Top Telecom Lobbyist Flatters FCC Chair Ajit Pai At L.A. Panel

Federal Communications Commission Chair Ajit Pai was, and remains, the driving force behind the FCC’s repeal of net neutrality rules last year. Pai’s job also makes him the nation’s chief regulator of the telecommunications industry. But on Tuesday, Pai appeared on stage in Los Angeles, at the Mobile World Congress with a top telecom industry lobbyist, Meredith Attwell Baker. According to the site Mashable, which covered the event,  Pai and Baker appeared a little too friendly, given their ostensibly adversarial position. “The discussion went from awkward to eerie as Baker—again, the head of a mobile industry lobbying firm—continuously flattered and joked with Pai,” wrote Mashable reporter Rachel Kraus, “and the two ping-ponged complimentary talking points off of each other.” Attwell is the president and CEO of CTIA—originally the Cellular Telecommunications Industry Association, but now known only by its initials—a leading lobbying group for the wireless telecommunications industry. Attwell also served on the FCC, from 2009 to 2011, appointed by President Barack Obama, though she is a Republican who previously served in the George W. Bush administration Commerce Department. Baker is also the daughter-in-law of James Baker III, who served a chief of staff to both Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, as well as secretary of state under Bush.  At Tuesday’s Mobile Word Congress, where Pai delivered the keynote address, Baker also complimented the FCC chair on his “leadership” on the campaign to upgrade the nation’s wireless infrastructure to the faster, 5G standard.  "To lead the world in 5G, we’re going to need a lot of great years," Baker told Pai, as quoted by Mashable. "With leadership like this, I know we will." Pai’s aggressive auctioning of public, 24GHz radio waves—the spectrum used by 5G networks—to private telecom giants such as Verizon, where Pai himself was once an in-house lawyer, and AT&T has proven controversial as well.  According to a letter sent to the FCC by Oregon Senator Ron Wyden and Washington Senator Maria Cantwell earlier this year, allowing private firms to hoard excessive 5G bandwidth “could damage the effectiveness of U.S. weather satellites and harm forecasts and predictions relied on to protect safety, property, and national security."  The U.S. Navy also authored a memo outlining the dangers of selling off the 24GHz spectrum, saying that the private 5G networks will cause radio interference leading to “a partial-to-complete loss of remotely sensed water-vapor measurements.” Without those measurements, the Navy could lose it ability to forecast tropical cyclones, or just ordinary rain and snow, the memo said. Photo By Gage Skidmore / Wikimedia Commons