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Floor Speech

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Mr. WARNER. Madam President, I am going to speak on another matter in just a moment, but I want to thank my friend the Senator from Louisiana.

There are a number of subjects that are debated on this floor that I may know a little bit about, may not know much at all about, but on the subject he was just addressing, the question of spectrum and the challenges and the threats around 5G--I can still claim this--I am proud of the fact that I spent a longer time in business than I have in politics. My whole career was spent in the business of mobile communications, wireless communications. I spent the last 3 or 4 years on the Intelligence Committee in a bipartisan way looking at both the challenge and the opportunity in 5G, and let me assure you that some of the items the Senator from Louisiana has raised in terms of the security threats that will be posed if we end up with the wrong vendor in 5G are an enormous problem.

I don't always agree with this President. On this item, he is right. My hope is that he will stick to his guns and not trade that away in a trade negotiation with China.

I also know that getting spectrum aligned the right way has been one of our challenges because other nations have been able to, frankly, in Asia and elsewhere, align spectrum better, so the underpinnings are better positioned than we are. So how we do this is 100 percent right.

Let me also say that whether it is Louisiana or Virginia, one of the issues I hear the most--I am not talking far world; I am talking small towns and midsize cities in Virginia, and I am sure the same is the case in Louisiana--the issue is--Democrat, Republican, and Independent--when am I going to get broadband in an accessible way?

If we don't make sure that we think this through on spectrum and recognize the national security implications and also recognize that if we roll out 5G and leave, in my State, 18 percent of the population behind who doesn't even have broadband, their ability to compete in the 21st century is going to be dramatically undermined.

So I hope I will have a chance to visit with my friend the Senator from Louisiana and see if we might be able to work together on some of these issues.

For a while, at least before the FCC auctioned off that spectrum, it was left in other hands, and suffice it to say that I know how much that spectrum is worth.

I thank my friend the Senator from Louisiana for his comments.

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