Two Think Minimum

Bryan Tramont is Managing Partner of Wilkinson Barker Knauer, a top tier law firm according to Chambers and Legal 500 Bryan offers strategic counsel to Fortune 100 companies, trade associations, small and midsize telecommunications and media companies, on all aspects of communications, law and regulation. Bryan has also served as Chief of Staff and Senior Legal Advisor for FCC Chairman Michael Powell. His other top level FCC gigs have included at Senior Legal Advisor to Commissioners Kathleen Abernathy and Harold Furchtgott-Roth. He's been recognized as one of the nation's top communications lawyers. If there's a list he's on it, including 2016 Lawyer of the Year in Communications law and the top 10 Washington DC Super Lawyer, 2017 Lawyer of the year in media law, was named in 2017 to be Inaugural Legal 500 Hall of Fame, and Lawyer of the Year in 2020 edition of Best Lawyers in America, which is amazing cause it's not even 2020 yet. So, and although there's no award for it, Bryan is also known throughout the telecom world regardless of your economic or political leanings or company you work for or represent, as not just a super insider, unmatched knowledge, but also the friendliest, most helpful and most honest person around.

Judith Mariscal is a professor at the Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económicas (CIDE) and Executive Director of the Cyber Policy Center for Latin America. She's a leading telecommunications scholar and easily the most knowledgeable and thoughtful person on telecom in Mexico. For the last few years we've seen lots of big changes, not just in politics in Mexico, but in the telecommunications sector and one of the biggest issues that possibly has broader lessons for the rest of the world is the story of Red Compartida, the wholesale network, where the government provided a 90 MHz block to the 700 MHz spectrum band and awarded build out to a company. It's been hugely controversial. Judith helps explain what's happening.

Catherine Tucker is the Sloan Distinguished Professor of Management and a Professor of Marketing at MIT Sloan. She is also Chair of the MIT Sloan PhD Program. Her research interests lie in how technology allows firms to use digital data and machine learning to improve performance, and in the challenges this poses for regulation. Tucker has particular expertise in online advertising, digital health, social media, and electronic privacy. Her research studies the interface between marketing, the economics of technology, and law. Disclosure Statement: https://mitmgmtfaculty.mit.edu/cetucker/disclosure/. Professor Tucker’s disclosure statement lists companies she has consulted for, grants she has received, relationships with academics working at a variety of firms, and entities in which she has a significant financial interest. The statement follows the guidelines set out by MIT, American Economic Review, and NBER.

Cathryn Ross is director of regulatory affairs at BT. Before that, she was head of Ofwat (Water Services Regulation Authority.) She joins TPI Senior Fellow Bob Hahn on this wide-ranging discussion of the economics of regulation.

Dimitri Sirota is CEO and cofounder of BigID. Sirota is the CEO of one of the first enterprise privacy management platforms called BigID and a privacy and identity expert. He is an established serial entrepreneur, investor, mentor and strategist and previously founded two enterprise software companies focused on security and API management, Layer Seven technologies which was sold to CA Technologies in 2013.

Tim Muris is a former chairman of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), and currently a George Mason University Foundation Professor of Law, at Scalia Law School and Senior Counsel at the law firm Sidley-Austin. He has substantial experience in every aspect of antitrust enforcement as well as in key consumer protection issues, including advertising, consumer finance and privacy regulation. During his lengthy tenure with the FTC, Mr. Muris held multiple high-level posts and was the only person ever to direct both of the FTC’s enforcement bureaus. It was under his leadership that the FTC established the National Do Not Call Registry and brought numerous high-profile cases against firms for misusing government practices to raise prices. Professor Muris has held three previous positions at the Commission: Assistant Director of the Planning Office (1974-1976), Director of the Bureau of Consumer Protection (1981-1983), and Director of the Bureau of Competition (1983-1985). After leaving the FTC in 1985, Muris served with the Executive Office of the President, Office of Management and Budget for three years. Jon Neuchterlein is a partner and co-leader of Sidley’s Telecom and Internet Competition practice, focuses on telecommunications law, antitrust, and appellate litigation. He rejoined the firm in 2016 after serving as General Counsel of the Federal Trade Commission. Jon’s extensive government experience also includes positions as Deputy General Counsel of the Federal Communications Commission, as Assistant to the Solicitor General, and as law clerk to D.C. Circuit Judge Stephen Williams and Supreme Court Justice David Souter. He is the author (with Phil Weiser) of a widely cited treatise on telecommunications law and policy. The Best Lawyers in America recently named Jon as the 2019 “Lawyer of the Year” for Communications Law in Washington, D.C. As the FTC’s General Counsel from 2013 to 2016, Jon represented the FTC in court, provided legal counsel on a range of antitrust and consumer protection issues, and oversaw the Commission’s appellate litigation activities. Their paper, "Antitrust in the Internet Era: The Legacy of United States v. A&P", can be found at https://doi.org/10.1007/s11151-019-09685-7

Professor William Kovacic is the Global Competition Professor of Law and Policy, Professor of Law, and Director of the Competition Law Center at George Washington University Law School. Bill has many years of experience as an antitrust scholar and practitioner, serving at the Federal Trade Commission as Chairman (2008-2009), Commissioner (2006-2011), and General Counsel (2001-2004).

Brian Sullivan of CNBC and Laura Martin of Needham & Company sit down with Scott Wallsten in this episode recorded in Aspen, Colorado at the Technology Policy Institute's annual Aspen Forum on August 18-20, 2019. Brian, Laura, and Scott discuss a wide range of topics from eSports, gaming, Fortnite, and the future of media. Brian and Laura discuss their perspectives on the growing influence of Washington, D.C. on business decisions on Wall Street and around the world.

Randal Picker is the James Parker Hall Distinguished Service Professor of Law at the University of Chicago Law School, Senior Fellow at the Computation Institute of the University of Chicago Argonne National Laboratory, and affiliate faculty with the Coase-Sandor Institute for Law and Economics. Professor Picker currently teaches classes at the Law School in Secured Transactions and Antitrust and a seminar on antitrust and intellectual property policy. In prior years, Professor Picker has taught Network Industries, Bankruptcy and Copyright; Technology, Innovation and Society; Corporate Reorganizations, Commercial Law and Civil Procedure. He has also taught seminars on Game Theory and the Law and The Legal Infrastructure of High-Tech Industries.

Panel event recorded on Wednesday, June 5, 2019, 12:00 PM to 2:00 PM, at TPI Conference Center, 409 12th Street, SW, Second Floor, Washington, DC 20024. To maximize spectrum’s value, it must be able to transition to new uses as technologies emerge. The C-Band includes 500 MHz of particularly desirable spectrum between 3.7 and 4.2 GHz that is currently allocated for satellite use. Given fast-growing wireless use and emerging 5G technologies, there is widespread agreement that at least some C-Band spectrum should be available for terrestrial uses instead of satellite uses, and that the reallocation should happen as quickly as possible. But there is less agreement on how much to reallocate and how to do it. The largest satellite companies that currently use the band have proposed a private sale. T-Mobile has proposed an incentive auction similar to the one the FCC recently completed for broadcast spectrum. Broadcasters and cable companies, meanwhile, are wary of reallocations that may disrupt the airwaves that they use to distribute programming. This panel will discuss the economic, policy, and practical implications of the competing proposals as well as whether and how the FCC will respond to these options for C-Band reallocation. Panelists included Tim Brennan, Professor, Public Policy and Economics, University of Maryland, Baltimore County; Colleen King, Vice President, Regulatory Affairs, Charter Communications; Patrick McFadden, National Association of Broadcasters, Peter Pitsch, Head of Advocacy & Government Relations, C-Band Alliance; Steve Sharkey, Vice President, Government Affairs, Engineering and Technology Policy, T-Mobile; Scott Wallsten (moderator), President and Senior Fellow, Technology Policy Institute