectively passes this judgment to an administrative body-- the FCC. Given that FCC decisions on this issue have been split along political affiliations of the Commissioners, every regime at the FCC could make opposing decisions making the implementation of any policy next to impossible. This opens up the entire issue to a lot of uncertainty which is likely to limit the ability of service providers to formulate go-to-market plans for 5G. We also believe that the Net Neutrality framework as of today (no prioritization, no blocking and no throttling) is without any nuance to deal with what might be legitimate and consumer-friendly use cases. For instance, Netflix alone consumes cents19% of downstream bandwidth (wireless and wired) in the US today. In the early days of cable, when bandwidth in the cable pipe was limited due to analog signals, content networks had to pay cable companies for carriage. This allowed a market-based mechanism for viable networks to effectively `buy' bandwidth and scale their services based on how widely they were distributed. Netflix however doesn't have to worry about this dynamic. It can make its technology decisions independent of the investment needs of the network. In theory, Netflix can decide to stream all its videos in 4K and suck up even more bandwidth, which will be to the detriment of other applications on the Internet and force cable and wireless companies to increase their network investment. At the same time, cable companies will have to deal with broadband price monitoring by the FCC (which the 2015 Open Internet Order enables), limiting their ability to pass through price to the consumer or to Netflix (due to a ban on paid prioritization). Overall, while the need for some framework on Net Neutrality is unquestionable, the move by the House to just pass the buck back to the FCC to deal with the details is not the right answer in our opinion. This needs a legislative solution on the scale of the 1996 Telecommunications Act but this is almost impossible in the current environment. As a result, we believe this issue is likely to remain unresolved for a long time to come. Near-term, however, if this legislation were to pass, it could have a bigger impact on wireless 5G plans than on wireline operators.

Mr. WALDEN. Mr. Chair, how much time do I have remaining?

Mr. WALDEN. Mr. Chairman, I claim the time in opposition to the amendment, even though I am not opposed to it.

Mr. WALDEN. Mr. Chair, may I inquire how much time I have remaining.