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THE RACE TO 5G: A VIEW FROM THE FIELD 

FIELD HEARING 

BEFORE THE

COMMITTEE ON COMMERCE, 

SCIENCE, AND TRANSPORTATION 

UNITED STATES SENATE 

ONE HUNDRED FIFTEENTH CONGRESS 

SECOND SESSION 

OCTOBER 12, 2018 

Printed for the use of the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation 

( 

Available online: http://www.govinfo.gov 

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SENATE COMMITTEE ON COMMERCE, SCIENCE, AND TRANSPORTATION 

ONE HUNDRED FIFTEENTH CONGRESS 

SECOND SESSION 

JOHN THUNE, South Dakota, Chairman 

ROGER WICKER, Mississippi 

ROY BLUNT, Missouri 

TED CRUZ, Texas 

DEB FISCHER, Nebraska 

JERRY MORAN, Kansas 

DAN SULLIVAN, Alaska 

DEAN HELLER, Nevada 

JAMES INHOFE, Oklahoma 

MIKE LEE, Utah 

RON JOHNSON, Wisconsin 

SHELLEY MOORE CAPITO, West Virginia 

CORY GARDNER, Colorado 

TODD YOUNG, Indiana 

BILL NELSON, Florida, Ranking 

MARIA CANTWELL, Washington 

AMY KLOBUCHAR, Minnesota 

RICHARD BLUMENTHAL, Connecticut 

BRIAN SCHATZ, Hawaii 

EDWARD MARKEY, Massachusetts 

TOM UDALL, New Mexico 

GARY PETERS, Michigan 

TAMMY BALDWIN, Wisconsin 

TAMMY DUCKWORTH, Illinois 

MAGGIE HASSAN, New Hampshire 

CATHERINE CORTEZ MASTO, Nevada 

JON TESTER, Montana 

NICK ROSSI, Staff Director 

ADRIAN ARNAKIS, Deputy Staff Director 

JASON VAN BEEK, General Counsel 

KIM LIPSKY, Democratic Staff Director 

CHRIS DAY, Democratic Deputy Staff Director 

RENAE BLACK, Senior Counsel 

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C O N T E N T S 

Page 

Hearing held on October 12, 2018 .......................................................................... 1 

Statement of Senator Thune ................................................................................... 1 

WITNESSES

Hon. Brendan Carr, Commissioner, Federal Communications Commission ...... 3 

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 5 

Hon. Paul TenHaken, Mayor, City of Sioux Falls ................................................. 7 

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 9 

Dr. Jose ́-Marie Griffiths, President, Dakota State University ............................. 10 

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 13 

Robert Fisher, Senior Vice President, Federal Government Affairs, Verizon .... 26 

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 28 

Justin Forde, Senior Director, Government Relations, Midcontinent Communications ................................................................................................................ 31 

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 32 

Mark Shlanta, Chief Executive Officer, SDN Communications .......................... 37 

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 39 

APPENDIX

Letter dated September 27, 2018 to Hon. John Thune and Hon. Brian Schatz 

from Shirley Bloomfield, Chief Executive Officer, NTCA—The Rural 

Broadband Association ........................................................................................ 57 

Letter letter dated October 3, 2018 to Hon. John Thune and Hon. Brian 

Schatz in support of S. 3157 ............................................................................... 58 

Letter dated October 15, 2018 to Hon. John Thune and Hon. Bill Nelson 

from Tom Cochran, CEO and Executive Director, The United States Conference of Mayors ................................................................................................. 61 

Letter dated July 27, 2018 to Hon. John Thune and Hon. Bill Nelson from 

Scott D. Pattison, Executive Director and Chief Executive Officer, National 

Governors Association; William T. Pound, Executive Diector, National Conference of State Legislatures; Matthew D. Chase, Executive Director, National Association of Counties; Clarence E. Anthony, CEO/Executive Director, National League of Cities; Tom Cochran, CEO and Executive Director, 

The United States Conference of Mayors; and Christopher P. Morrill, Executive Director/CEO, Government Finance Officers Association ....................... 62 

Letter dated October 2, 2017 to Ajit Pai, Chairman; Mignon Clyburn, Commissioner; Michael O’Rielly, Commissioner; Brendan Carr, Commissioner; 

and Jessica Rosenworcel, Commissioner, Federal Communications Commission from Tom Cochran, CEO and Executive Director, The U.S. Conference 

of Mayors; Matthew Chase, Executive Director, National Association of 

Counties; Steve Taylor, Executive Director, National Association of Telecommunications Officers and Advisors; and Clarence Anthony, Executive 

Director, National League of Cities .................................................................... 64 

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THE RACE TO 5G: A VIEW FROM THE FIELD 

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 12, 2018 

U.S. SENATE, COMMITTEE ON COMMERCE, SCIENCE, AND TRANSPORTATION, Sioux Falls, SD. 

The Committee met, pursuant to notice, at 3:08 p.m. CDT, at 

Carnegie Town Hall, 235 W. 10th Street, Sioux Falls, South Dakota, Hon. John Thune, Chairman of the Committee, presiding. 

Present: Senator Thune [presiding]. 

OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. JOHN THUNE, 

U.S. SENATOR FROM SOUTH DAKOTA 

The CHAIRMAN. Let me just say good afternoon and welcome to 

everybody and thank you for coming. Today, I’ve convened this 

hearing of the Senate Commerce Committee to explore ways to 

maintain global leadership in the race to 5G, while ensuring the 

benefits of remarkable new wireless technologies reach rural America. 

Over the past two years, I have convened several hearings in 

Washington, D.C., aimed at identifying barriers to the deployment 

of next-generation services and what we can do in Congress to help 

lower them. I am pleased that today we will be able to discuss 

these very important issues right here in South Dakota. 

I’ve heard from stakeholders throughout the country who represent American businesses that are on the ground building and 

maintaining our communications networks, deploying infrastructure, and bringing to market cutting edge technologies like autonomous vehicles, precision agriculture, and remote health care services that will transform our everyday lives. 

We have also heard from the community and tribal leaders, 

small businesses, hospitals, schools, and everyday Americans that 

will benefit from this important technology. 

The race to 5G has begun, and the United States has the technology to win it. But as I’ve said before, technology is only part of 

the equation. We must ensure that wireless providers have spectrum on which their systems can operate, and they must be able 

to deploy those networks in a reasonable and timely manner. The 

MOBILE NOW Act, which is a bill I authored last year, and it was 

enacted earlier this year, addressed both spectrum and infrastructure needs, but more work needs to be done. 

In July, the Committee examined ways to free up more spectrum 

for 5G. I am pleased to see both the Federal Communications Commission and the National Telecommunications and Information Administration are taking critical steps this year to make more specVerDate Nov 24 2008 08:01 Jan 07, 2025 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00005 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 S:\GPO\DOCS\57908.TXT JACKIE
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trum available for wireless use. And our Committee will continue 

to encourage innovative approaches to using spectrum more efficiently 

Indeed, spectrum is critical to winning the race to 5G, but removing barriers to infrastructure deployment is the final piece of the 

puzzle. Earlier this year, I introduced a bill called the STREAMLINE Small Cell Deployment Act on a bipartisan basis with Senator Schatz. The STREAMLINE Act reflects more than a year of 

hard work with stakeholders, including many here today, to eliminate needless barriers to deploying 5G and to bring the benefits to 

American consumers. In fact, just last week we received a letter of 

support for the STREAMLINE Act signed by 25 groups representing a range of stakeholders from health care to agriculture, 

the automotive and manufacturing industries, Internet companies, 

consumer technologies, and more. 

I am confident that our legislation will allow Americans across 

the country, no matter where they live, the ability to reap the benefits of 5G leadership while at the same time respecting the important role that State and local governments play in deployment decisions. 

Additionally, I am very pleased that the FCC, as part of an effort 

led by Commissioner Carr, has just taken an important step to 

modernize its siting rules consistent with the goals of the 

STREAMLINE Act. 

As Mayor TenHaken knows, making infrastructure siting easier 

is particularly important for those of us in rural America, where 

the business case for deployment is different than in larger metropolitan areas. Lowering deployment costs is especially important in 

more rural communities, where we simply don’t have the population density to justify deployment if those barriers are high. Excessive fees, delays, and uncertainty can ruin the case for deployment of 5G for a community. I’m proud that our home state of 

South Dakota is leading the way in 5G. 

Dr. Griffiths together with Dakota State University are training 

the young men and women who will design and protect our 5G networks and the services that they will offer. 

Mayor TenHaken and Commissioner Carr are leading the way 

with their work to establish rules and policies that encourage 5G 

deployment. 

And Justin Forde, from Midco; Mark Shlanta, from SDN Communications; and Robert Fisher, from Verizon; are working to deploy the 5G networks and related infrastructure that will bring 

South Dakota the next generation of wireless communications. 

I want to thank all of you for being here today. I look forward 

to hearing from you, as well as an opportunity to enter into discussion as we get a chance to fully drill down on some of these issues 

and what we can do to bring 5G more quickly and more effectively 

here to South Dakota. 

So I’m going to start on my left with Commissioner Carr, 

Brendan Carr, who, by the way, this is his second trip to South Dakota, and every time he comes out here, he goes and does things 

to enjoy the state. Today, he climbed a 2,000-foot tower, I’m told, 

so maybe he’ll tell us about that. But I appreciate the interest that 

he has taken in the challenges of delivering these types of services 

3 

to rural areas of the country and his attempts to understand the 

unique needs and challenges that we have. 

So we’ll start with him and then move to the Mayor of Sioux 

Falls, the Honorable Paul TenHaken; Dr. Jose ́-Marie Griffiths, who 

is President of Dakota State University; Robert Fisher, who is Senior Vice President of Federal Government Relations for Verizon; 

and, as I said, Mr. Justin Forde, who is Senior Director of Government Relations at Midcontinent Communications; and then Mr. 

Mark Shlanta, who is Chief Executive Officer for SDN Communications. 

It’s great to have all of you here today. Thank you for being here. 

And we’ll start with Commissioner Carr. Please proceed. We look 

forward to hearing from you. 

STATEMENT OF HON. BRENDAN CARR, COMMISSIONER, 

FEDERAL COMMUNICATIONS COMMISSION 

Commissioner CARR. Thank you, Chairman Thune, for the invitation to testify. It’s great to be back with you in South Dakota for 

this field hearing on 5G and to join this distinguished group of witnesses. I can think of no better way to identify the barriers that 

slow down deployment and the steps we can take back in Washington to remove them, than spending time like this outside of D.C. 

On my way here, I spent time in Minnesota, North Dakota, and 

South Dakota. I heard firsthand the challenges that broadband 

providers face in building next-gen networks in rural America. And 

I saw the grit and determination the telecom crews demonstrate in 

getting the job done. Whether it was Justin on top of an already 

snow-covered grain elevator in Thompson, North Dakota, that’s 

now beaming broadband in a community of 1,000; or with Steve 

while he attached a new radio on a water tower in Shorewood, 

Minnesota, that’s adding capacity to the network; or this morning 

with Amos and Mike on a 2,000-foot tower in Rowena, South Dakota; these visits underscore the work we need to do to make these 

jobs easier. 

This week I also heard from the Great Plains innovators, job creators, and health care providers, that simply would not be operating in these communities without a broadband connection. 

So this field hearing is important. It puts our shared goal for 5G 

front and center. We want every community in the country to see 

the economic opportunity that 5G can enable. Spectrum and infrastructure are key. 

So I want to commend the Committee for leading on them. 

Chairman Thune championed the MOBILE NOW Act, which frees 

up the spectrum needed for next-gen services. 

And I want to acknowledge both Chairman Thune and Senator 

Schatz for their work on the bipartisan STREAMLINE Small Cell 

Deployment Act, which would cut red tape that’s been slowing 

down small cell deployments. 

And at the FCC, we’re building on the Committee’s efforts. In the 

U.S., as you know, we’re on the cusp of a major upgrade in wireless 

to 5G. The Wall Street Journal has called it transformative from 

an economic and technological perspective, and they’re right. Winning the global race to 5G, seeing this new platform deployed in 

the U.S. first, is about our economic leadership for the next decade. 

4 

Those are the stakes. And here is how we know it. Think back 

10 years ago when we were on the verge of upgrading from 3G to 

4G. Think about the largest stocks, the biggest drivers of our economy. It was big banks and big oil. Now it’s U.S.-based technology 

companies that have transformed our economy and our lives. Think 

about your own life. A decade ago, taking a road trip, like I’ve done 

this week, meant walking into your local AAA office, telling them 

the stops along your way and waiting for them to print out a 

TripTik booklet filled with maps that you’d unfold as you drove 

down the highway. Now an app lets you get real-time directions 

right on your phone. 

American companies led the way in developing these 4G innovations. It is not by chance that the U.S. is the world’s tech and innovation hub. We have the strongest wireless economy in the world 

because we won the race to 4G. And being first to 5G will matter 

even more. As Deloitte put it, ‘‘First-adopter countries . . . could 

sustain more than a decade of competitive advantage.’’ 

And, after all, we’re not the only country that wants to be first 

to 5G. One of our biggest competitors is China. They view 5G as 

a chance to flip the script. They want to lead the tech sector for 

the next decade, and they’re moving aggressively to deploy the infrastructure needed for 5G. Since 2015, China has deployed 

350,000 cell sites. We’ve built fewer than 30,000. China is deploying 460 cell sites a day. That’s 12 times our pace. 

So we have to be honest about this infrastructure challenge. And 

from Congress, to the White House, to the FCC, to State and local 

leaders, we have a plan, and we’re executing on it. For our part, 

the FCC is working to get the government out of the way so the 

private sector can construct the hundreds of thousands of new 

small cells needed for 5G. 

In March, we excluded small cells from the costly review procedures designed for 100-foot towers. That decision cut $1.5 billion in 

red tape, and one provider is now clearing small cells for construction at six times the pace as before. So we’re making progress. 

When I think about success, when I think about winning the race 

to 5G, the finish line isn’t the moment we see next-gen deployments in New York or San Francisco; success can only be measured 

when all Americans have a fair shot at next-gen connectivity. 

So just two weeks ago, the FCC took another step in the right 

direction. We built on the bipartisan ideas championed by Senators 

Thune and Schatz, as well as dozens of State and local leaders. We 

streamlined the local permitting process. That decision cut another 

$2 billion in red tape, will stimulate $2.4 billion in new small cell 

deployments, 97 percent of which will be in rural and suburban 

communities, and we can accelerate that progress with the commonsense ideas contained in the STREAMLINE Small Cell Deployment Act. Doing so would represent another solid win for the U.S. 

in the race to 5G. 

So, Chairman Thune, thank you again for holding this hearing. 

I look forward to hearing from the other witnesses, and welcome 

your questions. 

[The prepared statement of Commissioner Carr follows:] 

5 

PREPARED STATEMENT OF BRENDAN CARR, COMMISSIONER, FEDERAL COMMUNICATIONS COMMISSION

Chairman Thune, thank you for the invitation to testify. It is great to be back 

with you in South Dakota. I want to commend you and the Committee for holding 

this field hearing on 5G. Spending time like this outside of D.C.—hearing directly 

from community leaders and broadband providers alike—is critical. I can think of 

no better way to identify both the regulatory barriers that needlessly slow down 

broadband deployment and the steps we can take back in Washington to remove 

them. And this field hearing helps put our shared goal for 5G front and center: We 

want every community in the country, from New York to Yankton, to see the economic opportunity that broadband enables. 

As this hearing makes clear, spectrum and infrastructure are key for 5G. So I 

want to start by commending the Committee for leading on these two issues. Chairman Thune championed the MOBILE NOW Act, which frees up the spectrum necessary for next-generation wireless service. And on the infrastructure side, I want 

to acknowledge both Chairman Thune and Senator Schatz for their work on the bipartisan STREAMLINE Small Cell Deployment Act. This bill would update our Nation’s infrastructure policies by cutting the red tape that threatens the deployment 

of 5G networks. At the FCC, we are building on your efforts, and we recognize that 

the time to act is now. 

In the U.S., we are on the cusp of a major upgrade in wireless to 5G. The WALL

STREET JOURNAL has called it transformative from a technological and economic perspective. And they’re right. Winning the global race to 5G—seeing this new platform 

deployed in the U.S. first—is about economic leadership for the next decade. Those 

are the stakes, and here’s how we know it. 

Think back ten years ago when we were on the verge of upgrading from 3G to 

4G. Think about the largest stocks and some of the biggest drivers of our economy. 

It was big banks and big oil. Fast forward to today: U.S.-based technology companies, from FAANG (Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix, and Google) down to the latest startup, have transformed our economy and our lives. 

Think about your own life. A decade ago, catching a ride across town involved 

calling a phone number, waiting 20 minutes for a cab to arrive, and paying rates 

that were inaccessible to many people. Today, we have Lyft, Uber, Via, and other 

options. 

A decade ago, sending money meant going to a brick-and-mortar bank, standing 

in that rope line, getting frustrated when that pen leashed to the table was out of 

ink (again!), and ultimately conducting your transaction with a teller. Now, with 

Square, Venmo, and other apps you can send money or deposit checks from anywhere, 24 hours a day. 

A decade ago, taking a road trip across the country meant walking into your local 

AAA office, telling them the stops along your way, and waiting for them to print 

out a TripTik booklet filled with maps that you would unfold as you drove down 

the highway. Now, with Google Maps and other apps you get real-time updates and 

directions right on your smartphone (Otherwise, there’s little doubt that I’d still be 

lost in Yankton instead of speaking to you today). 

American companies led the way in developing these 4G innovations. And it’s not 

by chance or luck that the United States is the world’s tech and innovation hub. 

We have the strongest wireless economy in the world because we won the race to 

4G. No country had faster 4G deployment and more intense investment than we did. 

Winning the race to 4G added $100 billion to our GDP. It led to $125 billion in revenue for U.S. companies that could have gone abroad. It grew wireless jobs in the 

U.S. by 84 percent. And our world-leading 4G networks now support today’s $950 

billion app economy. 

That history should remind policymakers at all levels of government exactly what 

is at stake. 5G is about our leadership for the next decade. 

And being first matters. It determines whether capital will flow here, whether 

innovators will start their new businesses here, and whether the economy that benefits is the one here. Or as Deloitte put it: ‘‘First-adopter countries. . .could sustain 

more than a decade of competitive advantage.’’ 

After all, we’re not the only country that wants to be first to 5G. One of our biggest competitors is China. They view 5G as a chance to flip the script. They want 

to lead the tech sector for the next decade. And they are moving aggressively to deploy the infrastructure needed for 5G. 

Since 2015, China has deployed 350,000 cell sites. We’ve built fewer than 30,000. 

China is deploying 460 cell sites a day. That is twelve times our pace. China now 

has 1.9 million cell sites. We have around two to three hundred thousand. Put differently, China has more than 13 times the number of cell sites per mile as the U.S. 

6 

We have to be honest about this infrastructure challenge and show the courage 

to act. 

From Congress, to the FCC, to the White House, we take this challenge seriously. 

The U.S. has a plan, and we’re executing on it. For our part, the FCC is working 

to get the government out of the way, so that the private sector can construct the 

hundreds of thousands of new cell sites needed for 5G in this country. 

In March, we updated Federal historic and environmental reviews to reflect new, 

5G technology. While the old rules were written for 200-foot towers with large footprints, the majority of wireless infrastructure being built today is made up of small 

cells, often the size of a backpack. Requiring every new small cell to go through the 

lengthy and costly review designed for 200-foot towers was like requiring a commercial pilot’s license to fly a paper airplane. The outdated reviews were not providing 

any real benefit to Americans. And they had real costs—in both dollar figures and 

in the race to 5G. 

For evidence of the problem, look no further than last year’s Super Bowl, which 

was played at NRG stadium in Houston. The construction of the stadium itself, including the parking lot, did not involve any Federal historic review. But when a 

wireless provider tried to build 23 small cells on the stadium and on poles in the 

parking lot so that fans could send pictures and videos from the Big Game, our old 

approach required historic preservation review for those backpack-sized antennas. 

In the end, one wireless provider paid nearly $180,000 in historic review fees to attach small equipment onto the massive concrete stadium and parking lot. 

Unfortunately, that was not an isolated incident. Twelve thousand dollars for reviewing a small cell outside a steel factory in East Chicago, Indiana. Another twelve 

thousand dollars for reviewing a small cell placed between a sidewalk and a highway in Ohio. A million dollars for reviewing small cell nodes in Atlanta. The fees 

were pointless, increasing, and draining the limited capital needed to deploy 

broadband and 5G in communities across the country. 

So the FCC stepped in to fix that broken Federal review process. Given their 

much smaller size and footprint compared to large towers, we held that small cells 

should not go through the costly and lengthy reviews designed for 200-foot towers. 

And we’re already seeing results. That decision cut $1.5 billion in red tape, and one 

provider reports that it is now clearing small cells for construction at six times the 

pace as before. 

So we’re making progress. But hurdles remain. We’ve heard from dozens of mayors, local officials, and state lawmakers—including officials right here in South Dakota—who get what 5G means. They understand the economic opportunity that 

comes with next-gen networks. But they worry that the billions in investment needed to deploy these networks will be consumed by the high fees and long delays imposed by big, ‘‘must-serve’’ cities. They worry that, without Federal action, they may 

not see 5G. I’d like to read from a few of the many comments I’ve received over the 

last few months. 

Duane Ankney is a retired coal miner from Montana, a Member of the Montana 

State Legislature, and chair of its Energy and Telecommunications Committee. He 

writes: ‘‘Where I see the problem is, that most of investment capital is spent in the 

larger urban areas. This is primarily due to the high regulatory cost and the cost 

recovery [that] can be made in those areas. This leaves the rural areas out.’’ 

Mary Whisenand, an Iowa commissioner, writes: ‘‘With 99 counties in Iowa, we 

understand the need to streamline the network buildout process so it’s not just the 

big cities that get 5G but also our small towns. If companies are tied up with delays 

and high fees, it’s going to take that much longer for each and every Iowan to see 

the next generation of connectivity.’’ 

Ashton Hayward, the Mayor of Pensacola, Florida, writes: ‘‘[E]xcessive and arbitrary fees . . . result[ ] in nothing more than telecom providers being required to 

spend limited investment dollars on fees as opposed to spending those limited resources on the type of high-speed infrastructure that is so important in our community.’’ 

And the entire board of commissioners from a more rural area in Michigan writes: 

‘‘Smaller communities such as those located in St. Clair County would benefit by 

having the [FCC] reduce the costly and unnecessary fees that some larger communities place on small cells as a condition of deployment. These fees, wholly disproportionate to any cost, put communities like ours at an unfair disadvantage. By 

making small cell deployment less expensive, the FCC will send a clear message 

that all communities, regardless of size, should share in the benefits of this crucial 

new technology.’’ 

They’re right. When I think about success—when I think about winning the race 

to 5G—the finish line is not the moment we see next-gen deployments in New York 

7 

or San Francisco. Success can only be achieved when all Americans, no matter 

where they live, have a fair shot at next-gen connectivity. 

So just two weeks ago, we built on the many smart infrastructure policies championed by state and local leaders. We ensured that every city is compensated for 

its costs in reviewing and approving small cell deployments, while putting guardrails in place to address excessive fees. We updated the shot clocks that have long 

applied to local reviews to account for the lower impact of new small cell deployments. And we ensured that local governments can take reasonable aesthetic considerations into account when reviewing deployments. After all, it is these local 

leaders—not FCC commissioners—that will get pulled aside at their grocery store 

or post office if a provider puts up an ugly small cell. 

This was a balanced approach that will help speed the deployment of 5G. It will 

cut $2 billion in red tape. To put that in perspective, that’s about $8,000 in savings 

per small cell—on top of the $10,000 in savings from our March decision on Federal 

historic reviews. Cutting these costs changes the prospects for communities that 

might otherwise get left behind. It will stimulate $2.4 billion in new small cell deployments. And, importantly, that new investment is enough to cover 1.8 million 

more homes and businesses with 5G—97 percent of which are in rural and suburban communities. That means more broadband for more Americans. 

So I am pleased with the progress we’re making. But there is more work ahead. 

The commonsense ideas contained in the STREAMLINE Small Cell Deployment Act 

would solidify the progress we’ve made while further simplifying the process governing the construction of next-gen networks. It would represent another solid win 

for the U.S. in the race to 5G. 

Chairman Thune, thank you again for holding this hearing and for the invitation 

to testify. I welcome your questions. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you, Commissioner Carr. Again thank you 

for the time you’ve invested in understanding South Dakota, what 

our needs are, and for everything you’re doing on the FCC. I 

couldn’t applaud more the steps that you and your fellow Commissioners have taken in this to prepare and get us ready to win that 

race. 

Mayor TenHaken, who is a tech entrepreneur as well, so understands these things really well and is working aggressively I know 

here in the City of Sioux Falls to do everything possible to help 

speed up and enable us to take full advantage of some of these 

technologies. So thank you for the leadership that you’re taking, 

and I look forward to hearing from you. 

STATEMENT OF HON. PAUL TENHAKEN, MAYOR, 

CITY OF SIOUX FALLS 

Mr. TENHAKEN. Thank you. 

Chairman Thune, thank you for holding this hearing today in 

what you already know as the greatest city in the world, Sioux 

Falls, South Dakota. 

I appreciate the opportunity to address you today on the importance of Internet connectivity in Sioux Falls and how fifth generation of Internet connectivity is incredibly important to South Dakota and to the Upper Midwest. 

Sioux Falls is a growing city in the heart of America. Continued 

investment in connectivity like 5G helps ensure that South Dakota 

remains a technological player in the national and international 

market. 

With the dawn of the digital age and Internet, we’ve seen a new 

wave of business fueled by entrepreneurs, like myself. In 2008, I 

founded the marketing technology firm Click Rain here in Sioux 

Falls. Thanks to the explosive growth of the Internet and digital 

commerce, our company quickly found our way onto the Inc 5000 

8 

list 5 years in a row as one of America’s fasting growing private 

companies, and soon became one of the largest marketing technology firms in the Upper Midwest. My background in this space 

gives me a heightened level of interest and expertise on the subject, 

of which I am quite passionate about. 

Today, nearly every sector of Sioux Falls’ economy counts on a 

fast and reliable Internet connection. Organizations like Avera 

Health are operating one of the most robust eCARE backends in 

the country, right here in Sioux Falls. CarsForSale.com is a dotcom success story that has created hundreds of jobs here in Sioux 

Falls. DocuTAP, just up the street, provides hundreds of tech careers delivering EMR software to urgent care clinics all over the 

world. The common thread of success amongst all these companies: 

fast, reliable connectivity. 

As the United States strives to be one of the first nations with 

a fully functional 5G network, the city of Sioux Falls strives to be 

the first mid-market city with a 5G infrastructure. Right now, 

wireless carriers are negotiating small cell tower location review 

fees and easement fees with local governments to install 5G infrastructure, and that’s happening right here in Sioux Falls. 

As Mayor, it’s not my intent to profit off carriers to deploy 5G 

infrastructure. We seek fair and reasonable compensation for city 

staff time to review applications from carriers. And, in turn, we 

offer a reasonable time-frame to approve or deny these applications, or work with the carrier on an alternative site. Last, we 

want easement fees that cover the inflationary costs we incur with 

carriers locating their technology on our city assets. It’s a very 

basic ask: make the city whole on our costs to review and house 

the infrastructure that carriers need to deliver this connectivity. 

It is critical that Federal regulations protect local governments 

and allow them to set reasonable fees that cover costs. Giving carriers authority to set fees that are unfair to local governments is, 

in essence, an unfunded Federal mandate that will cost local governments tens of millions of dollars when you consider the thousands and thousands of small cells that will be deployed across the 

Nation in the coming years. 

5G plays a pivotal role in the future of economic development, 

workforce development, and innovation in this city. For autonomous vehicles to be safe and viable, we need 5G. For enhanced 

public safety with high-definition feeds for police officer cameras, 

we need 5G. The opportunities 5G brings to our community are 

endless, and I look forward to working with this Committee, the 

FCC, and the carriers to successfully and expeditiously deploy 5G 

in Sioux Falls. 

So in closing, I want to thank Chairman Thune for your leadership in this area. Your vision for streamlining 5G deployment 

across the U.S. that is fair to communities, consumers, and carriers 

is a step in the right direction. 

I am excited to foster and support 5G in Sioux Falls as we seek 

to grow our technological footprint in this city and remove unnecessary barriers for entry for this critical infrastructure. We’re ready 

to help you lead this effort. 

Thank you. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. TenHaken follows:] 

9 

PREPARED STATEMENT OF PAUL TENHAKEN, MAYOR, CITY OF SIOUX FALLS, SOUTH DAKOTA

Chairman Thune, thank you for holding this and hearing, and welcome to the 

great City of Sioux Falls, South Dakota. I appreciate the opportunity to address you 

today on the importance of Internet connectivity in Sioux Falls and how the fifth 

generation of Internet connectivity is incredibly important to South Dakota and the 

Upper Midwest. 

Sioux Falls was incorporated in 1876, around the same time in history when communication in the United States was transformed by the telegraph system, and the 

same year Alexander Graham Bell sent the first human voice over an electric telegraph wire. Fast forward to today, Sioux Falls is a growing city in the heart of 

America. Our geographic distance from larger cities is immaterial for access information and communication. Today, the city and its citizens are data-driven, we are 

information creators and consumers, and we are mobile in a global economy. South 

Dakotans can work remotely for any global company, talk with clients around the 

world and read news from Washington, D.C., and other capitols throughout the 

world. Continued investment in connectivity, like 5G, helps ensure that South Dakota is a member of the national and international market. 

With the dawn of the digital age and the internet, once again, communication and 

information channels were revolutionized for rural America, and birthed new businesses and fueled entrepreneurs, like myself. In 2008, I founded the marketing technology firm, Click Rain, in Sioux Falls. Thanks to the explosive growth of the Internet and digital commerce, our company quickly become our way onto the Inc 5000 

list for five straight years as one of America’s Fastest Growing Private Companies 

and one of the largest marketing technology firms in the Upper Midwest. 

Today, nearly every sector of Sioux Falls’ economy relies on a fast and reliable 

Internet connection. As an essential part of personal and professional life, our mobile devices and the infrastructure supporting the connection of these devices is an 

economic and quality of life driver for Sioux Falls, South Dakota and the entire region. Organizations like Avera Health are operating one of the most robust eCARE 

backends in the country, right here in Sioux Falls. CarsForSale.com is a dot-com 

success story that has created hundreds of jobs in Sioux Falls. DocuTAP provides 

EMR software to urgent care clinics across the globe. The common thread of success 

amongst all these companies: fast, reliable connectivity. 

In particular, the future of telemedicine from providers like Avera will be revolutionized as the prevalence of 5G grows. Avera’s eCARE launched in 1993 focused 

on telemedicine care, and today it provides a wide continuum of care including 

emergency, ICU, pharmacy, senior care and behaviorial health. This team has 

touched 1.4 million patients across 18 states and has saved $200 million in health 

care dollars over the past 25 years. 5G will no doubt increase the capability of patients to receive care from wherever they have access to a computer, tablet or phone. 

Imagine the ability of a doctor in Sioux Falls to consult with a doctor and patient 

in Pierre while sharing a 3D CAT scan that is several gigabytes in size and at a 

4K resolution. Traditional connections today would prohibit that type of communication on a routine or on demand basis and require that same patient to travel to 

Sioux Falls to see the Sioux Falls Specialist and the 4k 3D image. 5G technology 

would allow this interaction to occur in milliseconds. This technology could also provide telemedicine for simple and complex medical needs from a patient’s home or 

in an ambulance while being transported to the nearest hospital. The potential is 

great and the benefits are tremendous. 

The deployment of 5G is of great importance to the continued evolution of connecting rural America to the rest of the world. As the United States strives to be 

the first nation with a fully functional 5G network, the City of Sioux Falls strives 

to be the first mid-market city with 5G infrastructure. 

Right now, wireless carriers are negotiating small-cell tower location review fees 

and easement fees with local governments to install 5G infrastructure, cities with 

outdated ordinances are faced with updating regulations that allow small cell towers. 

As mayor, it is not my intent to profit off carriers to deploy 5G infrastructure. 

We seek fair and reasonable compensation for city staff time to review applications 

from carriers. In kind, we offer a reasonable time frame to approve or deny applications, or work with the carrier on an alternative site. Lastly, we want easement fees 

that covers the inflationary costs we incur with carriers locating their technology 

on city assets. It’s a very basic ask—make the city whole on our costs to review and 

house the infrastructure you need to earn your profits. 

Recent guidance from the Federal Communications Commission and the proposed 

legislation before this Committee seeks to standardize negotiations for cities and 

10 

carriers, and in many cases is aligned with my philosophy of rapid deployment in 

Sioux Falls. It is critical that Federal regulations protect local governments and 

allow them to set reasonable fees that cover costs. Giving carriers authority to set 

fees that are unfair to local governments is in essence an unfunded Federal mandate that will cost local governments tens of millions of dollars when you consider 

the thousands of small cells that will be deployed across the Nation in the coming 

years. 

Cutting-edge technology, innovation, forward thinking and proactive planning are 

crucial to preparing Sioux Falls and the region for quality of life improvements driven by technology advancements, and 5G plays a pivotal role in the equation. For 

autonomous vehicles to be viable, we need 5G. For enhanced public safety with 

high-definition feeds for police officer body cameras and surveillance equipment, we 

need 5G. The opportunities 5G brings to our community are endless, and I look forward to working with this Committee, the FCC and carriers to successfully and expeditiously deploy 5G in Sioux Falls. 

In closing, I want to thank Chairman Thune’s leadership in his area. His vision 

for streamlined 5G deployment across the United States that is fair to communities, 

consumers and carriers is a step in the right direction. The Chairman understands 

the importance of connecting rural states with the rest of the world as well as the 

economic opportunities 5G offers to states like South Dakota. I am excited to foster 

and support 5G in Sioux Falls as we seek to grow our technological footprint and 

remove unnecessary barriers to entry for this critical infrastructure. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you, Mayor. Again thank you for everything you’re doing, and the bold vision that you’ve articulated for 

Sioux Falls. I hope it can be replicated all across our state and 

across our country. It’s moving the ball in the right direction, and 

the sky is the limit in terms of what we can do, but it takes the 

right kind of leadership. So thank you. 

Dr. Jose ́-Marie Griffiths, is the, as I said, President of Dakota 

State University. I think everybody is well aware of the terrific 

work that she and Dakota State University are doing in 

cybersecurity, and the young, bright, talented people that they are 

producing that are leading the way on a lot of these technological 

fronts. So thank you for being here, and I look forward to hearing 

from you. 

STATEMENT OF DR. JOSE ́ -MARIE GRIFFITHS, PRESIDENT, 

DAKOTA STATE UNIVERSITY 

Dr. GRIFFITHS. Thank you, Chairman Thune, for the opportunity 

to testify today on this important topic of next-generation communications infrastructure, services, and applications. I’m especially 

pleased that you chose to hold this hearing in Sioux Falls, South 

Dakota, not only because it brings you home, Senator, but because 

I strongly believe that South Dakota represents the 68 percent of 

country’s ‘‘tweener’’ population that live between the East Coast 

and the West Coast. 

I’m passionate about ensuring that more than two-thirds of the 

country are not bypassed by the next technological revolution along 

with its need to connect not just the last mile, but what one of my 

colleagues calls the ‘‘last inch.’’ 

I believe the best way to address the three issues that you asked 

of us is to start with a coordinated effort to develop widespread understanding and knowledge of what 5G and the cyber universe, 

what I call the Cyberverse, are and why they’re so important to the 

economic health, security, and quality of life for the United States 

in both the near—and far-term future. 

As impressive as today’s Internet is, it’s clear that our present 

telecommunications and cyber environment have major problems 

11 

with limited bandwidth, unacceptably long latency, slow speeds, 

and inadequate reliability, inappropriate dependencies on users for 

security and maintenance, and interoperability chaos. 

At the same time as we’re hitting a brick wall with our existing 

technology and networking approach, users are increasingly demanding far more than simply access to information. The complex 

problems of our 21st century world require a more complex and 

fluid ecosystem of participants, machine and human. People don’t 

want to just access or give information, they want to interact with 

it, to be immersed in the process of its creation as much as its use, 

analysis, extension and dissemination. And they don’t just need to 

interact with it by themselves, they need to collaborate with multiple others in a 3-dimensional environment where they can tap 

into people-to-people, machine-to-machine, and people-to-machine 

interactions, more like an ocean than a highway. 

I believe to make the greatest progress most rapidly, we should 

create a public-private partnership to build and deploy a real-world 

5G and Cyberverse testbed. Two years ago, Dakota State University developed the idea of South Dakota 5G, we call it SD5G, as 

one, if not the first, 5G ready straight. We believe that our state 

has the characteristics and resources that make it the ideal place 

for such a project. We’re eager to move forward to create for the 

Nation a model of how to address the various challenges of this 

transformative approach to the delivery and use of technology. 

South Dakota is a geographic area in the United States that contains a cross-section of the types of population clusters and organizations, geography, climate, industries, and existing technologies to 

explore, troubleshoot, and establish best practice models for the 

technology, as well as for the policies and governance required to 

support 5G deployment and development across the country. 

Those who think of South Dakota as home to vast farms on the 

plains, buffalo and cattle ranches stretched across the buttes, and 

the lifestyle of ‘‘Little House on the Prairie’’ and Native American 

heritage should be aware that these days the state is also home to 

impressively sophisticated technology development and cyber innovation. Silicon Valley or Boston’s metropolis are rapidly being 

matched by a technology revolution in the center of the United 

States. DSU cybersecurity and Raven’s Loon system are matched 

by multiple enterprises across South Dakota working at the vanguard of precision agriculture, cutting-edge and distance-delivery 

health care, and robotic manufacturing, among others. To develop 

and deploy these new technologies in a manner consistent with the 

country’s democratic values and concerns, we must engage 

cybersecurity professionals in every aspect of this testbed. 

With great power comes great responsibility, and that’s never 

been more true than with the development and deployment of 5G 

and migration into the Cyberverse. 5G is what will make it possible for us to move into the Internet of Everything; however, every 

time we connect a new device to the network, we also potentially 

open up a new set of vulnerabilities. The U.S. is sorely lacking 

right now in standards and best practices for security to build into 

Internet of Everything devices or the software that can easily be 

installed as part of the basic features of any device. 

12 

The U.S. is presently seriously underresourced in cybersecurity 

professionals, and the vast majority of cybersecurity professionals 

that we do have are overextended, working to mitigate and remediate existing Internet attacks, which multiple faster than the proverbial rabbits. However, it’s critical that the U.S. ensure that a 

network upon which every activity in this country is dependent is 

developed in such a way that vulnerabilities are reduced as much 

as possible and that the U.S.’s 5G and Cyberverse cybersecurity expertise proceeds in step with the development of our national 5G 

networking capability. And this is one area that’s of such common 

concern and serves every individual and enterprise in the country 

that it would be appropriate and maybe necessary for the Federal 

Government to help provide the upfront investment in the recruitment, education, and deployment of cybersecurity professionals in 

5G development. 

5G and the resulting Cyberverse are a common good whose availability and operability will be critical to every endeavor across the 

United States. As such, it’s important that the Federal Government 

provide leadership and corral support for those efforts that will 

move development and deployment of this vital national resource. 

It’s also the case that we’ll only have one chance to do this first. 

According to a study released by Deloitte Consulting, the United 

States is losing the race against China to develop and deploy a nationwide 5G network. And there’s more at stake here than just 

prestige. The National Security Agency has stated that if China 

dominates the telecommunications network industry, it will win politically, economically, and militarily. 

In addition to the concerns of national security, there’s no question that the first country to effectively deploy 5G will also reap 

enormous macroeconomic gains. The first to deploy 5G in the 

Cyberverse in a real-world setting will also be the country to understand the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats related to the new technology. 

The United States was the first country to develop and implement the comprehensive Internet, initially building on the foundation and integrating multiple federally developed networks. The results have been clear and impressive. Despite all of the concerns 

about cybersecurity issues and technology dependencies, there is no 

question that the United States’ lead in developing and deploying 

the Internet has had profound economic and societal impacts. 

There is a need once again for the Federal Government to step forward and take the lead in investment and organizational support 

for the development and deployment of 5G and the Cyberverse. 

In summary, we need a coordinated effort to develop widespread 

understanding of the benefits and implications of 5G capabilities 

accompanied by the creation of a public-private partnership to 

build and deploy real-world 5G Cyberverse testbed, preferably 

across South Dakota—of course, I’m biased now—and engage cyber 

professionals in all aspects of testbed development and deployment. 

Thank you for your attention. 

[The prepared statement of Dr. Griffiths follows:] 

13 

PREPARED STATEMENT OF DR. JOSE ́-MARIE GRIFFITHS, PRESIDENT, DAKOTA STATE UNIVERSITY

5G NETWORKING—FROM THE INTERNET TO THE CYBER UNIVERSE—THE CYBERVERSE

FROM THE INFORMATION SUPERHIGHWAY TO AN OCEAN OF COLLABORATIONS

A SHIFT FROM DRIVING DATA LOCATION TO LOCATION TO LIVING, WORKING, AND PLAY- ING IN AN ENVIRONMENT OF TECHNOLOGY-INFUSED INTERACTIONS AND COLLABORA- TIONS

INTRODUCTION 

This hearing is asking those of us testifying to address three topics: 

1) Existing barriers to broadband deployment on the horizon of next generation 

wireless technology deployment, 

2) ways to encourage investment in next generation communications services, and 

3) ways to streamline broadband deployment siting. 

I believe the best way to address all three of these issues is as follows: 

1) Invest the resources necessary to build widespread understanding and knowledge of what 5G and the Cyber Universe are and why they are so important 

to the economy, security, and quality of life for the United States in both the 

near and far future; 

2) Engage cyber security professionals in every aspect, from the ground up, of the 

creation of a 5G and Cyber Universe testbed such that the model U.S. 5G environment is not only effective and efficient, it is also safe and ensures the privacy and democratic values to which we in the U.S. are committed; and 

3) Rapidly create a publicly/privately-funded partnership to build and deploy a 

real-world 5G and Cyberverse testbed across a geographic area in the U.S. that 

contains a cross-section of U.S. population clusters and organizations, geography, climate, industries, and existing technologies, to explore, troubleshoot, 

and establish best-practice models for the technology as well as the policies 

and governance required to support 5G development and deployment across 

the country. 

I. BUILDING KNOWLEDGE AND UNDERSTANDING OF 5G AND THE NEW 

CYBER UNIVERSE—What are 5G and the Cyberverse and why should 

anyone care? 

In order to build widespread understanding and knowledge of what 5G is and why 

it is so important to the economy, security, and quality of life for the United States 

and its citizens in both the near and far future, we must first be clear about what 

is 5G and what is the new Cyber Universe—the Cyberverse—it will enable. 

We have become accustomed to our technology becoming, ever rapidly, faster and 

more capable. We understand that most of our computers or smart phones or networks have a half-life shorter than most pro football coaches (their average is about 

3 years). It’s hard to be excited or very energized by—or put a lot of investment 

into—some new technology that we anticipate will lose its ‘‘wow’’ factor predictably 

and soon. The ‘‘yawn factor’’ runs deep these days in the general public’s—and even 

much of leadership’s—reaction to calls from techies to embrace yet another supposed 

new breakthrough technology with some new strange name, like ‘‘5G and the 

‘‘Cyberverse.’’ 

5G is NOT just another iteration of what has come before. In reality, calling 5G 

the fifth generation, just as 1G was first generation, 2G was second generation, etc. 

is a misnomer. 5G is a totally new and radical approach, not just to telecommunications and networking, but to how we live, work, and play in the cyber universe. 

A) THERE IS TROUBLE ON THE INFORMATION SUPERHIGHWAY 

As amazing as the Internet is, there is trouble on the Information Superhighway. We are facing multiple problems in our present cyber environment, including availability/capacity, reliability, speed, responsiveness, interoperability, 

security, energy efficiency, expandability, and the flexibility to support the complex problem-solving processes that the complex problems of the 21st century 

require. 

i) Travel on the Internet is not optional—network connectivity and technology access are essential community goods 

Today, the technology an organization uses—and how effectively it uses it—is 

just as essential to its success as its reason for existence—the service or product 

it generates. There is really no significant activity in this country that does not 

14 

1https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/solutions/collateral/service-provider/visual-networkingindex-vni/vni-hyperconnectivity-wp.html 

depend heavily, and often for its very existence, on technology, telecommunications, and computer networking. From finance to agriculture to manufacturing to healthcare to government to entertainment, the cogs of our modern 

society move by the power of cyber. 

All this cyber use means that the traffic on the Information Superhighway is 

increasing at a rate that is difficult to grasp. According to a study by Cisco, 

Internet traffic is on target to increase by 25 percent every year between 2016 

and 2021. We are also on trend that by 2021 the number of devices connected 

to IP networks will be more than three times the global population, at the 

equivalent/per capita of 3.5 networked devices for every man, woman, and child 

on the planet. Between 2016 and 2021 we will have added 10 billion devices 

online, from 17.1 billion in 2016 to 27.1 billion in 2021. It would take more than 

5 million years for one person to watch the amount of video that will cross global IP networks each month in 2021.1

ii) Traffic jams are increasingly common—capacity constraints are creating 

availability, reliability, speed, and responsiveness problems 

All this traffic is causing global-sized traffic jams. The bottom line is that we 

don’t have enough lanes on the Information Superhighway to accommodate everyone and everything that wants to use it. And we don’t have enough available 

real estate on the present routes, i.e., the presently used radio spectrum bands, 

to add more lanes, technically called bandwidth. The result is the cyber world 

matches L.A. traffic at rush hour in the physical world. And without the required capacity on the Highway, availability, reliability, speed, and responsiveness fall off exponentially. 

Practically, at the busiest times of the day cyber users may find that they are 

totally unable to even get on the Internet—there are simply no lanes available 

for them, there is no more bandwidth available for their transmissions. We have 

all had the experience of watching the spinning ball on our monitors with increasing frustration as we try to get on the virtual Highway. If the traffic jam 

and lack of bandwidth is really bad, the system may just give up trying. An 

error message will pop up on our screens saying that the connection ‘‘timed out’’ 

and we have to click our mouse or enter a command to try afresh to connect. 

Once we do connect, depending on how our connection is routed, if we hit a 

place where the traffic overwhelms the available lanes, the available bandwidth, 

we may be knocked off the virtual highway altogether and, from our virtual 

‘ditch,’ have to try yet again to get back on the highway into a lane. 

All this congestion means that we cannot rely on how long any transmission 

will take. Latency, the delay between an action taken on my computer and 

being received at another device, is critical in more and more applications. In 

the early days of the Internet, trying to ‘crystal ball’ the future, developers attempted to guess at what might be possible if we had this ubiquitous resource 

to move information around. At the outer edges of that imagining, people suggested things like remote surgery with a physician able to operate robots in an 

operating room in a rural area, providing life-saving care to patients who do not 

have access to that specialized surgeon’s skill and expertise. They envisioned 

collaborations involving real-time meetings with hundreds of thousands of people interacting with each other using the same application on their various devices, all at one time, for example following a natural disaster or in a military 

operation. The reality is that we do now have the technology to do these tasks 

and many more. However, the increasingly crowded bandwidth of the Internet 

and the resulting traffic jams not only impact availability and reliability, speed 

and responsiveness have also deteriorated. The movement of the surgeon’s hand 

tying off a bleeding blood vessel must be transmitted in milliseconds to the 

robot device actually carrying out the action inside the patient’s body. Network 

latency cannot be an issue. 

And the amount of information to be transmitted is more and more extensive 

and detailed, which also is going to require more lanes of the highway. A less 

dramatic but economically significant example is with supply chain management. U.S. manufacturers are dependent on supplies coming from around the 

world on a predictable schedule. Being able to prepare for a shortage, for example, of the raw materials to make a car’s dashboard, can save or cost an automaker thousands of dollars, enabling them to shut down or repurpose a factory 

line. It’s not enough for the ship carrying those materials to have a system with 

15 

sensors that lets the captain know that a part has broken down inside the engine. Now it is possible and economically necessary for that engine to have sensors that can predict that a part is close to breaking down, which sends a message to a system that figures out when it will fail entirely, which then sends 

back a message to shut down the engine to save damage to other parts while 

sending an alert to the repairman as to what needs to be fixed and, simultaneously, notifying a supplier thousands of miles away and multiple steps down 

the supply chain that the car dashboard factory line is not going to have the 

parts on time. This scenario is entirely possible, but the present telecommunications system does not have the bandwidth to accommodate this and the other 

millions of scenarios in multiple industries. 

iii) Too many people have keys—and they’re all different—maintenance, 

security, and interoperability in the present technology environment are dependent on millions of (non-techie) people being technologically savvy and responsible 

We are also now struggling with a high level of technology knowledge required 

of even the most casual user. It’s one thing when you only have very smart 

technology people using the network and sharing information. It is another 

thing when you have millions of people doing that, an enormous number of 

whom have no interest or ability to, for example, keep their passwords private 

and change them often, or upgrade software on their multiple devices every 

time another security vulnerability is identified or a company has decided to upgrade or expand the features available in their applications. In addition, the responsibility for getting all of our various devices connected to the Information 

Superhighway falls on each of us individually. And often the way to do so is 

different for each device—smartphone, computer, tablet, gaming console, etc. 

In addition, I think most of us without thinking about it, have all taken on an 

enormous time-drain of overhead in obtain, maintain, and use our ever-increasing number of devices—a smartphone, a tablet, a laptop computer, a desktop 

computer, now rapidly being joined by a TV, various kitchen appliances and/or 

a smart speaker like Alexa. There is at present a serious contrast between, for 

example, electricity and technology networking. 

Electricity is generally pretty invisible. Except when it goes out, most of us, I 

don’t believe, spend much time thinking or dealing with electricity. We push a 

light switch—in our kitchen, in our office, in the restroom at the restaurant— 

the electricity connects and the light goes on. 

This is not the case with our ‘‘smart’’ phones. In order for my phone to work 

in my kitchen, I have a cable coming into my house connected to a cable 

modem, which I have to set up with a user name and a password. If the network goes down or becomes disconnected, I will have to reset and re-enter the 

cable modem user name and password. 

The cable modem talks to a Wi-Fi router sitting on a bookshelf in my living 

room, which also has a network name and password. When the cat knocks that 

device over and it becomes unplugged, I will also have to plug it back in and 

re-enter that network name and password. When I brought my cell phone home 

for the first time (or when I get a new one) I have to go into settings on that 

phone, have it find my home network (out of an amusing list of network names 

of my neighbors’ Wi-Fi networks), and use the correct user id and password to 

get it connected to my Wi-Fi and, ultimately, to the Internet, where I likely also 

have to use various different user ids and passwords to get into various sites 

to access any information I might have online, like my bank account, or be able 

to purchase something from an online store. 

Going to check my balance in my bank account first thing in the morning, I 

discover that the before-school teen crowd in my neighborhood has taken over 

the network bandwidth to check in with their friends as to what they’re going 

to wear that day. It takes so long for my typed-in request to get to the bank 

website that they consider I’ve been on my account so long that it’s a security 

risk and they have logged me out. Network latency has hit again. And I haven’t 

even left the house yet. . . 

Heading out for work, I lose my home Wi-Fi connection by the time I’m in the 

garage, where I have to wait for my phone to (hopefully) connect to my cell network (which also initially required a user id and password) and then via 

bluetooth to my car’s audio system. On the way to work, depending on the coverage of my provider’s network, my phone may or may not stay connected during the conversations I’m trying to have while enroute. When I arrive at work 

and go up to my office, my phone once again has to switch to the office Wi-Fi 

16 

(which at some point—and perhaps now and again must be repeated—requires 

yet another user id and password). I get to the office and login in to my computer (yes, another user id and password) and an alert comes up telling me that 

someone has discovered yet another security vulnerability in my operating system and I must install an update immediately. Installing that update requires 

my going to a website (where I have to login with—yes—another user name and 

password), download the software and install it, which takes three attempts because everyone else just got to the office and they are also trying to download 

the software and so I keep getting logged off the software download site. Once 

logged on, I send to a coworker a copy of a file that I worked on last night on 

my home computer. He sends me an e-mail back saying he can’t read it, because 

I have a different version of the software on my computer than he has on his. 

The present networking and computing configuration has put the maintenance, 

interoperability and most concerning, security of our cyber endeavors in the 

hands of millions of individuals with minimal knowledge, understanding, and 

unknown values. 

iv) People no longer want to ride only in their own vehicles—21st century problems require fluid multiple interactions for people and technology 

At the same time as we’re hitting a brick wall with our existing technology and 

networking approach, users are increasingly demanding far more than just access to information. The complex problems of our 21st century world require a 

more complex and fluid ecosystem of participants, machine and human. People 

don’t want to just access or give information, they want to interact with it, to 

be immersed in the process of its creation as much as its dissemination and extension. And they don’t just need to interact with it by themselves, they need 

to collaborate with multiple others in a three-dimensional environment where 

they can tap into people to people, machine to machine, and people to machine 

interactions—more like an ocean than a highway. 

In addition, the machines are becoming smarter and smarter. The last 10 to 20 

years have seen phenomenal growth in artificial intelligence and machine learning functionality. Computers are now able to take millions of pieces of data, 

identify predictive patterns and knowledge, and then use those results to inform 

and direct further processing and analysis. This is allowing humans to leapfrog 

over literally years of research to ask new questions in new ways, leading to 

the creation of new tasks for AI and machine learning machines to work on. 

However, AI and machine learning require almost instantaneous access to enormous amounts of data and need to transmit enormous amounts of data. Today’s 

crowded Internet cannot accommodate the speed or density of communication 

that are required for these new functions to work effectively. 

B) 5G AND THE CYBER UNIVERSE—the Internet is fixable 

As impressive as today’s Internet is, it is clear that our present telecommunications and cyber environment has major problems in 

• limited bandwidth; 

• unacceptably long latency, slow speeds, and inadequate reliability; 

• inappropriate dependencies on users for security and maintenance, 

• interoperability chaos, and 

• inability to accommodate the multidisciplinary, multi-agent processes required 

of people to people, people to machine, and machine to machine interactions for 

21st century endeavors. 

i) How 5G will move us from the Information Superhighway to the Cyber 

Universe 

Bandwidth, latency, speed reliability 

5G deals with bandwidth and latency in a new way, resulting in orders of magnitude improvements in cyber speed and reliability. 

The radio spectrum is broken up into bands, each with different features as you 

move up into higher frequencies. Our existing telecommunications systems work on 

certain bands of frequencies. 5G will run on a new ‘‘high-spectrum band’’, which 

uses higher frequency signals than previous generations of telecommunications. The 

new band will be much less congested than at present because there are many more 

frequencies available in higher ranges. These high frequencies are great for a number of reasons, one of the most important being that they support a huge capacity 

for fast data. Not only are they less cluttered with existing cellular data, and so can 

be used in the future for increasing bandwidth demands, they’re also highly direcVerDate Nov 24 2008 08:01 Jan 07, 2025 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00020 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6621 S:\GPO\DOCS\57908.TXT JACKIE
17 

tional and can be used right next to other wireless signals without causing interference or crossover. 

This is very different from 4G towers that fire data in all directions, potentially 

wasting both energy and power to beam radio waves at locations that aren’t even 

requesting access to the Internet. 5G also uses shorter wavelengths, which means 

that antennas can be much smaller than existing antennas while still providing precise directional control. Since one base station can utilize even more directional antennas, it means that 5G will support over 1,000 more devices per meter than 

what’s supported by 4G. Traffic jams, and the resulting crashes and slowdowns that 

contribute to today’s lack of connection reliability will be a thing of the past once 

5G is deployed. Given that the Internet of Things is going to move us into an almost 

unimaginable number of devices on the network, we need that capacity and speed 

yesterday. 

With 5G, for example, when a user makes a request from their phone, the network will respond about 10 times faster than the blink of an eye. (That is, network 

response times will be approximately 1 millisecond.) Importantly, this is below the 

human threshold to even detect a delay! To the physician’s hands sending signals 

to the remote robot, it will seem to the doctor that he and the robot are moving 

the scalpel at exactly the same time. 

Security, maintenance, interoperability 

One of the goals of 5G is to make our networking connections as invisible and 

requiring as little of our attention as electricity does now. 5G is designed to have 

everything connected to everything else, and to have all that connectivity taken care 

of and managed not by each individual user but by systems and processes in the 

Cloud. 

For example, with 5G, the network follows a user through ‘‘cells’’—geographic 

areas of connectivity. That cell of connectivity will no longer depend on a certain 

type of connection, for example Wi-Fi or cable. The network will seamlessly connect 

together all of the various cells provided by various technologies. Whether 

connectivity is being provided by a cellular network or a cable modem or a ‘‘small 

cell’’ device on the telephone pole outside their window will be of no concern to the 

user and will require no action on their part. In this heterogeneous but cohesive network, cells will assess the needs of each user’s device and route it to the most efficient services regardless of where location. There will continue to be larger cells, 

with broad coverage, but other areas, for example, a college campus, will be covered 

by small cell technology hung on lamp posts or the roofs of building, and, in new 

buildings, possibly even inside the bricks in the wall. But none of these different 

connections will require every individual user to enter a user id and password as 

their connection is moved from cell to cell. 

For example, algorithms in the network will determine how fast a moving device 

is travelling and what it’s networking needs might be because of that. An autonomous vehicle might be connected to a large or macro-cell, such as a large cellular 

tower, so that it stays connected without having to be shifted from cell to cell as 

it travels over a long distance. However, students walking across campus, texting 

on their smart phones can connect to smaller cells with less coverage, as the connections can easily be transferred to the next small cell as needed, so quickly that the 

student won’t even notice. 

Everything will be connected to everything all the time, just like electricity. Once 

the connection is there it stays connected. And if it goes down, when it comes back 

up, once again everything will be connected to everything else without any intervention on the part of users. 

An example of the difference in this approach can already be seen in our K–12 

schools, many of which have moved from tablets or laptops for their students to 

Chromebooks. What is the difference? For schools, which often need to have many 

hundreds of devices to serve their students, teachers, and staff, a huge difference 

is in tech support. A tablet or laptop has an operating system (OS) on it, as well 

as applications. When there is an update to either the OS or any of the apps, that 

update has to be installed on each device. While school networks often do have programs that will update multiple machines at the same time, some IT support person 

still has to ensure that all the devices are charged or plugged in and on the network 

and not being used at the time to run that program and that no one happened to 

take their machine home the night tech person is installing the upgrade. And that 

some user didn’t go rogue and install some out-of-the-ordinary app on their machine 

that collides with the new OS or software upgrade. 

Chromebooks update themselves automatically both for OS upgrades and application upgrades. There are no applications on Chromebooks—they connect to the 

Internet and use applications in the cloud. If an application needs updating, it is 

18 

updated in the Cloud and the next time the students go to that app, they are automatically connected into the new version. 

One of the features of 5G is to move to the Chromebook model rather than the 

tablet or laptop computer model. It is a shift away from our devices—hardware and 

what is included and runs on a particular device—to having all the technology we 

need to use running in the Cloud. The device we use to connect to the Cloud becomes almost unimportant. Incompatible files caused buy only having access to a 

certain old version of a software application would be a thing of the past. How many 

times have we gone to show someone something on our phone and say ‘‘oh, I can’t 

get that on my phone—I’ll have to show it to you on my computer.’’ It used to be 

that children would say ‘‘my dog ate my homework.’’ Today it is ‘‘my computer 

crashed and I couldn’t print it out’’ or ‘‘my brother spilled orange juice on my laptop 

and fried my file.’’ New excuses will be required with 5G—that homework will live 

in the cloud and be available from anywhere on any device. 

With zero perceived delay in access, even for those large files, 5G will change the 

economics of technology expense within an organization. The faster, low latency, reliable connections will make it more sensible to move expensive cyber storage and 

processing into the Cloud, which will require much simpler, less expensive, lowermaintenance devices in the hands of users. 

In addition, by moving the bulk of processing and storage into the Cloud, the energy demands of user devices will drop as well. It will be possible for smartphones, 

for example, to have batteries that last weeks or even months, given that the only 

processing required on that device is to make a connection to the network and then 

the Cloud. Medical implants will be able to function for decades without having to 

be removed or upgraded, since only maintaining a connection to the network will 

require very little battery use. 

ii) An immersive efficient cyber universe of interactions 

When bandwidth, reliability, latency, security, maintenance and interoperability 

are no longer constraints, it will be possible to migrate to a fluid immersive cyber 

universe of the people to people, people to machine, and machine to machine interactions required for 21st century endeavors. 

Analysts predict that by 2020, each person in a developed country will own and 

use about 27 connected devices. These will range from existing technology, such as 

smartphones, tablets and smartwatches, to refrigerators, cars, augmented reality 

glasses, and even smart clothes. Some of these devices will require significant data 

to be shifted back and forth, while others might just need tiny packets of information sent and received. The 5G system itself will understand and recognize this and 

allocate bandwidth respectively, thereby not putting unnecessary strain on individual connection points. 

II. CYBER SECURITY MUST BE BUILT IN FROM THE GROUND UP—and 

why it is important the U.S. get to 5G first 

A) Cyber Security Professionals 

We must engage cyber security professionals in every aspect of the development 

of the U.S.’s 5G system. such that this country’s 5G environment is not only effective and efficient, it is also safe and ensures the privacy and democratic values to 

which we in the U.S. are committed. 

With great power comes great responsibility, and that has never been more true 

than with the development and deployment of 5G and migration into the 

Cyberverse. 5G is what will make it possible for us to move into the Internet of Everything (IoE). However, every time we connect a new device to the network we also 

potentially open up a new set of vulnerabilities. Presently companies are racing to 

make their devices, from crock pots to lawn mowers, IoE-ready. In the absence of 

instructions and requirements, cyber security tends to be the last consideration of 

most of these manufacturers. The U.S. is sorely lacking right now in standards and 

best practices for security to be built into IoT devices, or the software that can easily 

be installed as part of the basic features of any device. 

The U.S. is presently seriously under-resourced in cyber security professionals. 

The vast majority of the cyber security professionals we do have are over-extended 

trying working to mitigate and remediate existing Internet attacks, which multiply 

faster than the proverbial rabbits. However, it is critical that the U.S. ensure that 

a network upon which every activity in this country is dependent is developed in 

such a way that vulnerabilities are reduced as much as possible, and that the U.S.’s 

5G and Cyberverse cyber security expertise proceeds in step with the development 

of our national 5G networking capability. This is one area that is of such common 

concern and serves every individual and enterprise in the country that it would be 

appropriate and likely necessary for the Federal Government to provide the upfront 

19 

investment in the recruitment, education, and deployment of cyber security professionals in 5G development. 

B) Why we must get to 5G first—and why we are falling behind China 

According to a study released by Deloitte Consulting, a top industry consulting 

firm, this past August 2018, the United States is losing the race against China to 

develop and deploy a nationwide 5G network. For a long time, the U.S. led in telecommunications and networking. As FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel has 

said, the U.S. has 5 percent of the world’s population but we have over 50 percent 

of the world’s 4G deployment. The smart phone revolution and the application economy started in the U.S. and we have reaped the rewards of that leadership position. 

Other countries have decided they are not going to let that happen with 5G. 

There is more at stake here than just prestige. The National Security Agency has 

stated that if China dominates the telecommunications network industry it ‘‘will win 

politically, economically, and militarily.’’ Michael O’Reilly, one of the U.S. FCC commissioners has stated that he believes if the U.S. loses the race to 5G it will mean 

that the Nation will be dictated to by foreign powers, many of which can’t be fully 

trusted, don’t believe in capitalism, don’t believe in freedom, don’t believe in fair 

play, don’t believe in the role of the individual over the government, and rebuke 

American leadership.’’ Deloitte’s report also states that since 2015 China has outspent the U.S. by $24 

billion in 5G infrastructure. China has built 350,000 new cell sites, while the U.S. 

has built fewer than 30,000 in the same time-frame. The U.S. mobile carriers’ industry association, CTIA, estimates that the number of cell sites in the U.S. must more 

than double from about 325,000 to 800,000 for 5G to be deployed. Deloitte’s report 

noted that China plans hundreds of billions of dollars in 5G-related spend and suggests that ‘‘China and other countries may be creating a 5G tsunami, making it near 

impossible [for the U.S.] to catch up.’’ 

In addition to the concerns of national security, there is no question that the first 

country to effectively deploy 5G and the Cyber Universe will also reap enormous 

macroeconomic gains. Given the increased capabilities of 5G and the Cyberverse, 

companies that develop and are designed to take advantage of those capabilities will 

quickly become global leaders. There is also something called the ‘‘data-network effect,’’ in which early leadership in new markets translates into more users who generate more data that, in turn, helps improve services and attracts more users. The 

first to deploy 5G and the Cyberverse in a real-world setting will also be the country 

to understand the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats related to the 

new technology. 

III. WE NEED A PUBLIC/PRIVATE PARTNERSHIP TO BUILD AND 

DEPLOY A REAL-WORLD 5G AND CYBERVERSE 

A) What we need 

The United States needs to rapidly create a publicly/privately-funded partnership 

to build and deploy a real-world 5G and Cyberverse testbed across a geographic area 

in the U.S. that contains a diverse cross-section of population clusters and organizations, geography, climate, industries, and existing technologies. This entity will 

make it possible to explore, troubleshoot, and establish best-practice models and 

tools for 5G and the new Cyberverse, as well as the policies and governance required to support similar development and deployment across the United States. 

5G and the new Cyberverse is clearly critical to the economic, safety, and quality 

of life future for this country. But there is a lot we still don’t know and won’t know 

until we actually fully deploy and use a 5G network and a Cyberverse. And we need 

to do it quickly. 

A big issue in the U.S. is finding a workable model for municipalities, states, and 

the nation, along with private industry, to work together to integrate the multiple 

networking components and resources it is going to take to achieve 5G. In an authoritarian country such as China, those are nonissues, and so they are moving very 

rapidly through that process. We can be successful in this work in the United 

States, still maintaining our respect for the rule of law and regional rights, but we 

need a model to do so. To develop that model, we need to develop and deploy a test 

5G network in an area that has multiple types of communities. A model that will 

work in a large city will likely not work the same way in a rural area or a small 

town. More than 85 percent of cities in the U.S. are small, under 10,000 people. If 

we are going to reach ubiquitous 5G, we have to develop a model that works in more 

than just urban areas along the two coasts. However, at present the telecom companies are concentrating only on those two areas, seeing them as the ‘‘low hanging 

fruit’’ where they can make the most money quickly. Only 15 percent of the U.S. 

population lives on the west coast, and only 17 percent in the northeast, which 

20 

means that 68 percent of the country does not live in the areas where U.S. telecoms 

are working to develop 5G. It is going to take Federal leadership and investment 

to ensure that more than two-thirds of the country are not bypassed by the next 

technological revolution. 

B) SD5G and the SD CYBERVERSE 

South Dakota is now working to become the first state in the Nation to develop 

and deploy a state-wide 5G network and Cyberverse. We believe that our state has 

the characteristics and resources that make it the ideal place for such a project. We 

are eager to move forward to create for the Nation a model of how to address the 

various challenges of this transformative approach to the delivery and use of technology. 

An American model for 5G and Cyberverse development and deployment must develop best practices that integrate the needs and particular characteristics of multiple: 

1. Cyber security demands, software to hardware, end user through the Cloud 

2. Technologies—small cell, large cell, fiber, etc. 

3. Enterprises—education, government, agriculture, manufacturing, health care, 

transportation, etc. 

4. Population clusters and types—from urban to rural, with special focus on making sure the ‘‘last mile’’ and the ‘‘last inch’’ are as connected as the first and 

reviving ‘‘main street’’ through migration to ‘smart cities’ 

5. Governmental organizational structures and concerns—city, county, state 

6. Geographies and climates 

1) Cyber security demands, software to hardware, end user through the Cloud 

South Dakota is home to Dakota State University (DSU) in Madison, South Dakota. DSU is part of a state-wide regental system of six public universities. The 

DSU started in 1881 as a teachers’ college to serve the growing educational needs 

of the Dakota Territories and over time grew into a comprehensive university. In 

1986, a remarkably prescient South Dakota state legislature re-missioned DSU to 

add to these roles an augmented and specific focus on technology-infused and technology-intensive degree programs and R&D. 

Today DSU is one of the leading cyber security universities in the country, with 

four Center of Academic Excellence designations by the U.S. National Security 

Agency and Department of Homeland Security, in cyber education, operations, and 

research. The Beacom College of Computer and Cyber Sciences has a breadth and 

depth of cyber degrees, associates through doctoral, unmatched by any university 

in the country, its graduates at 100 percent placement, either in a professional position or a top graduate school. DSU also has the largest cohort in the country of the 

National Science Foundation’s CyberCorps Scholarship for Service program, where 

in exchange for scholarship support after graduation individuals serve in a state, 

federal, or tribal organization for the same number of years they received the scholarship. Dakota State is also home to the Madison Cyber Labs. The MadLabs is a 

prolific collection of public/private partnerships in research, scholarship, economic 

development, and policy development clusters organized around expertise and technology application in specific enterprises. DSU has experts exploring and working 

with leading edge technologies in a wide range of disciplines, from health care to 

adaptive technology for individuals with disabilities, from digital forensics to cyber 

security for the financial sector, and more. There are presently 14 clusters, and a 

new facility, funded by a private/public partnership, will open in 2019 to provide 

centralized and collaborative space for the MadLabs. Because DSU is part of the 

state-wide comprehensive regental university system, it is integrated into a rich fabric of disciplinary experts and exploration at the other five universities with their 

various emphases, from agriculture to law, from the medical school to mining. 

South Dakota is thus developing and will be deploying our 5G and Cyberverse solutions with the professionals and resources of DSU’s robust cyber security environment interwoven into every decision and solution. We continue to see the enormous 

cost to public and private safety and security when cyber security issues are ignored 

or left out of technology solutions. One only needs to consider the recent issues facing Facebook over the last few years to understand that we must never again consider cyber security a lower level ‘‘add on’’ to our technology innovations and solutions. 

2) Technologies—small cell, large cell, fiber, etc. 

South Dakota has been remarkably energized and diversified in pursuing and taking advantage of networking and cyber innovations and technologies. One of the reaVerDate Nov 24 2008 08:01 Jan 07, 2025 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00024 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6621 S:\GPO\DOCS\57908.TXT JACKIE
21 

sons for this is that with a smaller population, the state can be remarkably agile 

in making decisions and implementing change. 

In addition, the state has a wide cross-section of needs in its population that are 

representative of the wide cross-section of needs across the country. South Dakota 

has urban (e.g., Sioux Falls) and rural populations, and a large collection of typical 

‘‘small town U.S.A.’’ communities. The state continues to have strong concerns and 

is constantly looking for quality-of-life improvements for its Native American population, which for the most part continues to face poverty, physical and mental health 

illness, and a lack of socio-economic opportunities. Because of the wide geographical 

distribution of population, many physical solutions to issues in education, 

healthcare, transportation, business, development, etc. turn out to be cost-prohibitive and impractical. Early on, as the State legislature’s 1986 commissioning of DSU 

illustrates, South Dakotans recognized that computing and cyber had more potential 

to provide solutions to its challenges than the models developed and implemented 

in more geographically dense areas of the country. South Dakota is by no means 

alone in this respect. As mentioned before, 85 percent of U.S. towns have populations under 10,000 people, and 68 percent of the country’s population does not live 

in the primarily urban or population-intense northeast or west coast. 

Thus South Dakota has already taken initiatives to create the foundation of multiple networking technologies that will require integration to deploy 5G and the 

Cyberverse. The state already has a number of areas that have deployed small cells, 

and a number are under development. Sioux Falls and Brookings, two of the state’s 

larger cities already have some small cells deployed. Dakota State University is 

working in collaboration with the City of Madison to deploy a city-wide small cell 

system in the next year. The state is connected to the Internet2 high-speed fiber 

background through the REED Network. 

One of the most innovative new networking technologies has emerged from 

Google’s Project Loon, an effort to find a new way to provide Internet access to rural 

and remote areas. The company that emerged from the R&D project uses high-altitude balloons placed in the stratosphere at an altitude of about 18 km (11 mi) to 

create an aerial wireless network. The balloons use patch antennas—which are directional antennas—to transmit signals to ground stations or LTE users. Some 

smartphones with Google SIM cards can use Google Internet services. The equivalent of the ‘‘base station’’ that talks directly to devices is carried in the balloon (adding new meaning to the idea of technology in the ‘‘cloud’’). Users of the service connect to the balloon network using a special Internet antenna attached to their building. The signal travels through the balloon network from balloon to balloon, then 

to a ground-based station connected to an Internet service provider (ISP), then onto 

the global Internet. The system aims to bring Internet access to remote and rural 

areas poorly served by existing provisions, and to improve communication during 

natural disasters to affected regions. It was named Project Loon for 2 reasons: one 

was that even Google itself found the idea of providing Internet access to the remaining 5 billion unconnected people in the world an unprecedented and ‘‘loony’’ 

idea, and ‘loon was a short-hand for the ‘‘balloons.’’ 

It turns out that South Dakota is a significant partner in the Loon technology, 

through the company that makes the highly sophisticated balloons, Raven Industries, Inc. Established in 1956 to make high-altitude balloons, Raven was launched 

by a group of General Mills employees, including General Mills High Altitude Research division employee Ed Yost. Yost picked Sioux Falls for its favorable wind conditions and over the years the company has focused in on its precision agriculture, 

engineered films, and Aerostar divisions. The U.S. military and other government 

agencies are among its clients. The balloons are superpressure balloons filled with 

helium and stand 49 feet across and 39 feet tall when fully inflated. They carry a 

custom air pump system that pumps in or releases air to ballast the balloon and 

control its elevation. A small box weighing about 22 lb containing each balloon’s 

electronic equipment hangs underneath the inflated envelope. This box contains circuit boards that control the system, radio antennas and a system to communicate 

with other balloons and with Internet antennas on the ground, and batteries to 

store solar power so the balloons can operate during the night. Each balloon’s electronics are powered by an array of solar panels that sit between the envelope and 

the hardware. In full sun, the panels produce 100 watts of power, which is sufficient 

to keep the unit running while also charging a battery for use at night. A parachute 

attached to the top of the envelope allows for a controlled descent and landing when 

a balloon is ready to be taken out of service. In the case of an unexpected failure, 

the parachute deploys automatically. When taken out of service, the balloon is guided to an easily reached location, and the helium is vented into the atmosphere. The 

ground stations use a Ubiquiti Networks ’Rocket M5’radio and a custom patch antennae to connect to the balloons at a height of 12 miles. The balloons are equipped 

22 

with automatic dependent surveillance broadcast and so can be publicly tracked 

along with other hot air and weather balloons. 

Those who think of South Dakota as home to vast farms on the Plains, buffalo 

and cattle ranches stretched across the buttes, the lifestyle of Little House on the 

Prairie, and Native American heritage should be aware that these days the state 

is also home to impressively sophisticated technology development and cyber innovation. Silicon Valley or Boston’s metropolis are rapidly being matched by a technology revolution in the center of the United States. DSU’s cyber security and 

Raven’s Loon system are matched by multiple enterprises across South Dakota 

working at the vanguard of precision agriculture, robotic manufacturing, and distance-delivery health care, among others. 

This multifaceted foundation of expertise and deployed technologies is making it 

possible for South Dakota to move rapidly in the development and deployment of 

SD5G and the SD Cyberverse. The only constraints at present are garnering the investment needed to move as rapidly as we are able to. We understand the national 

security and economic impacts of the United States achieving working and workable 

5G and Cyberverse models before those countries whose development of these technologies will likely not be in our best interest or to our profit. South Dakotans long 

learned how to overcome obstacles and turn dry ground into fertile fields, and our 

efforts in cyber are determined to be comparably fruitful. 

3) Enterprises—education, agriculture, manufacturing, health care, etc. 

South Dakota, especially over the last century, has developed a remarkably diverse business and industry environment. In every area, often due to the particular 

challenges of rural areas and difficult geographies, technology development and use 

is key to the state’s economic development and health. 

a) Education 

5G and the Cyberverse will be especially transformative in terms of education. 

The South Dakota university system launched some of the very first online 

courses, and, for example, DSU’s Internet-based degree programs reach students across the country and around the world. 

Technological advances have already moved many rich digital resources far beyond the physical confines of the classroom and into the hands of learners. 5G 

and the Cyberverse will enable a learning model that will be an international, 

immediate, virtual, and interactive environment. It will make it possible for 

teachers and students to learn and interact in much different ways that we do 

today. The new model will be learner-centric, skill-centric, on-demand and 

personalised, which will in turn improve student development in the areas of 

critical-thinking and collaborative learning. 

5G and the Cyberverse will create a network capable of transferring our tactile 

communication from one location to another, from one device to another. This 

will make it possible to move beyond today’s online teaching focus of content 

and information delivery to the ability to train students in hands-on skills, what 

some are calling manual handskill delivery. 

Virtual reality (VR) has initially been developed primarily by the entertainment 

industry, but with 5G networking in the Cyberverse VR has tremendous potential and relevance for education and training. For example, with a VR application, students could not just learn about the seven wonders of the world, they 

could visit them and explore on their own, at their own pace and direction the 

sights and sounds that make those locations especially remarkable. They could 

stop and examine those things of greater interest to them, and immediately access additional information or locations that would further enhance their understanding and experience. Instead of just studying about the various systems of 

the human body, VR applications can be developed to allow them to virtually 

enter a body and follow the bloodflow through the heart and lungs, or perch 

themselves inside an ear to watch what happens to the ear drum when sound 

waves hit it. 

Combining tactile and VR communication, it will be possible for students to develop hands-on skills by using simulations of highly sensitive expensive equipment without potentially damaging the real equipment. And medical students 

can perfect the precise hand motions and pressure required to carry out surgical 

procedures with applications that even can provide them virtual but realistic 

feedback on the damage they can do if they do not perform correctly. Students 

in elementary schools may see the tops of their desks turned into touch-sensitive screens, able to assess their progress as they complete assignments and 

providing them corrections and directions to increase their success. 

23 

One of the populations that has been profoundly impacted by 21st century technology developments are individuals with disabilities. At present, with the 

model of assistive technology that is device-dependent, where applications have 

to be within the hardware accessed by the user, many assistive and adaptive 

technologies are far too costly to be available in schools. However, with 5G and 

the Cyberverse, where the applications will live in the Cloud and users will access them via a device in their hands or on their wheelchair, expensive speech 

and language technologies, for example, will be made far more widely available 

for those children who are unable to speak without such assistance. The impact 

on the ability of those children to participate in a regular educational setting 

with their peers will expand exponentially. 

Cloud-based robots can be considered as a full-time assistants for students with 

disabilities, helping them to interact with the standard classroom environment 

and their peers. Rather than having to call a teacher over for help (which can 

cost both the student and the teacher time they could be using more productively) the students can take care of the issue with the help of their robot. 

At the college level, we look forward to many applications that can improve today’s teaching, learning, and campus experience. Being automatically logged 

into the classroom as soon as entering the classroom, being alerted by a tactile 

signal as soon as losing concentration during a lecture, or real-time feedback 

to a lecturer about areas that students still have problem based on the realtime analyses of their notes are all innovations well within reach with 5G and 

the Cyberverse. 

Dakota State University began as a teacher’s college, and its education degree 

programs are still central to its mission. In recent years the university has significantly expanded its collaborations with K–12 schools in South Dakota, focusing on two needs in cyber education: a general cyber literacy for all students, 

and accelerated education and opportunities for those who are interested in pursuing cyber careers. These programs will provide a foundation and structure 

within which SD5G and the SD Cyberverse can begin to develop, test, and implement some of the many exciting teaching/learning innovations that will be 

enabled by these new technologies. 

b) Agriculture 

Agriculture is an industry in every state in the union, and in many areas remains a key employer. The United States is a net exporter of food to the world, 

which has often strengthened both our economic and national security. South 

Dakota is located in the middle of the country’s most agriculturally rich region, 

and the state’s traditional expertise and success in agriculture has continued to 

move forward. South Dakota is now a leader in technology-based precision agriculture. South Dakota farms are heavily invested in the development and use 

of automated driving technology, computer vision, telematics, and cloud-based 

mobile applications to help farmers double or triple their yields—a feat that will 

be key to keeping up with global food demands as the Earth’s population grows 

over the next thirty years. 

It is a known fact that food sufficiency plays a major role in the peace and prosperity of any country. Predictions are that by 2050 there will be nine billion 

people on the planet. To feed all those people, experts believe globally agriculture will need to increase current production by 70 percent. It is a race to 

develop and deploy the technologies to get there, and certainly the first country 

to do so will reap enormous benefits, not only in its ability to feed its own population but economically to be the preferred marketplace for other countries. 

In the early 1800s, it took about 300 hours of labor to produce 100 bushels of 

wheat. Today in South Dakota, through the application of leading-edge technologies, it takes less than an hour of labor to produce 100 bushels of wheat. 

However, in the state as around the world, climate change, soil degradation, 

and water shortages are all challenges that are increasing. Sensors are already 

available that can be put out in crop fields to collect information such as soil 

moisture, fertilization, and recent weather impacts. With 5G and the 

Cyberverse, once the processing is done in the Cloud, these will be able to be 

simpler and less expensive. The information from the sensors will be able to be 

transmitted to a central hub, providing farmers real-time access to information 

and analysis of their land and crop. This information can then be used to 

logistically plan for the most effective use of their resources like water and machinery. 

Cattle farmers in the west to be profitable have to have herds of thousands of 

animals distributed over thousands of acres of land. The growth, health, and 

24 

location of those herds is critical information for the rancher. Cattle and sheep 

often wander into terrain that is inaccessible by motor vehicles, still requiring 

location and monitoring by horseback, challenging and slow, especially in winter 

blizzards, when the livestock often need the most support to survive. GPS devices, passive systems requiring only small units with little energy draw, are 

already available that can be attached to each animal, which would make it 

possible for real-time monitoring of the location of one animal or a thousand. 

In addition, biomedical sensors are now available and shrinking in cost and size 

that will be able to provide real-time biomedical data on livestock, such as body 

temperature, pulse, growth, and even tissue resistivity, a significant measure 

of productivity and market value. Today, neither the bandwidth nor the capacity to accommodate thousands of simultaneous users make this application 

practical. However, with 5G it will be just one of many that will transform livestock farming. 

South Dakota’s vigorous agricultural industries, illustrative of agriculture 

across the United States, are providing expertise and enthusiasm toward the 

development of 5G and the Cyberverse across the state. 

c) Manufacturing 

Supplying the needs of the United States through a strong domestic manufacturing sector protects the country from international economic and political disruptions. 5G and the Cyberverse has the responsiveness, concurrency and reach 

that will transform manufacturing. 

One in every ten jobs in South Dakota is in manufacturing. In 2016 the state’s 

manufacturing industry generated more than $4.5 billion of output and accounted for 9 percent of South Dakota’s GDP. The state’s manufacturing sector 

has eagerly sought out technology-based innovations to increase productivity, 

expand markets, and develop new products. South Dakota’s Manufacturing and 

Technology Solutions (MTS) organization is part of the National Institute of 

Standards and Technology’s Manufacturing Extension Partnership (NIST MEP). 

MTS is one of many organizations supporting South Dakota manufacturing in 

its drive for what is being called Industry 4.0, or the next industrial revolution. 

NIST is advancing ‘smart manufacturing’ as systems that are ‘‘fully-integrated, 

collaborative manufacturing systems that respond in real time to meet changing 

demands and conditions in the factory, in the supply network, and in customer 

needs.’’ For example, South Dakota manufacturers are heavily engaged in deploying Collaborative Robots (Cobots) and Autonomous Guided Vehicles (AGVs) 

on factory floors. South Dakota companies have discovered that implementing 

these robotic systems improves efficiency, reduces errors, increases safety by relieving humans from dangerous tasks, and reduces machine downtime. Compared to traditional industrial robots, the latest collaborative robots are better 

suited to high mix, low volume production, meaning they can be used to meet 

variable demand and for just-in-time inventory processes. However, they also 

require a more sophisticated technological infrastructure, and large-scale multisite deployment will require the capabilities of 5G and the Cyberverse. 

South Dakota’s manufacturing companies will provide the testing ground for 

how 5G and the Cyberverse need to be configured to support their activities. 

d) Health Care 

5G and the Cyberverse will have a profound impact on health care delivery in 

this country, especially for those populations who have historically been underserved. A fast, reliable, high-capacity network will make it possible to truly implement telemedicine, and enable providers, first responders, and even civilians 

to provide medical aid faster, more efficiently and safely. 

The Center for the Advancement of Health Information Technology (CAHIT) is 

one of the DSU MadLabs and the home of HealthPoint, the non-profit federallydesignated health information technology (HIT) resource and support center for 

all South Dakota healthcare providers. HealthPoint is part of a national network of 60 regional extension centers with a pipeline of key information on 

health IT. The organization supports medical practices with technology tools 

and support needed to improve quality of care, increase patients’ access to information, utilize health data to determine gaps and interventions, and spend dollars more wisely. As a result of their work, South Dakota leads the Nation in 

percentage (90.4 percent) of office-based physicians that have adopted certified 

Electronic Health Records. SD5G and the SD Cyberverse will use this existing 

strong network of already-connected medical practices to explore how best to 

configure the new technologies to enhance and expand medical care delivery. 

25 

4) Population clusters and types 

South Dakota has a range of population clusters and types and is committed 

to economic development improvement through the use of technology for all of 

them. From urban to rural, the state has special focus on making sure the ‘‘last 

mile’’ and the ‘‘last inch’’ are as connected as the first. South Dakota is also taking the lead in efforts to ‘‘revive main street’’ through migration to ‘smart cities,’ 

harnessing the power of technological innovation to improve economic health 

and the quality of life in our small and medium-sized cities. 

South Dakota has the third highest proportion of Native Americans of any 

state, behind Alaska and New Mexico. Five of the state’s counties lie entirely 

within Indian reservations. South Dakota is also a refugee resettlement state, 

and its university system has a significant enrollment from international students. 

South Dakota is the 11th-fastest growing state in the country, and Sioux Falls 

is the sixth fastest-growing city in the country. This growth has been significantly fueled by a young (the median age in the state is 36) entrepreneurial culture that is highly tech savvy. 

At the same time, the state has a vast land mass and much of the population 

is distributed in rural areas. In this regard South Dakota is representative of 

much of the center of the United States, which is often resource-rich but 

connectivity poor. 5G and the Cyberverse must include innovative ways to connect every U.S. citizen, regardless of their location in the country. SD5G and 

the SD Cyberverse will develop models to do so. 

5) Governmental organizational structures and concerns—city, county, state 

The smaller population of South Dakota, and the distributed population, have 

required that cities, counties, and the state work together collaboratively to 

meet the needs of the state’s citizens. One of the challenges in deploying 5G and 

the Cyberverse is the complicated, interwoven, and often mutually exclusive 

regulations, policies, practices, and laws of different municipalities. 

One of the greatest needs at the Federal level is for new radio spectrum bands 

to be made available for 5G and the Cyberverse. Senator Thune took the lead 

toward action on this almost two years ago in the Mobile Now Act proposing 

reforms that would ensure more spectrum is made available for commercial use 

and by reducing the red tape associated with building wireless networks. His 

leadership and interest in moving U.S. technology and networking forward is 

matched by leadership across South Dakota, and thus the state is a receptive 

area for developing, deploying, and creating best practices for leading edge technologies. 

6) Geographies and climates 

The United States is a country which, because of its size, has a vast assortment 

of geographic configurations and climates. A range of 5G and Cyberverse hardware must be developed and deployed that can accommodate the differences in 

geographic configurations (e.g., mountains) and extremes of temperature (e.g., 

hot summers and sub-zero winters), wind, and precipitation. Because of its considerable size—the state is 380 miles long and 210 miles wide—it covers several 

geographic areas, each with a different weather pattern. The eastern half of the 

state has a humid continental climate while the western half of the state falls 

into the semiarid steppe category. South Dakotans face extremes in temperature: blazing heat waves in the summer and bitter Arctic incursions in winter. 

In July and August, the mercury can soar above 100 degrees Fahrenheit, while 

in winter, it regularly dips below zero. Record-setting temperatures in the state 

include readings above 115 degrees and colder than minus 40. This makes it 

an ideal setting to test the weatherability of various technologies, and most especially the ability to maintain the network of connectivity under extreme conditions. 

CONCLUSION 

It is exceedingly important to do what we can to remove the existing barriers to 

broadband deployment on the horizon of next generation wireless technology deployment, to encourage investment in next generation communications services, and find 

ways to streamline broadband deployment siting. 

I believe the best way to address all three of these issues will start with a coordinated effort to develop widespread understanding and knowledge of what 5G and 

the Cyber Universe are and why it is so important to the economic, security, and 

quality of life health for the United States in both the near and far future. To develop and deploy these new technologies in a manner consistent with the country’s 

26 

democratic values and concerns, we must engage cyber security professionals in 

every aspect of this testbed. I believe the way to make the greatest progress most 

rapidly is to create a public/private partnership to build and deploy a real-world 5G 

and Cyberverse testbed. We are eager to do so in South Dakota, as a geographic 

area in the U.S. that contains a cross-section of the types of population clusters and 

organizations, geography, climate, industries, and existing technologies, to explore, 

troubleshoot, and establish best-practice models for the technology as well as the 

policies and governance required to support 5G development and deployment across 

the country. 

5G and the new Cyberverse is a common good whose availability and operability 

will be critical to every endeavor across the United States. As such, it is important 

that the Federal Government provide leadership and support for those efforts that 

will move development and deployment of this vital national resource. 

It is also the case that we will only get one chance to do this first. The United 

States was the first country to develop and implement the comprehensive Internet, 

initially building on the foundation and integrating multiple federally-developed networks. The results have been clear and impressive. Despite all of the concerns about 

cyber security issues and technology dependencies, there is no question that the 

United States lead in developing and deploying the Internet has had profound economic and societal impacts. There is a need once again for the Federal Government 

to step forward and take the lead in investment and organizational support for the 

development and deployment of 5G and the Cyberverse. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you, Dr. Griffiths for the great work that 

you and Dak State are doing in this space. It’s going to take a lot 

of very trained, skilled professionals to protect and safeguard these 

networks, too, as we develop new technologies. So it’s exciting stuff 

that you’re involved with. 

Next up is Mr. Robert Fisher, who, as I said, is Senior Vice President at Verizon, Senior Vice President of Federal Government Affairs. He is here today. We welcome him to South Dakota and hope 

that Verizon is looking at investing heavily in these types of technologies in our state. So thank you for being here, Mr. Fisher. 

STATEMENT OF ROBERT FISHER, SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT, 

FEDERAL GOVERNMENT AFFAIRS, VERIZON 

Mr. FISHER. Yes. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate the opportunity to be here. 

My name is Robert Fisher, and I am Senior Vice President of 

Federal Government Affairs for Verizon. I appreciate the opportunity to be here to discuss 5G and the policies that the United 

States needs to adopt to win the global race on 5G. 

On a personal note, Mr. Chairman, I just want to thank you. As 

a former staffer of the Senate Commerce Committee many years 

ago under then Chairman John McCain. It’s a real honor and a 

pleasure for me to be here today. 

Earlier this decade, Verizon led the way in deploying the Nation’s first 4G network. Mr. Chairman, here in South Dakota, from 

2013 to 2018, Verizon alone has invested more than $119 million 

in private capital. Today, our 4G network covers more than 98 percent of the U.S. population, and now we are leading the way on 5G. 

For example, Verizon created the 5G Technology Forum, led the 

way with a number of technology firsts on 5G, built innovation labs 

to help create next-generation applications, and we were the first 

in the world to launch a commercial 5G service called Verizon 5G 

Home, which is currently available in Houston, Indianapolis, Los 

Angeles, and Sacramento. Verizon plans for rapid expansion of 5G 

Home and the launch of 5G mobility service going into 2019 and 

27 

beyond. But it’s helpful to begin our conversation by looking at 

what came before 5G. 

The first generation of mobile technology 1G was about voice. 2G 

introduced text messaging. The move to 3G provided the essential 

network speeds for accessing the Internet through smartphones. 

4G, with faster data transfer rates, gave rise to many of the connected devices and services that we rely upon today. Ultimately, 

5G will be even faster, allowing greater network capacity, more opportunities for connectivity, and improved reliability. 5G also represents the potential for up to 1,000 times the network capacity of 

today’s 4G LTE network and 20 times faster download speeds, and 

the network latency will become even faster than a blink of an eye. 

We believe the economic and social impacts will be transformative, and 5G will usher in a true ‘‘Fourth Industrial Revolution,’’ which will fundamentally change how we live, work, and 

play. It will be the foundation for other technologies, such as artificial intelligence, autonomous cars, robotics, and biotechnology. In 

addition to providing a long-sought competitive alternative to cable 

broadband, as Verizon’s 5G Home Service does, 5G will provide for 

an enhanced mobile broadband, such as new and immersive virtual 

reality experiences, mission-critical communications, the connections that are required for the full capabilities of self-driving cars, 

and the connecting of the Internet of Things. 

It’s critically important for the U.S. to lead the way in 5G. The 

wireless industry’s impact on the State of South Dakota due to the 

evolution of 4G technology already accounts for $587 million in 

gross domestic product and 6,700 related wireless jobs in the state. 

We want 5G to build on that success of 4G. 

Commissioner Carr said it best earlier this year, ‘‘The stakes are 

high. Winning the race to 5G could mean 3 million new jobs, a half 

trillion dollars in GDP, $275 billion of private sector investment, all 

without a penny of new taxes. We want that, but our friends and 

competitors in Europe and Asia want that, too.’’ 

To underscore the Commissioner’s point, all of this is being done 

with private investment. Fortunately, the FCC and Congress have 

both made great strides to win the race to 5G with a focus on infrastructure and spectrum policy. 

Two weeks ago, under Commissioner Carr’s leadership, the FCC 

issued a ruling that adopted commonsense guidelines that reduced 

the time and cost of deploying next-generation wireless infrastructure while accounting for legitimate local interests. The FCC’s ruling built on the momentum established over the past few years in 

numerous States and communities to reform infrastructure siting. 

In terms of spectrum policy, the FCC has moved fast to open up 

more spectrum and frequency bands that not have traditionally 

been used for cellular communications but are critical for 5G. Last 

week, Commissioner O’Rielly outlined a plan for moving forward on 

the 3.5 gigahertz spectrum to be considered at the FCC’s meeting 

later this month. 

Likewise, Mr. Chairman, you have been leading the way to advance 5G infrastructure policy in Congress. You and Brian Schatz, 

a Senator from Hawaii, have introduced the STREAMLINE Small 

Cell Deployment Act, or the STREAMLINE Act, to help promote 

the deployment of small cell equipment. The STREAMLINE Act 

28 

modernizes deployment policies while ensuring states and localities 

have the ability to recover their costs. You’ve led the way in ensuring to critical mid-band spectrum, which is a critical component of 

5G deployment. Mid-band spectrum provides a good mix of coverage and capacity and is essential for a broad nationwide rollout 

of 5G technologies. 

Verizon has always worked well with policymakers at all levels 

and hope to do that around the country, and ensure that we are 

building our country’s biggest and best network is accomplished 

with the cooperation and support of our government partners. 

While some municipalities have expressed concern about having a 

standardized framework for governing antenna siting, I can assure 

you that Verizon believes in dialogue and compromises between 

providers and localities are more important than ever, and we remain committed to that goal. 

The U.S. needs to win the race to 5G, and while Verizon is investing and innovating to help us get there, it is critical for Federal, State, local governments all to be rowing in the same direction. We have to get this policy framework right. With your leadership, Mr. Chairman, and working with the members of the Senate 

Commerce Committee, the FCC, and other policymakers, we’re 

making great progress, and I have high hopes the U.S. will lead 

the world on 5G network deployment. 

I thank you again for being here today and look forward to answering your questions. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Fisher follows:] 

PREPARED STATEMENT OF ROBERT FISHER, SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT, 

FEDERAL GOVERNMENT RELATIONS, VERIZON

My name is Robert Fisher, and I am Senior Vice President, Federal Government 

Relations for Verizon. Thank you for inviting me to discuss 5G—the fifth generation 

of wireless networks—and the policies that the United States needs to adopt to win 

the global race to 5G. 

What 5G Means 

To understand 5G, it’s helpful to understand what came before it. Broadly, the 

first generation of mobile technology, 1G, was about voice. 2G introduced short-messaging (i.e., text messaging) and the move to 3G provided the essential network 

speeds for accessing the Internet through smartphones. Then 4G, with faster datatransfer rates, gave rise to many of the connected devices and services that we rely 

on today. According to CTIA, the wireless industry’s impact on the state of South 

Dakota, due largely to the roll out of 4G, accounts for $587 million in GDP and 

6,761 wireless-related jobs. Verizon has invested more than $119 million in private 

capital in the state of South Dakota since 2013. 

Ultimately, 5G will be even faster, with an exponential growth in network capacity, greater opportunities for connectivity and improved network reliability. 5G presents the potential for up to 1000 times the network capacity of today’s 4G LTE network and 20 times faster download speeds than 4G. Additionally, network latency— 

or lag—of less than 10 milliseconds is many times faster than the blink of an eye. 

The economic and social impacts of this next generation will be transformative. 

With 5G, we are on the cusp of the ‘‘Fourth Industrial Revolution,’’ which will fundamentally change how we live, work and play. The Fourth Industrial Revolution 

is blurring the lines between the physical and digital worlds. Everything that can 

be connected will be. Some call it the ‘‘Cyber Physical’’ era, building on such technologies as artificial intelligence, autonomous cars, robotics and biotechnology to 

prime a fresh wave of innovation—all of it enabled by the low latency, lightningfast speeds, and continuous connectivity of 5G wireless technology. And Verizon is 

leading the way in deploying 5G. 

29 

Verizon’s 5G Leadership 

Verizon’s 4G LTE network covers more than 98 percent of the U.S. population 

today, and we plan to quickly expand our 5G service, using a wide variety of spectrum frequencies—low band; mid-band; and Ultra Wideband (which is what we’re 

using first for Verizon 5G Home). We have been the leader in 5G from the start. 

This has required a lot of important steps to get us to where we are today and 

where we are going. We created the 5G Technology Forum (5GTF) in 2015, with 

partners like Ericsson, Intel, Samsung and Qualcomm. As a result of these efforts, 

the first international technical standard for 5G debuted in December 2017—ahead 

of expectations. Verizon also lead the way with a number of technology firsts on 5G, 

including the first ‘‘in the wild 5G data transmission,’’ and we have built 5G innovation labs to help create the 5G applications that will change how we live, work and 

play. We were also proud to recently announce the world’s first commercial 5G service, Verizon 5G Home, which launched on October 1st and is available for order in 

Houston, Indianapolis, Los Angeles and Sacramento. Moving forward, Verizon plans 

for rapid expansion of 5G Home and the launch of 5G mobility service going into 

2019 and beyond. 

What 5G Will Enable 

What capabilities will 5G enable? Ed Chan, Verizon Senior Vice President and 

Chief Technology Architect, recently said at CTIA’s Race to the 5G Summit, ‘‘5G will 

only be limited by our imagination.’’ Looking back at the predictions of how 4G LTE 

would be used, no one predicted the smartphone and app economy revolution, and 

it may be that the most earth-shattering uses of 5G are things that no one is thinking of today—or maybe some young entrepreneur is inventing in her garage in Silicon Valley or right here in Sioux Falls? 

Nevertheless, CTIA has described some of the ways that 5G will impact the U.S. 

economy: ‘‘Entire industries, from agriculture to transportation, will be transformed 

to be more capable, efficient, and intelligent. That’s the promise of 5G.’’ In addition 

to providing a long-sought competitive alternative to cable broadband—as Verizon’s 

5G Home service does—5G also will provide for Enhanced Mobile Broadband, such 

as new immersive virtual reality experiences; Mission-Critical communications, such 

as the connections needed for the full capabilities of self-driving cars; and connecting the ‘‘Internet of Things.’’ 

Policies to Win the Global Race to 5G 

The U.S. winning the race to 5G is not a guarantee. Research by CTIA earlier 

this year found China has a narrow lead over the U.S. and South Korea in the race 

to 5G. It is imperative that we take the lead as we did with 4G. Why is it so important? Commissioner Carr said it best earlier this year: ‘‘The stakes are high. Winning the race to 5G could mean three million new jobs, half a trillion dollars in 

GDP, and $275 billion of private sector investment, all without a penny of new 

taxes. We want that. But our friends and competitors in Europe and Asia what that 

too.’’ To underscore the Commissioner’s point, all of this is being done with private 

capital. Fortunately, we know what needs to be done. Commissioner Carr hit on the 

winning playbook: focus on spectrum and infrastructure. Congress and the FCC 

have made great strides on both parts of this playbook. 

Under Commissioner Carr’s leadership, the FCC recently issued a ruling that 

adopted common-sense guidelines that reduce the time and cost of deploying next 

generation wireless infrastructure while accounting for legitimate local interests. 

This ruling built on the momentum established over the past few years in numerous 

states and communities to reform infrastructure siting policies. In terms of spectrum policy, the FCC has moved fast to open up more spectrum in frequency bands 

that have not traditionally been used for cellular communications but are critical 

for 5G. 

But FCC and state action is not enough. We need help from Congress, too, and 

that effort has been led by Chairman Thune, who, together with Senator Brian 

Schatz, introduced the ‘‘Streamline Small Cell Deployment Act’’ to help promote the 

deployment of small cell equipment. This bipartisan legislation is an important and 

thoughtful kickoff to a conversation about how best to modernize small cell deployment policy. The Streamline Act would add significant provisions to the national 

policy framework that the FCC’s recent decision just could not cover. As just one 

example, the Streamline Act would provide that small cell applications are ‘‘deemed 

granted’’ at the end of the allowed timetable for state and municipal authorities to 

act on an application. The FCC found that the remedy for inaction on an application 

is in the judicial system, and decided not to apply a ‘‘deemed granted’’ remedy, 

though it provided substantial guidance that should expedite judicial review. HowVerDate Nov 24 2008 08:01 Jan 07, 2025 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00033 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6621 S:\GPO\DOCS\57908.TXT JACKIE
30 

ever, even expedited judicial review involves delay and uncertainly, so a ‘‘deemed 

granted’’ remedy is a critical component to promote investment. 

In addition, while the FCC correctly noted that state and local governments are 

entitled to recover all reasonable costs related to the building of small cell antennas, 

this provision of the FCC’s new rules is opposed by some jurisdictions and likely 

will be challenged in court. Codifying the cost-based fee standard—as the Streamline Act would do—provides additional certainty and legitimacy behind this important principle, which simply ensures that states and localities have the ability to 

recover their costs, but not to tax infrastructure investment for additional revenues 

and for spending on unrelated purposes. 

Chairman Thune also has led the way on ensuring access to critical ‘‘mid-band’’ 

spectrum, which is a crucial component of 5G deployment. Mid-band spectrum provides a good mix of coverage and capacity and is essential for a broad, nationwide 

roll-out of 5G technologies. And there are other bipartisan efforts underway to ensure adequate spectrum resources. Of particular note is the Airwaves Act, which 

would help to create a spectrum pipeline, encourage rural wireless deployment, and 

reallocate underused spectrum. The Airwaves Act will help to encourage rural wireless investment by setting aside 10 percent of proceeds from the spectrum auctions 

required by the Act to deploy wireless in underserved, often rural areas. The Act 

also requires the FCC to study the impact of unlicensed spectrum on rural 

healthcare, education, agriculture, and broadband access. In addition, FCC Commissioner O’Rielly recently outlined a plan for moving forward on 3.5 GHz spectrum 

to be considered at the FCC’s October meeting. We encourage the FCC to ensure 

the 3.5 GHz band plays a critical role in delivering 5G services to American consumers. 

Verizon has always worked with policymakers at all levels to ensure that the 

building of our country’s biggest and best network is accomplished with the cooperation and support of our government partners. While there are some municipalities 

that have expressed concerns about having a standardized framework governing antenna siting, I can assure you that Verizon believes that dialogue and compromises 

between providers and localities are more important than ever. Under the FCC’s 

new rules and the provisions of the Streamline Act, there is still a great deal of leeway and oversight for localities to manage their rights of way. It will be most productive if providers work together with localities on comprehensive plans for small 

cell deployment. Verizon remains committed to that goal. 

Conclusion 

To sum up: the U.S. needs to win the race to 5G, and while Verizon is investing 

and innovating to help get us there, it is critical for the federal, state, and local governments to all be rowing in the same direction to get to the right policy framework. 

With the leadership of Chairman Thune and Commissioner Carr, and many other 

policymakers, we are making great progress, and I have high hopes that the U.S. 

will lead the world on 5G network deployment. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you, Mr. Fisher. 

Mr. FISHER. Oh, yes, sure. Here’s a—I won’t say what company 

it is, but it’s a—— 

[Laughter.] 

Mr. FISHER.—it’s a sample of a 5G small cell. This is approximately the size of things that we’re looking at deploying in places 

all around the United States. 

The CHAIRMAN. Compared to fourth generation technology, which 

is much larger. 

Mr. FISHER. Much larger. 200-foot macro cells, yes. 

The CHAIRMAN. So that’s the next generation, and what cities 

like Sioux Falls and other cities around the country will need to 

deploy to benefit from this. 

So thank you, sir, for being here and for your comments. 

Mr. FISHER. Thank you. 

The CHAIRMAN. Next up is Mr. Justin Forde, who is the Senior 

Director of Government Relations for Midcontinent Communications, which has a big footprint here in South Dakota and all 

across this region of the country. 

31 

So thank you and look forward to hearing from you. 

STATEMENT OF JUSTIN FORDE, SENIOR DIRECTOR, 

GOVERNMENT RELATIONS, 

MIDCONTINENT COMMUNICATIONS 

Mr. FORDE. Thank you. There’s a lot of talk about how to address 

the digital divide in rural America, but at Midco, we are currently 

solving and closing the digital divide through our fiber and fixed 

wireless broadband solutions. And 5G technology will continue to 

expand Midco’s opportunities to provide more fiber and fixed wireless here in South Dakota and across our footprint. 

Chairman Thune, thank you again for inviting me here today to 

discuss Midco’s view on 5G from the field in the Upper Midwest. 

Midco is the leading provider of Internet, networking, cable TV, 

phone, data center, home security, and advertising services in the 

Upper Midwest. We serve more than 400,000 residential and business customers in South Dakota, North Dakota, Minnesota, Kansas, and Wisconsin, and communities ranging in size from less 

than 100 people to more than 180,000. 

Midco has almost 10,000 miles of fiber, and in 2017, we launched 

our Midco Gig Initiative, a commitment to bring gigabit Internet 

speeds to our entire service area. To date, we have invested over 

$56 million in our Gig Initiative, and that’s over and above the millions of dollars we invest in our network annually. Today, Midco 

Gig is available to more than 80 percent of our customers, and it’s 

affordable and accessible at every address here in Sioux Falls and 

communities large and small with more to come in 2018. 

We also recognize that fiber is not the only solution to solve the 

digital divide. Many of our most rural and remote residents do not 

have access to broadband or have access to speeds that are so slow 

that the service is essentially nonexistent. This digital divide is 

devastating to our friends and rural residents and businesses and 

in smart agriculture. So in 2018, Midco acquired InvisiMax, and we 

have begun to expand broadband wireless service more broadly in 

most rural areas within our footprint. Fixed wireless allows us to 

reach rural areas that are up to 50 miles away from our fiber network. 

I myself am a Midco fixed wireless customer. I get my Internet 

from the top of a grain elevator 8 miles away to my small 

farmstead. On a normal day, my three kids are streaming video, 

and my wife is using that Internet to run a small business. The 

service has been a great asset to our family. 

My fixed wireless broadband ultimately connects to Midco’s fiber 

backbone, and fiber will continue to be the backbone of any 

connectivity solution, including small cell 5G technology for urban 

areas like Sioux Falls or Fargo. And given our deep fiber network, 

we are able to partner with the mobile carriers to provide the necessary connectivity link from small cell towers to the Internet. 

The discussion about emerging small cell technology for urban 

areas is continuing to gain momentum, and Midco is here to support mobile carriers by providing that connectivity. Small cell will 

create deeper fiber penetration in our communities, and we are excited for that possibility. 

32 

Small cell technology, however, is not the likely solution to close 

the digital divide due to the density of towers needed. For example, 

we estimate that 350 small cell towers would be needed to provide 

5G service to Sioux Falls with an area of only 74 square miles. 

While technology requires end users to be in such close proximity 

to a tower as a possibility in our more urban areas, it is not realistic in some of our more rural areas. But fixed wireless has been, 

and will continue to be, a solution. Instead of hundreds of feet between a tower and a consumer, our fixed wireless network can 

beam speeds, high-speed broadband, 5 to 28 miles between a tower 

and consumer. 

Midco currently provides fixed wireless broadband to large portions of the Red River Valley, with approximately 14,000 square 

miles using 140 cell towers, water towers, and grain elevators. 

Fixed wireless is closing the digital divide today. 

As Congress and the FCC continue to support emerging 5G technology, we, at Midco, are excited for the possibilities that that next 

generation of technology spectrum will bring for our fixed wireless 

network. 

In the race to 5G, Midco has two suggestions for Congress and 

the FCC to ensure that 5G discussions include opportunities for 

rural America. 

First is Congress and the FCC work to free up additional spectrum and drive the use of that spectrum in rural America. It’s vital 

that fixed wireless providers, like Midco, have both access to the 

spectrum and the financial ability to purchase licensed spectrum. 

As more spectrum is made available, we ask that the rules regarding spectrum also consider the technology needs for fixed wireless, 

such as higher power allowances. Large rural providers that desire 

to purchase licensed spectrum should have the ability to compete 

with large mobile carriers in spectrum auctions. To that end, the 

FCC and Congress should revise the rural bidding credits to allow 

larger rural companies, like Midco, to take advantage of such credits to build out their networks. 

Second, it is vital that fixed wireless providers have access to 

new laws and to advancing small cell technology so we can also 

benefit from those reduced regulations. This Committee’s 

STREAMLINE Act contains similar provisions to the FCC’s recent 

ruling on small cells, and we encourage lawmakers to continue considering fixed wireless when revising rules at the request of small 

cell operators. 

Chairman Thune, thank you again for inviting me here today. 

And we look forward to working with you all to continue advancing 

5G technology while also closing the digital divide. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Forde follows:] 

PREPARED STATEMENT OF JUSTIN FORDE, SENIOR DIRECTOR, 

GOVERNMENT RELATIONS, MIDCONTINENT COMMUNICATIONS

Chairman Thune and Members of the Committee, thank you for inviting me here 

today to discuss Midco’s view from the field on the impact of 5G in our footprint. 

We at Midco have developed innovative approaches to help us get high speed and 

reliable broadband to all of our customers, and I’m excited to share them with you 

today and our thoughts on the impact of mobile 5G technology. 

My name is Justin Forde, and I am the Senior Director of Government Relations 

for Midcontinent Communications (‘‘Midco’’). Midco is the leading provider of InterVerDate Nov 24 2008 08:01 Jan 07, 2025 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00036 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6621 S:\GPO\DOCS\57908.TXT JACKIE
33 

net and connectivity, cable TV, phone, data center, home security and advertising 

services in the Upper Midwest. We also operate a regional sports network, Midco 

Sports Network, which broadcasts live, local high school and regional college sports. 

Over 400,000 residential and business customers count on Midco services in 342 

communities in South Dakota, North Dakota, Minnesota, Kansas, and Wisconsin. 

Midco community populations range from less than 100 in places like Dodge, North 

Dakota, to our largest community, Sioux Falls, South Dakota, which has a population of approximately 180,000. 

Innovation and foresight have shaped Midco’s course for more than 85 years. In 

particular, we have made it our mission to ensure that our most rural communities 

are at the leading edge of technology. Our goal throughout our footprint is to continue to find ways not only to meet, but to exceed, the communications needs of our 

customers. 

Midco’s History of Innovation 

Midco has a history of innovation in the Upper Midwest. Founded in 1931, Midco 

began by operating movie theatres, with a vision of always staying one-step ahead 

of ever-changing technology. Midco then entered the radio business, and in 1954, became the owners of the first television station in South Dakota. We continued to 

innovate with the introduction of cable television and phone service, and on April 

15, 1996, in Aberdeen, South Dakota, launched our broadband Internet service, 

which today is the largest portion of our business. 

Our commitment to innovation continues to motivate our business initiatives 

today. We own and operate four data centers in North Dakota and South Dakota 

to give local businesses a cost-effective way to secure critical data and their IT infrastructure. We provide solutions for regional and national banking, healthcare, energy, and government customers, among many other industries. We combine our 

data center services with powerful network solutions through our wholly-owned, operated and engineered Midco fiber network. Our data centers are directly connected 

to our fiber backbone, giving businesses access to some of the fastest Internet speeds 

in the country. 

In 2017, we launched the Midco Gig Initiative—a commitment to bring Gigabit 

Internet speeds to our entire service area—from the region’s smallest towns to its 

largest cities. Today, Midco Gig is now available to more than 80 percent of our customers—with more communities to come in 2018—while the rest of our customers 

have a choice to receive speeds anywhere from 50 Mbps to 250 Mbps. It is important 

to remember that the majority of the communities we serve are very rural –nearly 

all of the 342 communities we serve have less than 50,000 people, with most having 

a population closer to 500 than to 5,000. 

To date, we have invested over $56 million to upgrade our network to deliver Gigabit speeds to some of the most rural areas in America—in addition to the millions 

of dollars we invest in our network annually. In 2017 alone, we invested more than 

$125 million in capital projects in our service area. 

Our continuing investment and almost 10,000 miles of fiber also serve as the 

connectivity source for mobile operators to connect their mobile customers to the 

internet. As mobile carriers advance their 5G initiative, local fiber and cable companies, like Midco, will continue to be an indispensable partner to connect consumers 

from small cell towers to the Internet. 

Midco’s innovation and continuing capital investment in our fiber stems from our 

desire to serve the communities where we live and raise our families. While the national push for 5G technology may yield a benefit to urban areas within our footprint, such as Sioux Falls or Rapid City, fiber and fixed wireless companies will continue to be the primary source of broadband in the more rural and remote areas. 

For example, last year, we extended our fiber-optic network to Littlefork, Canby, 

Porter, Tauton, Minneota and Ghent, Minnesota—six small communities that now 

have access to Midco’s fiber network, Gig speeds, and our data centers. Not only do 

we invest in our fiber and fixed wireless infrastructures, but we are also a Midwestern company and are deeply committed to giving back to the communities we 

serve. To date, the Midco Foundation has contributed more than $3.8 million in 

grants to the work of non-profits, local governments, and schools. 

Midco’s Innovative Use of Fixed Wireless to Reach More Communities with 

Broadband 

While extending the Midco network and bringing our service to rural communities 

has always been part of Midco’s culture and priorities, there are still folks out there 

who lack access to our network, or to any reliable and affordable Internet source. 

There are challenges and high costs associated with building fiber in many commuVerDate Nov 24 2008 08:01 Jan 07, 2025 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00037 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6621 S:\GPO\DOCS\57908.TXT JACKIE
34 

nities in our area, due to difficult terrain or sparse population in the vast farmland 

of the Upper Midwest. 

Fixed wireless services can be part of the solution for rural America. In March 

of 2018, we acquired InvisiMax, Inc., a fixed wireless company operating in the Red 

River Valley with more than 10 years of innovative spectrum use. 

I can personally speak to the benefits of the fixed wireless approach, as I myself 

am a Midco fixed wireless customer. I get my Internet from the top of the grain 

elevator in Prosper, North Dakota to my small farmstead six miles west of 

Argusville, North Dakota. On a normal day, my three kids are streaming video or 

other content, while my wife is using the Internet to run a small business, so this 

service has been a great asset for our family. 

Our extensive fiber network is the connectivity backbone for our fixed wireless 

business and other fixed wireless businesses through bandwidth wholesale agreements. We use our fiber network as the backbone and edge out our broadband services by using fixed wireless to reach more remote locations. 

A fixed wireless option is a huge benefit to our friends and neighbors who are not 

on Midco’s wired network. Fixed wireless allows us to reach remote, rural areas that 

are up to 50 miles away from our fiber network, and we can implement this solution 

relatively quickly and without the effort or expense of constructing fiber networks. 

We can also deploy new fixed wireless networks during the winter months, when 

harsh weather makes fiber construction impossible. 

Through innovative spectrum use, Midco is currently testing residential fixed 

wireless speeds of 100 Mbps download and 20 Mbps upload using our 3.65 GHz nationwide non-exclusive and 3.5 GHz Citizens Broadband Radio Service band licenses. Once Midco is able to access spectrum in the 3.5 GHz band, we can offer 

100/20 speeds more widely in our fixed wireless footprint. 

Midco’s fixed wireless innovation extends to the millimeter wave, where we are 

beginning testing. Using shorter distances from towers to consumers, we can use the 

70 and 80 GHz bands for our point-to-point connections and the 50 and 60 GHz 

bands for our point-to-multipoint connections. A new meshing technology will increase redundancy and reliability, and we will be testing Gigabit fixed wireless services. Millimeter wave technology can be an additional tool in the toolbox to offer 

high-speed and reliable broadband to rural America. 

How Congress Can Support Broadband Deployment in Rural America 

Midco supports your efforts to ensure all Americans have access to broadband 

services, and we have invested many millions of dollars to help make that goal a 

reality. We greatly appreciate the bipartisan commitment of this Committee to 

produce bills that include and reflect the key components of a broadband deployment-friendly atmosphere—prioritizing unserved areas, instituting competitive principles for awarding broadband dollars, and embracing technological neutrality. Your 

efforts in the RAY BAUM’S Act and MOBILE NOW Act to include broadband deployment provisions like the Dig Once policy and a spectrum policy balancing licensed and unlicensed uses, and your thoughtful consideration of the ACCESS 

Broadband Act, have contributed to an environment in which we are able to more 

easily invest, expand, and deploy. This Committee is leading the way in Congressional efforts to close the Digital Divide and should be commended for its efforts. 

Midco also respects your efforts to identify barriers to broadband deployment, including in the STREAMLINE Small Cell Deployment Act, introduced by Chairman 

Thune and Senator Schatz. As broadband providers develop new ways to deliver 

connectivity to their customers, it is appropriate to examine the regulatory landscape to ensure that obligations placed on providers—whether they offer wireless or 

wireline service—are reasonable, lawful, competitively neutral, and not unduly burdensome, while respecting legitimate interests of local communities. Fortunately, 

given Midco’s deep connections to the communities we serve, we have been able to 

work effectively and collaboratively with the great majority of our local officials to 

advance our shared interest in extending the benefits of broadband to our customers. 

We recognize that there is a great deal of interest these days in 5G, which is expected to enhance competition in cities like Sioux Falls and Rapid City. Like other 

fiber and cable providers, given our deep fiber network and partnership with municipalities across our footprint, we are able to partner with these mobile carriers 

to provide the necessary connectivity link from their small cell towers to the Internet. 

In the race to 5G, which will benefit more highly populated areas with dense networks, Midco hopes that Congress and the Federal Communications Commission 

(‘‘FCC’’) will not neglect rural America. Therefore, today, I would like to offer three 

suggestions for how you might help us further advance rural broadband. 

35 

First, as Congress and the FCC work to free up additional spectrum, it is vital 

that companies like Midco that provide high-speed and reliable broadband to the 

most rural areas of our country have equal access to spectrum. 

It would be detrimental to rural America if valuable and limited spectrum was 

allocated only to 5G, especially as 5G requires a high concentration of small cells 

to operate. Using current mobile 5G technology, it would take an estimated 350 

small cell towers to provide 5G to Sioux Falls, with a square footage of only 74 

miles. While technology that requires end users to be in such close proximity to a 

tower is a possibility in Sioux Falls, Rapid City, and other urban areas, mobile 5G 

it is not currently a realistic solution to close the Digital Divide in rural areas. 

But fixed wireless has been and will continue to be a solution. South Dakota is 

the fourth least densely populated state in the country, with about 11 people per 

square mile; and we all know that there is far less population density in our rural 

and farming communities. Instead of hundreds of feet between a tower and a consumer, our fixed wireless system can beam high-speed broadband 5–28 miles between a tower and a consumer. For example, Midco currently provides fixed wireless 

broadband to large portions of the Red River Valley with a square footage of approximately 14,000 miles using 140 cell towers, water towers and grain elevators. 

This partnership of fiber and fixed wireless is a viable, and long-term, solution to 

closing the Digital Divide. 

On behalf of our friends and neighbors who still lack access to broadband, we ask 

that Congress and the FCC allow fixed wireless providers like Midco to have equal 

access to spectrum as that valuable resource is freed up for commercial use. We 

know from field testing that the 3.5 GHz band is key spectrum for us to provide 

speeds of 100/20 and higher to homes that are over 8 miles away from the tower. 

The FCC is currently changing the rules for the 3.5 GHz band. However, under 

those rules, after 2020, we will lose our interference protection in the 3.65 GHz 

band, and we will then need to either use general authorized access spectrum, in 

which case our operations would not be entitled to interference protection, or bid 

on priority access licenses in the 3550–3650 MHz range that will be auctioned. 

Moreover, only 70 MHz of spectrum will be auctioned, and there is no guarantee 

Midco will be able to gain access to that spectrum. 

In addition, the FCC’s priority access licenses in the 3.5 GHz range will only be 

truly effective in helping rural areas if they are offered in small enough geographic 

areas that companies like Midco that want to provide broadband via fixed wireless 

in rural markets can compete for their purchase. Midco supports the FCC’s adoption 

of county-sized priority access licenses in the draft order released last week. Countysized licenses strike the right balance to enable auction participation by new entrants, including rural providers, and Midco urges the FCC to adopt this aspect of 

the order at its October open meeting. Midco also encourages the FCC to expand 

its definition of rural provider for rural bidding credits to be any provider with 

250,000 broadband subscribers or less in each state in which the provider seeks a 

priority access license for the 3.5 GHz band. By measuring and limiting the number 

of broadband subscribers on a state-by-state basis, mid-sized regional companies 

that focus their service on rural communities can benefit from the rural bidding 

credits and the FCC’s ultimate purpose for the credits remains intact. Given the 

push for 5G and need for spectrum for mobile carriers, robust rural bidding credits 

would allow long-standing rural community providers like Midco to have the ability 

to compete for priority access licenses. 

Beyond the 3.5 GHz band, the FCC is also considering how to more effectively 

use the 2.5 GHz, or Educational Broadband Spectrum, band. The licensed spectrum 

in the 2.5 GHz band is attractive because the propagation characteristics and high 

power allowance allows the broadband signal to penetrate through multiple shelter 

belts and forests to provide broadband and an Internet solution for precision agriculture and cutting-edge farm technology. Currently, however, the 2.5 GHz band can 

only be licensed to educational institutions or other entities dedicated to educational 

purposes, who may then lease the spectrum to others. This is true even though 

much of the spectrum remains unused. Indeed, the FCC estimates that current licensees only cover about half of the geographic area of the United States today, with 

significant amounts of spectrum going unused in rural areas. Opening the 2.5 GHz 

band for licensing by other, non-educational entities would allow Midco to provide 

fixed wireless service to even more rural residents. 

Specifically, we encourage the FCC to open as much of the 2.5 GHz band for commercial auction as possible by doing the following: rationalizing the current, 35-mile 

wide circular licensees (Government Service Area or GSA) to county-sized licenses 

if the GSA covers at least 75 percent of the county’s geography; instituting the performance requirements contemplated by the FCC in its May 10, 2018 Notice of ProVerDate Nov 24 2008 08:01 Jan 07, 2025 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00039 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6621 S:\GPO\DOCS\57908.TXT JACKIE
36 

1 ‘‘For mobile and fixed point-to-multipoint services, we propose an interim benchmark of 50 

percent population coverage and a final benchmark of 80 percent population coverage. . .For 

educational broadcast services, we seek comment on an interim benchmark of 50 percent population coverage and a final benchmark of 80 percent population coverage.’’ Notice of Proposed 

Rulemaking, WT Docket No. 18–120 (May 10, 2018) at ¶ 54. 2 ‘‘Midco also discussed and endorsed the channel plan and associated spectrum limitation of 

no more than 63 MHz advanced . . . specifically: A1–A3 and B1–B3—33 MHz of contiguous 

spectrum in lower band segment; C1–C3 and D1–D3—33 MHz of contiguous spectrum in lower 

band segment; A4, B4, C4, D4, and G4—30 MHz of contiguous spectrum in middle band segment; and G1–G3—16.5 MHz of contiguous spectrum in upper band segment[.]’’ Midco Ex Parte 

to Wireless Telecommunications Bureau, WT Docket No. 18–120 (Sept. 26, 2018) at 1–2 (adopting the proposal from the Wireless Internet Service Provider Association). 

posed Rulemaking;1 auctioning all remaining 2.5 GHz whitespace in county-sized licenses through a competitive auction with a defined channel plan and a limit on 

the amount of spectrum that one competitor could acquire;2 and creating robust 

rural bidding credits as suggested by Midco in the 3.5 GHz band. 

It is important that rural Americans have access to broadband of a sufficient 

speed, so that they can stream video on multiple devices, attend webinars and virtual meetings, operate a home security system, and, importantly in Midco’s service 

areas, use the Internet for a variety of precision agriculture needs. We need access 

to more spectrum so that our customers can engage in all of these activities. 

Second, we recognize that government help may be needed to bring broadband to 

areas that are beyond the reach of private risk capital. In areas where it is not financially viable to build—because they are too difficult to reach, geographically remote, or are otherwise very hard to serve—broadband deployment grants can alter 

the financial calculation, making serving an area possible. It is critical, however, 

that such help and government resources used for this purpose are directed to bring 

service only to areas that are truly unserved and not to overbuild existing networks. 

In the past, some government broadband funding programs have allowed funding 

to be used in places that already have broadband service. Midco has been overbuilt 

with our own tax dollars in places like Mitchell and Yankton, South Dakota, as have 

others in our region. In Yankton, South Dakota, for example, government dollars 

were used by a fiber company to overbuild two existing providers; and the new provider used those government funds to ‘‘cherry pick’’ a few business customers. We 

believe that scarce government resources should be targeted to those who will build 

out areas that do not yet have any access to broadband. 

We were a participant in the Connect America Fund Phase II Auction hosted by 

the FCC this year. This was a competitive, reverse auction, and we believe a fair 

and economical method to fund those last mile technologies. Midco was awarded approximately $38.9 million in the auction, and we will use the proceeds to extend our 

fiber and fixed wireless services deeper into rural areas in our service area. We were 

also encouraged to see that the pilot broadband funding program in the Omnibus 

Appropriations Act directed that funds be used in areas that are at least 90 percent 

unserved, and that the Senate Farm Bill similarly limits funding to areas that are 

at least 90 percent unserved. These approaches, implemented in a technology-neutral manner and with appropriate guardrails to ensure areas targeted are truly 

unserved, can complement the work of this Committee to make a meaningful impact 

in reducing the number of Americans lacking broadband access. 

Third, it is vital that fixed wireless—a service squarely aimed at rural areas— 

has access to new laws and orders designed to advance 5G technology, as fixed wireless, not mobile 5G, is the solution here and now to solve the Digital Divide. We 

were encouraged, therefore, to see the definition of ‘‘Small Wireless Facilities’’ in the 

FCC’s recent Declaratory Ruling and Third Report & Order on Small Cells as being 

structures that are 50 feet or less in height with antennas no more than three cubic 

feet in volume. This Committee’s STREAMLINE Act contains similar provisions, 

and we encourage this Committee, Congress, and the FCC to not neglect fixed wireless in revising rules and regulations at the request of 5G operators. We ask only 

for equal access to benefit from new laws and regulations. 

I commend the Committee for its focus on ensuring that all Americans—including 

those in rural America—receive the full potential of America’s broadband networks. 

Thank you again for inviting me here today, and we look forward to working with 

all of you on these important issues. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you, Mr. Forde. We appreciate you being 

here and look forward to have the opportunity to ask some questions about the things that your company is involved with here in 

South Dakota and across the region as well. 

37 

Mr. FORDE. Thank you. 

The CHAIRMAN. So last up is Mr. Mark Shlanta, who is the Chief 

Executive Officer of SDN Communications here in South Dakota. 

He has been at this for a long time, and has a lot of perspective 

and background I think that can be very useful as we head into 

this new frontier. 

So, Mark, welcome. It’s good to have you here. 

STATEMENT OF MARK SHLANTA, CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER, 

SDN COMMUNICATIONS 

Mr. SHLANTA. Chairman Thune, thank you. And thank you for 

inviting SDN to participate in today’s hearing. 

The prospect of 5G in South Dakota excites me. South Dakota 

has long been at the leading edge of broadband, especially in rural 

markets, thanks to the progressive approach of SDN’s owner companies, the independent telephone companies of South Dakota. Our 

companies cover 80 percent of South Dakota’s geography, and they 

aggressively combat the digital divide. In fact, SDN and the South 

Dakota Telecommunications Association recently commissioned a 

broadband benchmark report. 

Three things I wanted to highlight. First, 65 percent of the SDTA 

members, their customers are connected by fiber. 76 percent of 

their customers have high-speed broadband speeds that meet or exceed the FCC’s broadband definition. And third, in the 5 years from 

2013 to 2017, our members have invested over $400 million in networks that now total 45,000 miles of fiber in South Dakota. That’s 

enough to circle—enough fiber to circle the Earth twice. 

This leads me to my primary point: small cells and five generation networks, fifth generation networks. In the end, it’s still all 

about the wires, that I will refer to as the 6G fiber optic networks 

that support such advances. 

When I use my smartphone to send a message to my mother 

across town or to my sister, who lives in South Korea, nearly all 

of that communication will travel through the fiber in the ground 

or under the ocean. It’s only the very last part of the connection, 

from the handset to the tower, that is wireless. Today’s 4G and tomorrow’s 5G wireless do not exist without the 6G fiber that empowers them. 

SDN has extensive experience in the field. We partner with all 

the wireless providers in the region to provide backhaul from the 

towers and fronthaul to the small cells. 

SDN played a key role in deploying some of the first small cells 

in the region. We helped deploy dozens of small cells in places like 

Aberdeen, Brookings, Sioux Falls, Sioux City, Sturgis, and 

Yankton. One of the best examples is the new SDSU Dana J. 

Dykhouse Stadium in Brookings, which holds 19,000 people. Even 

a—even a few thousand fans had previously overloaded the mobile 

data capacity, making it impossible to text and pull up a web page 

or post to social media. That could paralyze a university and drive 

away fans, especially younger ones. SDN worked with a wireless 

carrier to secure locations, permit, and construct the poles. Fans 

now have a better digital experience there. 

More importantly, these and other small cells will play a role in 

public safety. These small cells represent the precursor to 5G. We 

38 

will need many of these to make 5G work, and all of them will 

have to connect to our 6G fiber. 

Chairman Thune and Commissioner Carr, I want to thank you 

for the lighter regulatory touches that you’ve allowed, especially 

the shot clocks encouraging local governments to act. In the past, 

it could take months, and in some cases, the regulatory and siting 

expenses exceeded $25,000 per pole. This did not include the 

monthly fees to cities, campuses, and other property owners. 

I encourage continued streamlining; however, I also believe the 

Federal and State governments should find a balance for local control. We work cooperatively with the governments in Aberdeen, 

Brookings, and Sioux Falls to make positive local ordinance 

changes. I am pleased to say the South Dakota Municipal League 

is aggressively working to create model ordinances for cities large 

and small to attract 5G services to South Dakota. 

An additional reminder, network security is critical as we advance faster wireless services. 5G will expand the Internet of 

Things and the IoT devices we all use, but network security should 

not be overlooked. Our state’s academic resources can assist to discover vulnerabilities and develop security measures. 

In conclusion, our fiber assets run deep into the rural landscape, 

and our early experience in small cells, along with the combination 

of local—local governments ready to embrace 5G, not to mention 

Dakota State University’s technical expertise, make South Dakota 

the perfect test site for everything from driverless vehicles to wearable devices, which are the applications of 5G. All of it will improve 

rural quality of life and offer our strikingly independent South Dakotans the opportunity to live, work, and create wherever they 

please. The diverse weather, culture, and geographic conditions will 

offer the best test of 5G and leverage the promise of our 6G fiber 

optic services. 

Thank you, Chairman Thune. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Shlanta follows:] 

SUMMARY OF TESTIMONY OF MARK SHLANTA, CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER, 

SDN COMMUNICATIONS

SDN Communications (‘‘SDN’’) is a leading provider of Internet and other networking services in the Upper Midwest. SDN is owned by 17 ILECs in South Dakota and works with dozens of additional ILECs, which collectively serve over 

200,000 residential and business customers in over 400 communities in South Dakota, Minnesota, and Iowa. SDN has a history of centralizing services for ILECs and 

supporting complex solutions for large enterprise customers. 

Nearly a decade ago, SDN’s members started delivering fiber to the premise and, 

in doing so, moved into the Gig era. SDN’s Members have invested nearly $500 million into the fiber projects since 2013. That includes 2018’s investment of $100 million in fiber and other capital projects by SDN and the ILECs that own SDN. These 

efforts have also included expanding service into unserved and underserved communities. There are challenges and high costs associated with building fiber in some 

rural communities. However, the schools, clinics, businesses, and consumers all benefit when our 6G fiber optic networks are deployed at the core of the broadband infrastructure. 

SDN supports the efforts of the wireless carriers, local governments, and the FCC 

to bring next generation 5G wireless services to the population centers. Larger communities in South Dakota can be outstanding test beds as this technology develops. 

Consumers will benefit from the enhanced access to faster wireless services and 

computing power being deployed to support new applications in the Internet of 

Things (IOT) era. Network security will play an ever-increasing role for consumers 

and SDN encourages all governments to encourage the development and deployment 

39 

of secure network assets and services during the growth and deployment of the new 

5G wireless networks. 

PREPARED STATEMENT OF MARK SHLANTA, CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER, 

SDN COMMUNICATIONS

Thank you, Chairman Thune, for inviting SDN to participate in today’s hearing. 

The prospect of 5G in South Dakota excites me. We have long been the leading 

edge of broadband, especially in rural markets, thanks to the progressive approach 

of SDN’s owner companies, the independent telephone companies of South Dakota. 

Our companies cover 80 percent of South Dakota’s geography, and we’re not talking about the population centers. Yet they aggressively combat the digital divide. 

In fact, SDN and the South Dakota Telecommunications Association recently commissioned a benchmark report. Three things to highlight: 

1. 65 percent of SDTA Members’ customers are connected by fiber. 

2. 76 percent of them have high-speed broadband that meets or exceeds the FCC’s 

broadband definition. 

3. In the five years from 2013 to 2017, our members have invested $400 million 

in networks that now total 45,000 miles of fiber in South Dakota—enough fiber 

to circle Earth twice! 

That leads me to my primary point: Small cells or 5G—it’s still all about the wires 

and what I refer to as the 6G fiber optic networks that support such advances. 

If I’m going to use my smart phone to send a message to my mother across town 

or my sister, who lives in South Korea, nearly all that communication will travel 

fiber in the ground or under the ocean; it’s only the very last part of the connection—from the handset to the tower—that is wireless. Today’s 4G and tomorrow’s 

5G wireless do not exist without the 6G fiber that empowers them. 

SDN has extensive experience in this field. We partner with all the wireless providers here to provide backhaul from the towers and fronthaul to the small cells. 

SDN played a key role in deploying some of the first small cells in the region. We 

helped deploy dozens of small cells in places like Aberdeen, Brookings, Sioux City, 

Sioux Falls, Sturgis and Yankton. 

One of best examples is the new SDSU Dana J Dykhouse Stadium in Brookings, 

which holds 19,000 people. Even a few thousand fans overloaded the mobile data 

capacity making it impossible to text, pull up a web page, or post to social media. 

That paralyzes a university and drives away fans, especially younger ones. 


1012SHLA1.eps
40 

SDN worked with a wireless carrier to secure locations, permit and construct the 

poles. Fans now have a better digital experience there. More importantly, these and 

other small cells will play a role in public safety. 

These small cells represent the pre-cursor to 5G. We will need many of these to 

make 5G work. And all of them will have to connect to our 6G fiber. 


1012SHLA2.eps 1012SHLA3.eps
41 

I want to thank you for a lighter regulatory touch, especially shot clocks encouraging local governments to act. In the past, it could take months, and in some cases, 

the regulatory expenses exceeded $25,000 per pole. That does not include the 

monthly fees to cities, campuses or other property owners. 

I encourage continued streamlining. However, I also believe the Federal and state 

governments should find balance for local control. 

We worked cooperatively with governments in Aberdeen, Brookings, and Sioux 

Falls to make positive local ordinance changes. I’m pleased to say South Dakota Municipal League is aggressively working to create model ordinances for cities, large 

and small, to attract 5G services to South Dakota. 

One reminder: network security is critical as we advance faster wireless services. 

5G will expand the Internet of Things and the IOT devices we will all use, but network security should not be overlooked. Our state’s academic resources can assist 

to discovery vulnerabilities and develop security measures. 

In conclusion, our fiber assets run deep into the rural landscape and our early 

experience in small cells, along with the combination of local governments ready to 

embrace 5G not to mention Dakota State University’s technical expertise, make 

South Dakota the perfect test site for everything from driverless vehicles to wearable devices—the applications of 5G. All of it will improve rural quality of life and 

offer our strikingly independent South Dakotans the opportunity to live, work, and 

create wherever they please. The diverse weather, culture, and geographic conditions will offer the best test of 5G and leverage the promise of our 6G fiber optic 

network services. 

Thank you. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you, Mr. Shlanta. 

Let me just follow up with you while it’s fresh in my mind here, 

but with the passage of the MOBILE NOW Act, we did make a 

downpayment on the spectrum and infrastructure needs to secure 

American leadership in 5G, and the STREAMLINE Small Cell Deployment Act represents sort of the next step on that infrastructure 

list. We recently held a hearing focused on ensuring that we have 

the additional spectrum necessary for 5G. 

From your perspective, as a provider of services to wireless carriers, what else should we be doing to support the deployment of 

5G, particularly in states like South Dakota? 

Mr. SHLANTA. Thank you. You know, states like South Dakota in 

the—I’ll say in the urban centers, you know, we all have reasonable fiber optic networks to help with the deployment. Coordination 

at the local effort in terms of working with the local governments 


1012SHLA4.eps
42 

for placement of fiber optic facilities will be key. But in the rural 

markets, if 5G were to ever long term extend into those rural markets, we must maintain I’ll say the support aspects of developing 

more fiber optic networks across the rural networks. The cost to deploy a rural network far exceed the cost per mile to—and the cost 

per customer to support—that is used to support an urban customer. So I would just make sure the Federal Government doesn’t 

overlook the needs of rural as we deploy 5G across the urban environments and extend those into the neighboring rural environments. 

The CHAIRMAN. In your experience, do you think that the siting 

policies for small cells should be different than policies for larger 

sort of macro towers, like what we see today? 

Mr. SHLANTA. Well, I do because they are far less intrusive. I 

think some of the pictures that were showing during my testimony, 

you know, indicate they are really similar to a municipal light pole, 

and I know that’s many of the collocation efforts that the wireless 

carriers are looking to work with the communities on, is to collocate on those types of infrastructure. 

The early poles that we deployed largely were a standalone facility, and those could be used in places where maybe a light pole or 

just the traffic volumes really wouldn’t allow us to get that type of 

infrastructure close to the communications or to the transportation 

systems, but they have that separate facility. So a lighter touch on 

those smaller facilities is important. 

The CHAIRMAN. Yes. Thanks. 

Mr. Forde, Midco has been particularly resourceful in deploying 

both fixed and wireless services to the people of South Dakota; for 

example, as you point out, deploying antennas on grain silos to provide wireless broadband. Could you discuss maybe how Midco has 

overcome some of the challenges to deployment in rural areas and 

some of the lessons that you have learned? 

Mr. FORDE. Absolutely, yes. Absolutely. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And we were also lucky to have Chairman Carr with us earlier this week as we climbed some elevators across the footprint. 

So it was very exciting to be up there. 

Obviously, when you look at, you know, deploying those networks, as Mr. Shlanta said, that cost can be very high. And when 

you look at our highly rural areas, and obviously as the temperatures dip, there’s only a limited amount of time when you can deploy some of those—those fiber networks. The fixed wireless solution, the speed, reliability, and throughput, that has continued to 

improve with the improvement of technology. So deploying that 

fixed wireless from our rich, you know, fiber networks in the cities 

that we do serve really allows us to reach those rural farmsteads 

and allows us to reach that 25 to 30 miles around there for precision ag, all those tough-to-reach places. 

Also, we have a very diverse geography here in our state and 

across the region, whether it’s badlands, granite cliffs, you know, 

lakes, you just can’t get the fiber through that. So this is a really 

unique way to continue to close the digital divide and reach those 

hard-to-reach areas. And it can be deployed relatively quickly. I 

mean, you can call and just within a few hours in some of those 

43 

rural areas we can have that technology out to you at very high 

speeds. 

The CHAIRMAN. You talked about the need for spectrum being 

available to fixed—people who are providing fixed wireless services, 

too. So what else do you think we could be doing to make it easier 

for you and others that are serving rural America to get access to 

that spectrum? You talked about it needed to be accessible and affordable. 

Mr. FORDE. Yes. I think obviously as spectrum is made available, 

it needs to be available in a way that we can have access to it. We 

like county size license sizes for spectrum, so that’s something that 

we can feel is a good fit for us to afford. Access to some of the 

bands of spectrum. The 2.5 gigahertz can get through some trees 

and get through some denser areas, which allows us to ultimately 

serve that customer better. So, you know, making sure that we 

have access to that will be helpful. Of course, we also provide video 

services as well through satellite, and we’ve got to make sure that 

there isn’t any interference with some of that spectrum as that’s 

made available for more fixed wireless. So there’s a good balance 

that needs to be found there as we make more spectrum available. 

The CHAIRMAN. I understand 5G is going to require different 

types of infrastructure in rural areas, some of which may be impractical in rural areas. But what other connectivity solutions can 

Midco offer? 

Mr. FORDE. Well, it’s, you know, that advancement of 5G technology, you know, the fixed wireless is a way—is similar to that, 

and some of those technology advancements are also advancing 

that fixed wireless technology. So obviously, you know, working 

with both in advancing those technologies will allow us to continue 

to have better 5G technology in our cities and also reach some of 

those hard-to-reach last areas. 

The CHAIRMAN. OK. Mayor, I think we’re all well aware that you 

understand what’s at stake here and are working hard to make it 

easier to build out some of these networks in the City of Sioux 

Falls. But could you talk a little bit about maybe what the implications are for economic growth and job creation if 5G deployment is 

slowed down by a delay in the approval by local, you know, zoning 

and siting applications? 

Mr. TENHAKEN. Yes. You know, I—me and my administration 

look at 5G as much as an economic driver and a workforce driver 

as anything. And in South Dakota, like a lot of places, we have a 

workforce challenge. We have a hard time recruiting people to 

come to Sioux Falls to put down roots here and work, even though 

we know the secret of this place, and it’s a great place to be. And 

so being able to offer advanced technology, like 5G, as a point of 

differentiation to whether that’s new college grads or whether 

that’s people pivoting in their career, and using 5G as a point of 

differentiation for Sioux Falls in addition to our favorable tax climate and our safe community and our great quality of life, it would 

be a tremendous win for us in helping to fill the workforce shortage 

that we have and helping to recruit businesses here. 

We recently invested in a biotech research park called the USD 

Discovery District, which we hope will someday house a couple 

thousand jobs centered around ag, pharma, and biotech, and those 

44 

jobs are going to require 5G connectivity to be done. They’re going 

to be jobs that rely on a good—good access. And so a slowed down 

5G rollout is only going to slow down some of those advancements 

we want to make as a city in terms of looking at biopharma jobs 

and bringing in new jobs to our city. 

The CHAIRMAN. In your experiences, do you think Sioux Falls is 

properly equipped right now to be a leader in 5G adoption? 

Mr. TENHAKEN. I think there’s—you know, this is one topic, just 

because of my background, that I am really passionate about, and 

I’ve talked a lot about this. And there is a hunger and an appetite 

in this city to be a leader in this space. And so we’ve seen that in 

our negotiations with the carriers. When we’re talking with them, 

we’re saying, ‘‘Listen, we’re not trying to make money on the deployment of these cells. We want to cover our costs, and that’s it, 

because we don’t see this as a revenue source for the city, and 

we’re not looking at it that way. We’re looking at it the win is going 

to happen once we have the network, that’s when the money will 

come in, through those jobs, through the economic development, 

and so forth.’’ So most of our community leaders are thinking that 

way as well. So the time is really right in terms of the mindset in 

Sioux Falls to be a real early adopter in this and a leader in this. 

The CHAIRMAN. Dr. Griffiths, I was interested in listening to 

your testimony and then reading it earlier, too. You talked about 

an interesting comparison. It’s not a super highway, it’s more of a 

super ocean in terms of the way that the connectivity that will 

exist as a result of this when it’s deployed. But could you talk 

about how 5G will improve education tools both for students and 

faculty at a university like Dakota State? 

Dr. GRIFFITHS. Yes, certainly. It will do a lot of things. First of 

all, it’s—it’s like the Mayor said, if you have the advanced technologies, the advanced infrastructure, people will come to work in 

it because we’ll have it and other places won’t, so that’s one thing 

that will help. 

In terms of our ability to reach out to work with K–12 education 

and with our own remote students—half our students are remote— 

we will be able to extend out virtual—virtual reality experiences 

for our students. We can train them in what we call hand skills. 

The ability to convey tactile information with a 5G network is 

going to be very strong so that we’ll be able to train them to do 

certain things. 

On Friday, I had an interesting conversation about robotic—a 

robotic dairy farm, which I happen to know about, which is 

strange, you know, self-milking cows. And we were talking about— 

they were talking about potentially locating this dairy outside 

Madison, South Dakota, and they were very interested in Dakota 

State because they were interested in the students and the graduates we have because a robotic farm is going to need people who 

can take care of the robots as well as taking care of the cows. I 

mean, it’s not just the cows anymore, the robots also need certain 

care and feeding as well. 

So—but I think the biggest thing that 5G in this area would do 

is to keep many of our graduates in this State. As you know, we 

are very technologically advanced with our graduates. 57 percent 

of our high-tech graduates leave the state. We want to provide 

45 

them opportunities to stay in-state. Many of them would prefer to 

stay in-state. And so I think with—by putting the infrastructure in 

place that will enable 5G services, we will attract the industries 

and the jobs and the innovation and entrepreneurship to occur 

within South Dakota to bring people in, to bring people back, and 

to keep our graduates here. 

The CHAIRMAN. And among the subjects that you’ve studied is 

how the digital revolution has affected research. 

Dr. GRIFFITHS. Yes. 

The CHAIRMAN. So what do you see as the impact of 5G on the 

ability to collect and use information and what that might mean 

for the economy and for how we live our lives? 

Dr. GRIFFITHS. Well, information is power, so, you know, there is 

this ability to collect a lot of information about how technology is 

used, how people are mobilizing, new applications, and all of that 

data can be gathered and analyzed in interesting ways. So, for example, we are looking now at law enforcement information, the 

number of cyber attacks that people have seen. Analyzing the data 

on who is attacked, where, by whom, what kind of attacks, et 

cetera, where the vulnerabilities lie, allow us to take those patterns 

and project out into industries so that we can be more proactive in 

preventing those kinds of attacks. 

So there’s a tremendous opportunity. If you have the information 

and you gather the information, that pool of information gives you 

the ability to know more than anyone else and to go out and help 

people fix the kinds of problems that they’re having. So it’s a huge 

advantage. And we believe that, plus the specialized resources that 

we’re building in Madison, South Dakota, at DSU will attract people in so that we’ll be able to attract new faculty who might not 

otherwise be attracted, we’ll be able to attract students who might 

not otherwise come, and we’ll be able to attract partners to come 

and work alongside us in this part of the country rather than staying out on the fringes, as it were. 

The CHAIRMAN. Yes. Good. A magnet. Yes. 

Commissioner Carr, I mentioned earlier some of the things the 

FCC is doing, which I give you great credit, you and your fellow 

Commissioners, because I think you’re very forward-looking, and 

many of the ideas that are incorporated I think as has been pointed 

out by several of the panelists in the STREAMLINE Act legislation, the FCC has been moving forward with, or at least moving 

forward in areas that are consistent with the goals that are outlined in the legislation. And so I just think you guys are really, 

really hitting it, and hitting it on all cylinders, in terms of what 

we need to be doing. But could you speak a little bit further to 

some of these recent FCC rulings, and particularly about wireless 

infrastructure and what it means for 5G deployment? 

Commissioner CARR. Sure. And thank you, Senator, for your 

leadership on these issues. We benefited a lot at the FCC from the 

legislation that you’ve introduced, the ideas that you’ve put together, as well as local leaders, including the mayor. There have 

been 20 states around the country that adopted updated procedures 

to account for these new small cell deployments. And if you think 

back, a lot of our regulations were written in an era of almost exclusively 200-foot towers with a large footprint. There were enviVerDate Nov 24 2008 08:01 Jan 07, 2025 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00049 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6601 S:\GPO\DOCS\57908.TXT JACKIE
46 

ronmental reviews, historic reviews, costs, timelines, that maybe 

made sense given that massive construction project. But when you 

have a small cell the size of a backpack or smaller, like the one we 

have now, when it can go on an existing light pole, those outdated 

approaches didn’t make sense and were holding us back. 

So in March, we reached a decision that excluded these small 

cells, but only the small cells, from the environmental and historic 

reviews that apply to those 200-foot towers, and there’s an economic study put into the record that showed that the March decision cut about $1.5 billion in red tape. And we saw situations, for 

instance, where you can put a 30-foot tower in a parking lot where 

the ground was disturbed, new pavement put down, but nonetheless, you had to get a historic preservation review as if you were 

turning the ground over anew, and you could have a deployment 

costing $30,000, where the environmental review would cost 

$27,000. So it was out of step with the technology, and that’s why 

we reached the decision in March. 

And then two weeks ago, we reached another decision that really 

builds on a lot of the ideas that we heard the mayor just talk 

about. Cities absolutely need to be compensated for their costs in 

reviewing these deployments. They can’t be going underwater reviewing the private sector’s investments. They need to be made 

whole, as the mayor made clear. And that’s what we did in our decision. We made sure that cities get their reasonable costs compensated, but that this is not a revenue-generating opportunity, as 

the Mayor said, because we need to move forward on a scope and 

scale of small cells that we’ve never done before. So we have to 

clear out the red tape that has been holding it back. 

The CHAIRMAN. Yes. I’m glad that South Dakota is leading the 

way on that, too and you heard earlier that the South Dakota Municipal League here in South Dakota is coming up with a draft ordinance for cities to adopt that would enable these infrastructures 

to be in place and to be built out. What you and the Commissioner 

are doing I think dovetail nicely with all of those activities. So we 

want to continue to encourage that. And, honestly, as we look at 

these issues, obviously we want to be respectful of the prerogatives 

of local governments and authorities and do it in a way that strikes 

a balance, but also in a way that’s reasonable and doesn’t stand in 

the way of what I think is going to be an enormous economic opportunity for our cities and our states and our country. 

What are the implications, to follow up on your point about siting 

policies, that go beyond cost-based recovery? 

Commissioner CARR. We saw evidence in our record that small 

cells are particularly sensitive to excessive regulatory fees, and we 

saw in the record where providers were looking to deploy in relatively small communities across the Midwest, and excessive fees 

resulted in pulling back and investing that deployment in the areas 

where the fees were a lot more reasonable. We saw record evidence 

of excessive fees in big coastal cities that would suck up the capital 

needed to deploy small cells in surrounding communities. So we 

saw real impacts in terms of the regulatory fees impacting where 

deployment takes place and whether deployment is going to take 

place. 

The CHAIRMAN. Yes. Thank you. 

47 

Mr. Fisher, we had Meredith Baker, who is the CEO of the 

CTIA, testify before the Commerce Committee earlier this year, 

and she said, and I quote, a small cell often can be installed in 

about an hour. The challenge we face is that governmental approval processes can take more than a year, and the application 

and fee structures are often mismatched with the smaller footprint 

of tomorrow’s networks, end quote. 

So could you kind of expand on this concept for us and explain 

how we can remove red tape and get infrastructure deployed to 

spur jobs and growth and get broadband competition more quickly? 

Mr. FISHER. Yes. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I think I agree a lot 

with what Commissioner Carr just kind of pointed out, which is I 

think historically when you’ve looked at the way that we’ve had red 

tape around expanding cell coverage, we thought of cell coverage, 

especially in 2G all the way up to 4G about large macro towers 

and, you know, historical preservation reviews and NEPA regulations. There are a lot of things that went into that process. And I’m 

not saying that that wasn’t incorrect maybe at the time given the 

size of some of those things. But as we move to really taking 5G— 

and the way I like to describe it to folks like I think about my parents and trying to explain what we’re doing on 5G, when you’re 

taking the network out closer to the consumer and trying to make 

a service that is going to be, 1,000 times faster than we have today, 

you need to realize that when we’re deploying something like this, 

the same things that Commissioner Carr pointed out and the regulations that surrounded large towers applying to this really don’t 

make sense. And the time, the amount of money, that go to that 

definitely do get more exercise towards that process and really take 

away, you know, potential investment in other surrounding areas. 

So I think continuing to encourage, and I hope that the Senate 

will take up the STREAMLINE Act and pass it because I think it’s 

a perfect complement to what Commissioner Carr and the rest of 

the FCC have done, which is really getting some of that underburden out so that we can get out there and quickly deploy because 

I think it’s crucial that we do it because we know that China and 

others are working very fast to do this, and I think it’s critical that, 

just as we led the world in 4G deployment, the U.S. should lead 

in 5G deployment. 

The CHAIRMAN. I want to follow up on the point you made about 

the steps. What steps do we need to take to win the 5G race when 

you have other countries like China, South Korea, Japan and Europe heading in the same direction here, but are deploying communications networks at a faster rate? And in a lot of cases they don’t 

have to deal with, the regulatory issues that we have in our country. 

So say we want to win that race, what are the steps that we 

need to be taking, that you think are necessary? 

Mr. FISHER. Well, I think we’ve taken a critical first step with 

what the FCC has done, and I think that’s good. I think building 

upon what they have done in passing the STREAMLINE Act would 

be critical. I do agree with what Mr. Forde said, too, you know, we 

need to identify mid-band spectrum, which is critically important. 

I agree with a lot of what he said on the mid-band side. It’s important to get more spectrum out there as quickly as possible. A lot 

48 

of other countries have been doing that for many years and have 

been rushing to do that. 

The CHAIRMAN. Can you talk just a minute and follow up why 

mid-band spectrum is important? 

Mr. FISHER. Yes. Well, I think as we move to—as we’ve thought 

about cell service, cell service was always about big towers, lowband frequencies that can penetrate through walls, really cover big 

distances. As we move into 5G we’re looking and deploying right 

now using what they call millimeter-wave spectrum, which is high 

frequency. And the higher you go up, the shorter distance it travels, but it has the ability to carry massive amounts of data. 

But in order to have all these things work, mid-band spectrum 

is going to be very complementary with high-frequency spectrum 

and low-frequency spectrum, quite frankly, because as you push 

the network out further distances, you’re going to need a combination of short-travel-distance spectrum to longer distance traveled 

spectrum to be able to cover larger areas. 

So all of those things are going to be very complementary to one 

another, and it’s going to be very critical for those things to happen, I think, in a very thoughtful but speedy way so that we don’t 

fall behind the rest of the world, because I—I think the most—the 

most damaging thing that we could do is take longer—take a 

longer amount of time to do this because we would be missing out 

on billions and billions of dollars of global economic cost to the U.S. 

because we’ve led in 4G, and we saw the benefits from it. It’s how 

the app economy exploded in this country. 

And probably a lot to what the mayor and the businesses that 

he ran, that—that was—that was really largely because of the—of 

the way we did networks here in the United States. If we continue 

to do that here in 5G, we will continue to develop things that we 

can’t even know or understand, things that students at Dakota 

State are trying to develop today. 

So it’s just vitally important that we—that we move forward 

quickly. 

The CHAIRMAN. And with all—it sounds like all the various 

bands of spectrum play into that. 

Mr. FISHER. Correct. 

The CHAIRMAN. But mid-band is especially valuable in terms 

of—— 

Mr. FISHER. Very valuable, yes. 

The CHAIRMAN. OK. Dr. Griffiths, I would be remiss if I didn’t 

ask this question because it’s kind of what you and your folks do. 

But 5G does offer the ability to connect many more devices to the 

Internet than we currently have at a higher level of connectivity, 

lower latency, tremendous increases in speed. But what challenges 

does this raise for cybersecurity? 

Dr. GRIFFITHS. Oh, I think, as I mentioned, every time you connect a new device to the network, you create potential for new 

vulnerabilities, not just in the devices—in hardware, coded in hardware is particular a problem. In software, it’s a little bit easier to 

detect. 

The other challenge I think that we have in this environment, as 

it moves so rapidly, is—is making sure we pay attention to the privacy concerns of the public that, you know, now people are becomVerDate Nov 24 2008 08:01 Jan 07, 2025 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00052 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6601 S:\GPO\DOCS\57908.TXT JACKIE
49 

ing more aware of devices that are actually recording them, and 

they—you know, we take it for granted that things will work the 

way we think they’re going to work, but, again, bad actors are always in play, and we need to always be mindful of that. 

So we do—we do educate some of our young people to—to think 

like that. It’s a different way of thinking, to be more proactive in 

looking at the cybersecurity environment to actually test things out 

in a proactive way to ensure that they can find potential 

vulnerabilities. 

And I think it’s a concern as we shift generations. So I’m afraid 

I’m a generation that saw the birth of the modern Internet, so, you 

know, my mind works in certain ways, and I’m glad I won’t have 

to deal with the waves of innovation that will come. But young people today have a totally different approach to the way they interact 

with technology, the way they think about privacy, the way they 

deal with data, et cetera. So it’s a totally different world. 

So I think there are going to be some social strains and stresses 

on the system that are going to actually eventually have to be 

worked out through governance structures and policy, et cetera. 

The CHAIRMAN. OK. I’m glad you’re training people to understand the bad guys, but getting them to work for the good guys. 

That’s what we want to have. 

Dr. GRIFFITHS. And make sure they put their white hats on. 

The CHAIRMAN. Right. And I would just say, too, if anybody else 

on any of these questions wants to jump in, feel free to do that. 

Mr. FISHER. Mr. Chairman, I was actually just going to follow up 

on something that Dr. Griffiths said because I think it’s important 

on the privacy front. And I agree, there’s a lot of work being done 

on the cybersecurity front as it relates to 5G and privacy. But in 

particular, this Committee has been very engaged in the privacy 

debate. You’ve held a series of hearings over the last couple weeks 

on privacy and what we should do, and as you know, Verizon has 

been pushing for comprehensive privacy reform for the last 6 years, 

and we believe it’s well past our time to update those laws, primarily for some of the reasons that Dr. Griffiths brought up. But 

it’s critically important that consumers have a sense of their privacy, and I think a lot of what we’ve seen over the last couple of 

years is certainly putting a lot of pause into people and the Americans across the country who are trying to figure out how their data 

is being used. So while I know it’s somewhat relevant to this hearing, I think it’s an important topic and something that the Committee hopefully and that the Senate and the House can pass legislation in 2019 to update our Nation’s privacy laws. 

The CHAIRMAN. I couldn’t agree more with that. 

Mr. Shlanta, obviously we’re all talking about swift action on 5G 

spectrum and deployment and how critical that is, but much of 

that massive amount of data is going to travel over 5G networks 

that will travel over SDN and the thousands of miles of fiber that 

you and your members currently operate. How is this increase in 

data traffic going to affect your business? 

Mr. SHLANTA. Well, first of all, thank you. You know, I would say 

the change in consumer behavior that we’ve seen especially in the 

4G world is things really moved to the handset in terms of how 

transactions started to take place. You know, we’ll see that double, 

50 

triple, 10 times, in terms of the number of transactions that will 

take place over the next decade across those—those handsets. All 

of that, of course, gets gathered up across those wireless networks 

and then transmitted across the fiber networks. 

You know, one of the things that we are planning for and have 

been continuing to invest in is the expansion, not just the reach of 

our fiber network, but the capacity of the fiber network, the optical 

network behind the glass that not every one sees. And so we’re already laying the, I’ll say, groundwork to upgrade those aspects of 

our network. Some of those are already in place as we’re seeing the 

deployments that the wireless carriers are bringing forward. But 

the, I’ll say, opportunities and challenges it brings, some of the opportunities are I’ll say staying current with the technology and 

finding the right workforce and being able to hire them and attract 

them to a state like South Dakota. And, you know, that’s one of 

the—I’ll say one of the challenges, one of opportunities, is just 

being able to meet those challenges. It may be somewhat cliche ́, but those are the kind of things that drive I know largely my technical team to the office every day that work and discover on those 

types of activities. 

But if I could, I’d like to build on one other statement that—or 

a couple of statements that were made here today, and I wanted 

to build on one that the mayor was speaking earlier, that it was 

hitting me. And I think if you go back and look at the record today, 

you’re going to find people who talk about all of us, in terms of witnesses, talk about, you know, 5G and what’s coming and what’s 

coming to South Dakota. 

But, you know, I want to make sure the carriers and the people 

who are here recognize that South Dakota has, first of all, a willing 

government environment. You’ve heard the mayor talk about that. 

You’ve heard the Municipal League talk about that. You know, we 

want to attract the 5G deployments to our state. You’ve heard different speakers talk about really the diversity of our climate, the 

diversity of our populations, the diversity of our environment. So 

there are great testbed opportunities to come here. And we talk 

about really the technical resources that not only SDN, but Mr. 

Forde, at Midcontinent, offer to the carriers as we come. 

And I would say, last, and it’s the thing that I think people overlook at times, it’s the network security. We want to push this forward, but we cannot overlook the network security aspects. 

I ran into you earlier this week in Washington. You were headed 

to the White House, and I was headed to a cybersecurity briefing, 

and just to hear those business leaders talk about the needs for security in their transmissions, you know, was driving the point 

home. So I just want to make sure that as a government official 

who helps drive legislation, that you don’t overlook the security aspects, so we bring that along at the same time we bring along all 

the other aspects of our—of our networks. 

The CHAIRMAN. OK. Good. 

Mr. TENHAKEN. Mr. Chairman. 

The CHAIRMAN. Yes, sir. 

Mr. TENHAKEN. Somewhat of a pivot from what Mark just talked 

about, but I want to make sure we get this out before the hearing 

ends. And, you know, the one ‘‘wet blanket’’ piece of this that I feel 

51 

we need to also address is what health impacts micro-millimeter 

waves have because it’s so new. And as a mayor, and as a mayor 

who is sitting on this panel, and the media is here, I’m going to 

get asked this 20 times yet this evening about the health ramifications of 5G and small cell deployment and mmW. And I’ve been 

getting asked it a lot already. 

And I know there are no documented studies because the technology is so new. And it reminds me a little bit of when microwaves 

came into our home, and people were concerned about the microwaves, and holding a cell phone to your head is going to fry your 

brain, and these things, and I’m hearing this more and more. 

And so while the concern I think is very inflated, it is something 

that we, as municipalities, are going to need help addressing. If we 

want to be excited and push this forward, which we are, we also 

need to have very clear direction, talking points, studies that have 

been done that show that there is no harm to our constituents and 

to the taxpayers on putting these small cells on towers close to libraries, close to schools, close to their homes. 

And so I, for one, have been researching this and have not seen 

any damaging effects of this, but I do think it’s something that this 

group, you know, will have to just consider to look at and continue 

to study so that as we push the legislation forward, we can do so 

with not only a clear conscience, but also have the right answers 

for people who express that concern. 

The CHAIRMAN. Yes. Good point, that is something that you do 

hear. We hear about it and I’m sure the FCC hears about it, too. 

Commissioner CARR. Yes, I’m happy to step in real quick on that. 

So the FCC, as well as other agencies that are experts in health 

and safety issues, are always looking very closely at these issues, 

staying up to date on the latest science. They’ve looked at all of the 

studies and all of the information, and they’ve reached the determination that these are safe, and that’s a determination that is 

constantly undergoing review, and any new information that comes 

up is taken into account. And, in fact, given the position of the Federal agencies on this, Federal law actually says that State and local 

governments can’t take RF concerns into account given how much 

work has already gone into this issue at the Federal level. And 

that’s not to say that you don’t hear about these concerns. And we 

have community meetings where people raise the concerns. All I 

can say is that both the FCC and other expert health agencies in 

Washington, they stay very much up to speed on these issues and 

have reached the determination that these are safe. 

The CHAIRMAN. I appreciate that. And you’re right Mayor, there 

is a lot of research that has been done, but it’s always important 

that efforts be made to educate your constituents, my constituents, 

the people across this country, who have that concern, and make 

sure we understand exactly what, if any, those health risks are. 

But as I have studied the literature that you and the FCC have, 

most of it comes to the same conclusion in terms of the impacts, 

but it’s something certainly that we need to be able to explain and 

be aware of. 

Between the auctions that are scheduled for this year and next, 

there will be a lot of new high-band spectrum coming into the market, but we were talking about mid-band spectrum and how desirVerDate Nov 24 2008 08:01 Jan 07, 2025 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00055 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6601 S:\GPO\DOCS\57908.TXT JACKIE
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able that is. I want to ask Commissioner Carr, are the FCC’s allocations of mid-band spectrum keeping pace with such allocations 

for high-band spectrum? Can you talk a little bit about the auctions 

and what you guys are doing over there? 

Commissioner CARR. Happy to do so, Senator. Thanks for the 

question. 

I think to start, obviously the MOBILE NOW Act, which you got 

across the finish line, has put a lot more spectrum on the table, 

which is going to be key for deploying 5G networks. We’ve heard 

a lot about what we call at the FCC high-band spectrum, and that’s 

going to be a key part of some of the initial 5G deployments, but 

ultimately, we need to push 5G down the spectrum band, including 

mid-band. And if you look at all the spectrum globally, the U.S. is 

leading the world in terms of allocating and freeing up more spectrum for mobile, but a lot of that is in the high-millimeter-wave 

band. So right now, we are turning our focus very closely to what 

we call ‘‘mid-band spectrum.’’ We have a number of proceedings underway, and we need to keep pushing forward, to your point, to get 

that mid-band spectrum out there. 

The CHAIRMAN. OK. We’re kind of getting to the time when we 

need to wrap up, but I just wanted, for any of our panelists today, 

to respond to kind of a couple of wrap-up questions or any closing 

remarks that you would like to make, or anything that you feel we 

didn’t touch on that we need to touch on. 

But just one question to think about, and that is, What can we 

do at the Federal level to help speed up deployment in South Dakota and around the country? My goal is to have South Dakota 

have the fasted Internet speeds in the Nation, in the world, for 

that matter. But, so, obviously I’m greatly interested in that as it 

pertains to our state here. 

And then how is this next-generation technology that we talked 

about today going to change what you do every day, and how is it 

going to change what we all do? I mean, I know it’s kind of a broad 

question, but if—and maybe it gets to a little bit some of the benefits and potential attributes and virtues of this technology. 

But what can the Federal Government be doing to speed it up? 

And, second, how does it change what we do every day and how 

is it going to change how we all live every day? Think about that 

for a minute. Anybody who wants to chime in, feel free. 

Mayor. 

Mr. TENHAKEN. Yes. You know, I think there is still so much unknown because it’s—it’s going to be the ‘‘Wild West’’ again. And so 

there’s—there are innovations that haven’t even been thought of 

yet which will bubble up as a result of 5G deployment. So I think 

that’s why it’s so important to keep the foot on the gas on this, because there are things we haven’t even thought of yet, but—and 

there are things we have thought of. 

For instance, I—I was talking with our police force today and 

was sharing with them the fact that with 5G, we would be able to 

have HD live feed body camera footage going back to Metro, so 

rather than them having to call in when an officer is down or a 

shot’s been fired, they’re seeing it in real time in HD, and the response times would improve, and they hadn’t even thought of that 

as an application to what would help them better serve the public. 

53 

So I think there are so many things and so many doors that 

would be opened, which is why I think most of us up here are really excited at the opportunity. With Dr. Griffiths, we’ve talked about 

between a partnership with Madison and Dakota State and Sioux 

Falls, they are, you know, the ‘‘Cadillac’’ of cybersecurity colleges, 

and they’re cranking out amazing grads. But they also know they 

have challenges being in Madison, South Dakota, and—or in Sioux 

Falls. And if we can create a 5G network and a 5G kind of pathway 

between Madison and Sioux Falls, we could really be known as a 

cybersecurity—it could be the next industry that this state is 

known for. But it’s going to take that technology before we can— 

we can make that a reality. 

So I guess my closing statement is just things like the STREAMLINE Act and MOBILE NOW, keep the foot on the gas on it. I 

think you have a lot of municipalities that want to be supportive 

and want to help. They also want to make sure it’s fair to the taxpayer on the deployment. But there’s a lot of excitement and energy for what could be. 

The CHAIRMAN. OK. Great. 

Dr. GRIFFITHS. If I could just add to that, it’s—it’s ultimately 

going to be all about the services and applications, but you can’t 

get them until you’ve got the infrastructure in place. And if you 

delay on putting the basic infrastructure in place when the services 

come out, it will take you longer to get that infrastructure there. 

It reminds me very much of Internet 1 to Internet 2, and a group 

of academic institutions wanted to put in the next generation of 

Internet so that we can experiment with it and see how it worked. 

We didn’t switch our regular Internet use to that Internet 2, it was 

purely a research network, and a number of my colleagues at the 

time were reluctant to sign up. So I was the first one to sign up 

for Internet 2. We’re now talking academically about Internet 3. 

But it’s the same—it’s the same environment. 

My feeling was, how could I sit and not have my faculty and students have access to the best resources available to them? I’m sure 

you think the same about your constituents. How can we not make 

available the potential of all this capability once those services 

come available? We can’t think of what those services would be. I 

don’t think anyone would have imagined Amazon to have grown to 

be the behemoth that it is in all the different areas it’s doing business, but, you know, the business, the applications, the innovations 

will come, but if the infrastructure is not in place, then you’re behind, and once you’re behind, it’s hard to catch up. 

Mr. FISHER. And, Mr. Chairman, I think that this discussion 

today has been extremely helpful. I think all the work that’s being 

done at all levels of government there’s a real effort by a lot of folks 

at the Federal side and legislation that you are championing that 

we remain committed to hopefully try to get that—that bill passed. 

I think the mayor brings up, you know, excellent points. 

I mentioned in my testimony, I’d like to underscore it again, 

we’re working very hard at a local level to talk to cities all across 

the country and have these discussions about getting our—our investment, you know, out there as quickly as possible. So I think 

just keeping a foot on the gas pedal is the theme that we’re using 

here on the Federal side. 

54 

And I would say to your last question, the capabilities of 5G right 

now is basically wherever your mind can take you at this point. 

And I think that whether it’s students that are currently enrolled 

at Dakota State or universities across the country. I bet if we sat 

here even 10, 15 years ago and talked about the app economy today 

and what it blew up to, none of us would have ever guessed what 

would have happened, and 4G took us there. 

I think 5G leads us to a whole different level of virtual reality, 

augmented reality, and even applications that we don’t know of. 

The latency—one thing that we didn’t talk about that I’ll just mention quickly, the latency as we go to 5G, that is the time, that devices can talk back and forth on the network. 

Just an example would be that today if you take an autonomous 

car, and it’s traveling at 60 miles an hour, and it’s communicating 

over a 4G network, and it has to signal that it’s about to break, 

the processing time right today on a 4G network is about 4 feet. 

When it’s going 60 miles an hour, about 4 feet is the processing 

time to go back and forth. I think as we have autonomous vehicles, 

we can all safely assume that we want to make sure that things 

are happening very quickly and very rapidly. In a 5G world latency, the same example, a car traveling 60—it goes from 4 feet to 

1 inch of compute power, and the latency will be quicker than a 

blink of an eye. 

And so that really gives us unlimited potential as it relates to 

robotic surgery. You know, think about the things that we can do 

to take STEM education to the next level. You know, here, I think 

in many parts of South Dakota, what that means to ag tech and 

farmers across the country. 

So let our imaginations take us where 5G is possible, but I think 

maybe 10 years from now, we could be sitting around here imagining all these things that we couldn’t believe here today. 

At Verizon, we’re very excited about this. We have five labs, 5G 

labs, that we’re opening across the country. We have one open in 

New York right now. We’re going to have some open in Palo Alto 

and Washington, D.C., Boston, and L.A. by the end of 2018. So 

these will really be testbeds for people to come and test out technologies. 

The CHAIRMAN. The mayor was waiting to hear you say ‘‘Sioux 

Falls.’’ 

Mr. SHLANTA. I was ready to chime in—— 

Mr. FISHER. My understanding is that we’ve had some initial discussions and conversations continue, so we look forward to that. 

The CHAIRMAN. Great. 

Mr. FORDE. Mr. Chairman, thank you so much for bringing this 

hearing to South Dakota and for your leadership and your staff 

and all the hard work they’ve put in to keeping us a technology 

leader here in South Dakota. You know, we’re just so blessed to 

have all these companies together working so hard on this issue, 

and I think that are fiber networks and our data center, our Gig 

Initiative, our fixed wireless, just making all these things a part of 

this process leads to the great environment that we have here in 

this community. And we’re blessed to be able to work with everyone here at the table and to continue move things forward in our 

state. 

55 

Mr. SHLANTA. One last thing I’d just like to say is we’ve heard 

a lot today about 5G wireless. So much will happen, especially in 

the—probably the urban centers as we get started. But I just wanted to also say thank you, Chairman Thune and Commissioner 

Carr, for all the work that you do in the rural networks as well. 

The needs of rural are different than we see in the urban areas. 

So I just wanted to say thank you for all your efforts there as well. 

Commissioner CARR. Also, real quick, I think there are still a 

number of great ideas in the STREAMLINE Small Cell Deployment Act that’s in Congress right now. And I’ll also say today we 

were with the really talented crews of Sioux Falls Tower, and if 

you think about having about 15- to 20,000 cell sites in the country 

going up a year, well, next year we need to see about 60,000 a year 

increasing from there. So it’s actually a good jobs story, but we’re 

at a point where we need to make sure we have the trained workforce that can do that massive increase in infrastructure deployment. I think there’s work we can do on the apprenticeship side. 

I think there’s work we can do on the community college side as 

well to get very quickly the skill sets into the community. 

The CHAIRMAN. All right. Thank you. 

Well, listen, thanks to all of you. Appreciate your input, your 

thoughts, your suggestions. And I think it’s really exciting. And 

we’ve had a number of hearings in the Commerce Committee dealing with some of these new technologies, like artificial intelligence 

and quantum computing and blockchain and other things, all of 

which I think become increasingly more possible. 

And I’ve used the example, Mr. Fisher, that you use with autonomous vehicles because, you know, one of the things that we—and 

the reason I’m interested in autonomous vehicles is that we lose 

37,000 people every year on America’s highways. 94 percent of 

those accidents are human error. And if we can eliminate just some 

of that, we can save a lot of lives. It needs to be done in a safe 

way, and obviously it’s much safer if an autonomous vehicle can 

stop at an inch rather than in—what was it? 4 feet? Yes. So, you 

know, these are the dimensions of difference and dimensions of 

benefit that happen when this kind of technology and the infrastructure and everything that supports it is put into place. 

So we want to encourage that investment. I’m excited to see the 

things that are happening already here in South Dakota and the 

great work that’s already being done. But I really do believe the 

sky is the limit, and so we want to continue to partner and work 

with everybody here at the table as we, as a State and a country, 

win this race. 

So thank you all very much. With that, this hearing is adjourned. 

[Whereupon, at 4:38 p.m., the hearing was adjourned.] 

(57) 

A P P E N D I X 

NTCA—THE RURAL BROADBAND ASSOCIATION

Arlington, VA, September 27, 2018 

Hon. JOHN THUNE, 

United States Senate, 

Washington, DC. 

Hon. BRIAN SCHATZ, 

United States Senate, 

Washington, DC. 

Dear Senator Thune and Senator Schatz, 

On behalf of NTCA—The Rural Broadband Association, I write to reinforce our 

support for S. 3157, The Rapid Evolution And Modernization of Leading-edge Infrastructure Necessary to Enhance Small Cell Deployment (the STREAMLINE Small 

Cell Deployment) Act, and our gratitude for your ongoing interest in improving conditions for broadband deployment throughout the United States. 

Having served on several of the FCC’s Broadband Deployment Advisory Committee working groups, after reviewing many of the infrastructure questions and 

challenges presented there, and knowing well the obstacles NTCA members often 

face in seeking to build broadband networks across rural America, NTCA appreciates your bipartisan effort to reduce barriers to deployment of communications 

networks that are needed to meet the growing demands of consumers. 

Applications based on objective engineering standards, reasonable shot clocks, and 

more transparent permitting processes are common sense solutions that continue to 

respect local authority while also seeking to modernize infrastructure rules and promote both advanced wireless services and the robust wireline networks that serve 

as their essential foundation. 

NTCA looks forward to continuing to work with Congress to identify and address 

barriers to deployment and expansion of broadband facilities of all technologies. 

Thank you for your bipartisan efforts and we look forward to working with you on 

this important bill. 

Sincerely, 

SHIRLEY BLOOMFIELD, 

Chief Executive Officer. 

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