Thank you so much, John, for that kind introduction. It is wonderful to join all of you today — policymakers, industry leaders. If you're neither one of those, that's okay; it's good to see you as well. You're probably a lot more fun than those first two categories. As was indicated, President Trump recently made me Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission earlier this year. I've been on the job for about 41 days. I want to express my thanks and appreciation to President Trump for the faith and trust he has placed in me. I can assure you that in America we are approaching our jobs right now in this new administration with new energy, new vigor, and new urgency.
While this is my first trip abroad as Chairman of the FCC, it is not my first trip abroad serving on the FCC. I started at the commission back in 2012, and my very first trip to Europe came in 2015. In fact, in preparation for these remarks today, I looked back at that 2015 speech. Reflecting back 10 years ago, I was much more youthful back then. I actually had a little bit of hair back then, and I had a whole lot less wrinkles back then. But some things don't change. The core message that I talked about then, the core regulatory principles that guided me then, are still the North Stars for me today. And looking back at that speech, it hit three main points: spectrum, scarcity, we need to get simplicity in our regulations, and we need to get to scale. And I want to touch on a number of those right now.
The most important thing I think we need to do with spectrum is to make sure that we have a regulatory environment that incentivizes billions and billions of dollars to be invested in that networks. We need more certainty, both in America and in Europe, to justify those types of moves. The other issue I talked about was simplicity. Back then we used the term deregulation, but I think, you know, the term of the day is simplicity. And the key is to a regulatory framework that's going to incentivize, again, billions and billions of dollars in investment in networks. After all, capital doesn't have to be invested, risks don't have to be taken. The more difficult we make it for broadband providers and technology companies to invest and build in our markets, the less likely they're going to be to do it.
And the other point that I made was scale. Scale is king. To compete in the network world, we have to create the incentives for carriers to amass the size necessary to actually compete at scale. If you flash forward those 10 years, in America we've been able to make some progress on a few of those fronts. On the scale front, a couple of years ago we approved the combination of Sprint and T-Mobile, the number three and number four carriers in the country. And since we allowed that consolidation, we have seen investment increase, we've seen speeds increase, we've seen coverage increase. We now have 5G at scale across the country.
When it comes to simplicity, we've also taken action to deregulate. The topic that was the focus back then in 2015 was the FCC's experiment with heavy-handed regulation of the internet. It came under the rubric of net neutrality or Title II at the FCC. We've done Title II, we've not done Title II, we've done Title II again. And just recently in the US, our courts struck down the Biden administration's effort to return to heavy-handed regulation of the internet. So thankfully in America, that heavy-handed regulation is at an end, and it's a good thing because as you look at these new networks, there are functionalities and technologies that would be incompatible with an aggressive version of net neutrality. Network slicing in America right now, our networks can be divided up. You can provide precise services to emergency responders, you can provide another slice of the network to IoT. It's that type of permissionless innovation that heavy-handed regulation can get in the way of.
Now, again, it's not my first time here, but I will say the last couple of times I've come to Barcelona, I've gone to the hotel and the conference has a magazine that's in your hotel room giving you an indication of what the focus of the conference is going to be. In the last few years, it has had 5G splashed all across the front page of those glossy magazines. And for the first time on this trip, the magazine in my hotel room had AI on it. And so I think as we look at this next great transition, we're on the cusp of this move into AI, it's important that we double down on those core principles of spectrum, of scale, and of simplicity. And I would add another one to it. In America, it's important to us as these AI technologies develop that a couple of core points remain clear. Recently, Vice President Vance gave a speech on AI in Paris, and he laid out some of this himself. One, America intends to continue to be the leader in AI technology. We want an open system that is available for all countries, and we are looking to partner and work with allied nations all across the globe.
Number two is we don't want these systems to develop with any ideological bias. If you step back over the last couple of years around the globe, we've seen a surge in censorship. In many ways, free speech has been in retreat. A lot of that, for my own part, I attribute to the COVID-19 pandemic, as governments around the world increased controls necessarily, free speech was one of the casualties of that. In America, we are returning to our First Amendment roots, we're returning to our free speech tradition, and from President Trump to me across the government, we are encouraging our technology companies to stop the censorship we saw over the last couple of years.
Now on this front, there is some concern that I have with respect to the approach that Europe is taking with the DSA in particular. There's a risk that that regulatory regime imposes excessive rules with respect to free speech. It's a worry, I think, here for the people of Europe, but for US technology companies that do business here, the censorship that is potentially coming down the pipe from the DSA is something that is incompatible with both our free speech tradition in America and the commitments that these technology companies have made to a diversity of opinions. So last week I sent a letter to US technology companies that would be regulated by DSA, and I want to work with them to make sure we can find a path that works for them so they don't get excessively fined by doing business here in Europe, but also allows them to stay true to America's free speech tradition.
After all, when it comes to US technology companies, if there is an urge in Europe to engage in protectionist regulation, to give disparate treatment to US technology companies, the Trump administration has been clear that we're going to speak up and defend the interests of US businesses. What we are going to insist on is a level and fair playing field. So as we move forward with AI, we need to apply all those same traditional principles. We need more spectrum in the US. Again, we're hitting the ground running. My very first meeting as Chairman of the FCC, we voted to start a new proceeding to take a look at a large swath of spectrum in the upper portion of the C-band. This follows actions that we took back in 2020 to free up some lower portions of the C-band, but this could potentially add new spectrum to power AI.
We're also looking to continue to simplify our regulations. We still have a lot of state and local rules in place that make it difficult to build new networks, but we need regulations that make it easier to put new money in new networks rather than simply to get rent off of getting access to aging legacy networks. And so that's the approach that we're going to be taking at the FCC. We're pushing hard for more spectrum, we're pushing hard to simplify and deregulate, and we're making sure that AI develops free from ideological bias and with a return to America's commitment to free speech. So I look forward to continuing to have these consultations with all of you. I look forward to the discussions ahead and to the panel. Thank you so much for having me. I appreciate it.
