Trusty Pushes for International Collaboration
Countries all over the globe are competing to advance in the fields of technology, and the U.S. needs to be engaged internationally and to be constantly working to win that race, said FCC Commissioner Olivia Trusty in remarks Tuesday at the International Institute of Communications' North America Digital Communications & Media Forum. Trusty’s speech focused on what she learned by speaking with communications regulators from around the world while recently representing the U.S. at the World Telecommunication Development Conference. “These conversations reinforced for me that the work we do at the FCC has implications far beyond our borders, and that staying engaged internationally is not optional, it is essential,” she said. “These global lessons are a wake-up call: U.S. leadership in communications policy is not guaranteed. Initiatives like Delete, Delete, Delete show we are taking steps to modernize our rules and procedures, but we must continue to act with intention to remain the global benchmark.”
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Although the FCC is concerned with domestic issues, matters such as spectrum allocation, satellite coordination, cybersecurity and AI governance “cross our borders with ease, even when our institutions do not,” Trusty said. The U.S. needs to “engage early and constructively” ahead of the World Radiocommunication Conference 2027 “to provide a clear signal about how we intend to protect incumbents, support innovation, and enable flexible use.” It also needs to embrace a more nimble regulatory scheme to compete, she said. “In a world where technologies evolve in months, regulatory processes cannot operate on multi-year cycles.” When the world “faces similar problems at the same time, that creates a tremendous opportunity for collaboration.”