That are under the verizon umbrella. Guest its a great question because verizons changed quite a bit over the last couple years. We have our network business, our wireless business which is nationwide in the u. S. , our fios business which is broadband and our enterprise business. But weve also expanded pretty significantly into internet of things and sort of internet video and content business, and so weve acquired aol, of course, announced a plan to acquire yahoo over the course of the last couple month, weve acquired two companies, connected vehicles which is in the smart cities of business and many more. So you see us increasingly building to out to internet of things and online video. Host given the nature of your business, how often does federal policy play a role in Business Decisions you make . Guest policy permeates a lot of things we do, but whats happened is its no longer just telecom policy. We have all realm of policy thats going out of washington like some part of our business. Does everyone in the company wake up every today thinking about policy . No. They think about how to serve customers, what customers needs and how to do that best. But because of the scope and scan of our business, there are elements of policy that touch almost everything we do. Host well, with the new incoming administration, a new federal communications commission, whats one of the issues that youll be looking at regulatory and legislatively . Guest i think a couple of things going on here in the new administration. I think one of the top things were focused on is infrastructure, particularly fiber build. When you think about the world that we are in today whether its wireless where increasingly if you go back a couple of years, you have a lot of big cell towers transmitting a couple of miles, increasingly as you just see this incredible demand for mobile services, were densifying our network. What that means is were building the fiber deeper and deeper into the network so that the wireless signals are traveling a shorter distance. 90 of that is actually fiber. And you i mentioned the internet of things in smart citieses, you look at what cities are trying to do, you need a massive infrastructure to do all that. So a lot of the issues were looking at is where is all that fiber going to come from, whos going to build it, making sure its accessible so we can continue to build these services and pollutions on top of it. Enter so youre dealing with state governments, local government, cities. Guest thats exactly right. And one of the interesting trends is the increasing importance of municipalities, just working with mayors offices. A lot of innovative policy making going on in the cities, and theyre looking at how do they create an environment thats a great place to live, draws workers in, makes them more efficient . All ultimately, its built on fiber. Host well, lets bring John Mckibbon of the wall street journal into our discussion. Hey, craig, how are you . Talk more about infrastructure. Obviously, congress has been thinking a lot about another infrastructure bill. The the president elect is thinking about it as well. How could that play into what you see is the future of infrastructure . Guest it absolutely could be part of it. Obviously, we talk about roads and bridges, and thats an incredibly important part of it. But today with our knowledgebased economy, the services that are being provided, i do think we need to see fiber as one of those fundamental aspects of infrastructure for Economic Growth. So certainly one of the aspects discussed is the idea that as part of an infrastructure package, you might see subsidization of fiber builds across the country. What kind of subsidy are we talking about . Guest obviously, i cant speak for the incoming administration, but i think what you want to look at, obviously, is any place that the market is driving investment, you dont need to subsidize there. But there can be various ways you can do that. Basically, look at areas where the market size may not be there to build out fiber, which is expensive. Its a heavy Capital Investment to encourage whichever players may want to play in that space. And what are the kinds of places that were talking about here . Are they mostly rural . Are they cities . Guest certainly, the economics of fiber get harder and harder as you move to less and less dense areas. So the more dense population base you have, the more the economics for building fiber makes sense. So i think two things. One is that youre probably looking at rural areas where the economics for the build may not make sense. The second thing i think you want to think about is that the combination of fiber and wireless is pretty powerful, and you may not need to build fiber where you build it all the way down to a premises, but rather build out to nodes and let people build wireless capabilities on the end of those nodes. That may be a Cost Effective or more efficient way to get fiber out there but not have to build all the way to the last mile. What do you think that president elect trump thinks about the Telecommunications Business . Hes succeeding president obama whos, obviously, very techsavvy. He professes not to be aztec talf i have as techsavvy, and i think a lot of people perceive he doesnt focus on silicon valley, certainly. What do you think he wants out of the Telecommunications Industry . Guest im sorry, i cant speak for president recollect president elect trump are, but i think the way we all should think about this, as we mentioned before, we live in a war where the Services Element of the economy is growing. Its a tremendous opportunity for the country to grow as we move into new sectors, new areas of innovation, research and development. All thats built on top of communication. So in order for us as a country to be leading the world in new r d, in new innovations, we need to have those underlying Communication Networks as robust and ubiquitous as possible. So i think all policymakers should be thinking about how do we continue to encourage that investment in the Broadband Networks so that we reach as many people. Its not a static point. You never reach a point where youre done. You need that continuing investment to keep upgrading. I think its a fundamental part of all the other Economic Growth components of a new administration. Host now, Craig Silliman, you mentioned 90 of socalled wireless traffic done on wired line. Is there a disconnect between wireless policy and wired policy, and should they be treated the same . Guest increasingly i think we do need to look at the Networks Coming together, converging, and you need to look at Overall Communications policy. There are certain areas that are unique to one or the other. So, for example, spectrum is very unique to wireless. But increase increasingly everyone is looking at mobility, right . People are connected with their devices, with their tablets. But that may be in your home, that may be out on the street, and when youre doing that, youre really connecting over Wireless Technology but very quickly moving into a wired infrastructure. So i think there are aspects of the techs and aspects networks and aspects of the industry that still differ a little bit. Its not completely harmonized, and the same policies dont apply completely. One example is you still have four nationwide wireless carriers and a number of other players coming in, for example, cable players. So theres a lot of competition on the edge there. There are fewer people who are building the core Fiber Networks or the coa networks, and i think that will always with the case. It probably wont be economically viable to have four, five, six players overbuilding those wireline networks. It makes a lot more sense to have those shared in some way, wholesaled, etc. , has you may have a hot of competition going on on the edge of the Wireless Networks with all sorts of different wireless technologies. Uhuh be i think but i think there may be some differences still there, but a lot of the issues, you think about privacy, you think about cybersecurity, those issues that i think will be big issues for some years to come. Host a couple of issues that might be revisited with the Incoming Trump administration includes Net Neutrality. Guest it may be. I think itll be interesting to see what the debate around Net Neutrality is, because when we talked about this, and weve talked about it for a long time, Net Neutrality has often been conflated with the whole debate about title ii. And, certainly, i have said, verizons said for some time, many, many years we support the Net Neutrality principles. What the fight has been about for many years is about the jurisdictional hook the fcc used to get there. We actually came out some time ago before the Court Decisions and said the way to fix this is for congress to simply codify the principles into law and move away, put the whole title ii debate behind us. They didnt do that, and i think senators thune and nelson, their staffs did a lot of work to try and get there. But, ultimately, what happened in this whole Net Neutrality debate was you had some advocates that i think either moved the goalpost or ultimately revealed what they really wanted which was not Net Neutrality, but title ii. And so they pushed very hard to not have Congress Come up with Net Neutrality rules. I think, frankly, that was disingenuous and in retrospect, a bad political calculation. But i think that Net Neutrality principles are still important. What we do need to stand back and look and say what is the statutory framework under which the fcc is operating, and theyve really been trying to put square pegs into round holes for some time on some of these jurisdictional questions s. And i think the new administration looking at what you really need to protect consumers, whats the right setup of different agencies, whats their jurisdiction. And from that flows questions like how do you protect Net Neutrality principles. But i think we can do it in a much more efficient way if we stand back and look and say were in 2016, soon to be 2017. Lets come up with a 21st century framework, not govern the whole industry under a 1996 law. So that doesnt just answer the question of what happens to Net Neutrality rules, but it does get into a question of what is statutory framework under which all these decisions should be made, and thats incredibly important. Host and a communications guy, greg walden, is coming in as the chair of the energy and commerce committee. Guest he is. He of knows the industry very, very well. Hes been involved in these issues deeply for some years. Hes fan fantastically knowledge about these things, open minded and fireminded, i think hell fairminded. Host do you find that Congress Overall understands some of the technical issues that youre dealing with . Guest like all issues, the its going to be a mix. Theres such a vast range of issues, you cant expect every member to understand every issue. But you do have members, greg wald withen being one of them, who do understand these things very, very well with, and just as importantly, they have Staff Members who have lived in this world deeply for a long time. There are a couple of key staffers that are on the hill that everyone knows who are very, very good, very smart, very thoughtful, very knowledgeable. I actually theres a narrative that you may be hinting at, how can Congress Take on such a complex issue like rewriting the telecom act. You have some key members, key staffers that absolutely have the capability to do this. They have the knowledge, the wherewithal to take on these issues. So you envision legislation that could sort of refine the definition of title ii or maybe make clear that, you know, your business doesnt fit under title ii, by and large. Your broadband business. Do you foresee that this legislation would be limited to that, or could there be a lot of other issues . And if so, what do you think those issues might be . Guest if it were me, i would stand back and take a fresh look at the industry. Think about the 1996 telecom act. It literally reflects the world of the early 90s. What were some of the key issues that you were trying to solve . Long distance and local competition coming into effect. In essence, its been wildly successful but think about the debates around privacy. Do you have the privacy provision, the socalled privacy provision. It was originally written as basically a marketing it was written to say the local phone company sees your calling patterns, your Long Distance calling patternings, so they have an advantage marketing a Long Distance plan visavis mci at the time. Completely irrelevant in todays world. And that budget in any way that wasnt in any way written as a broad provision for the internet ecosystem. So you think about a world that didnt have any of the major players, the googles, the facebooks, the twitters that wasnt part of the ecosystem. It was really about bringing the cable guys, but yet hugely successful in what it was meant to accomplish but not all structure for the way the industry works today. So i think you really want to stand back instead of tinkering with the telecom act, you really stand back and say what is the industry structure, what is the thingses you are trying to achieve and how do you write a statute and set up agencies that are designed to operate and achieve those things, competition and Consumer Protection, in todays world . So you see a fairly far reaching scope for this legislation. Guest i do. I think that, i think if you think about the amount of technological market change over 20 years, if youre going to change it, say what am i trying to achieve for consumers in competition. Dont ticker around tinker around the edges. Host at what point do you draw that line in the sand and say, okay, from this day forward, lets move . With Technology Moving so quickly, how to do you draw that line . Guest yeah, thats a great question. You really cant expect congress to put something in statute that anticipates the future. No one can. If we all knew how to anticipate the great new technologies of the future, wed have a crystal ball thatd allow us to be great investors. So what you have to do is design a law that doesnt assume technologies. You have to base it on a couple of core principles, right . How do you drive competition, how do you protect consumers. But dont build a statutory framework as it is today where its built around silos of telecom, cable, wireless. When all those things meld, it begins to put strains on the fundamental statutory construction. What you want to do is say assumed continued evolutions of technology, assume and build it on a couple of Guiding Principles like Consumer Protection, and then the statutes and the regs can flex and move as the Technology Grows and changes. Host does that indicate as well that the fcc, perhaps, should be reorganized . Guest i think that the fcc certainly should continue to evolve with new technologies. The fcc originally had been built around certain silos of technologies, wire line and wireless. What not. Again, as those issues become more melded, i think absolutely you need to look at thats not a criticism of the way something was set up in the past, simply a recognition that as the technology changes, as the markets change, you need to change the framework of the regulator to make sure that they are structured in a way to meet the needs of todays technology, todays markets and todays consumers. Do you think you should keep regulation of what are called edge providers, the Internet Companies such as google or facebook, you know, when it comes to privacy issues or other issues like that, do you think that that regulation should stay at the ftc, or should it move to the cff . Is there fcc . Is there a way to slice that . Guest first of all, i think the whole question of what you should regulate, we should be careful not to fall into thinking that says a certain class of companies or a certain type of technology should be regulated per se. I think you all want to look and say, okay, wheres the competition, where theres more competition, you need less regulation. Where you see competition breaking down, thats where you need a little more regulation, and what are the consumer harms that could arise, and how do you do that. As far as your larger question, it clearly is the case that the ftc and the fcc are increasingly overlapping in terms of their jurisdiction. You see that with verizon. You asked earlier about the type of businesses that verizon is in, and youre in this odd situation where parts of our business are regulated by one agency, parts of the business are regulated by the other. Right. Guest for that matter, a device and mobile device, Consumer Protection driven in part by where in that device, is it the network . Is it the operating system . That doesnt really make sense, right . And its not good for consumers. So i do think over time you begin to say what are the important Consumer Protection principles, what is the agency best suited to regulate that, that entire ecosystem in a coherent way. I certainly think that would be good policy making going forward. Speaking of change in markets, at t, one of your rivals, is trying to do a d