On December 4, 2018, the Phoenix Center held its Eighteenth Annual U.S. Telecoms Symposium to another standing-room crowd. Once again, the discussions were both informative and lively.

The Symposium began with a panel entitled Developing Effective Mechanisms to Repurpose Spectrum from Low- to High-Value Uses. Joining us for this discussion were Morgan O’Brien – Chief Executive Officer, PDVWireless; Hank Hultquist – Vice President-Federal Regulatory, AT&T; Peter Tenhula – Acting Associate Administrator, Office of Spectrum Management, NTIA; and Dr. Giulia McHenry – Deputy Chief, Office of Strategic Planning and Policy Analysis, Federal Communications Commission; and Chief of FCC Office of Economics and Analytics; and former Chief Economist, NTIA.

Building on the success of our Rooftop Policy Roundtable, our next panel was entitled Privacy (Redux). Joining us again on this panel were Daniel Caprio – Co-Founder and Chairman, The Providence Group; Shane Tews – Visiting Fellow, American Enterprise Institute; Gerry Stegmaier – Partner, Reed Smith; and Jeff Brueggeman – Vice President Global Public Policy, AT&T.

And as no Phoenix Center Symposium of late would be complete without a discussion of the net neutrality debate, with final briefs just filed prior to—and oral arguments scheduled under two months away from—our Symposium, our last panel was entitled Previewing Oral Arguments in Mozilla v. FCC. Joining us for this discussion were Maureen Ohlhausen – Former Acting Chair, Federal Trade Commission; Bryan Tramont – Managing Partner, Wilkinson Barker Knauer; Angela E. Giancarlo – Partner, Mayer Brown; and Matthew Brill – Partner, Latham and Watkins.

Per tradition, our Symposium ended with the presentation of the Phoenix Center’s Annual Jerry B. Duvall Public Service Award. The Duvall Award does not seek to recognize the recipient’s personal politics; instead, the Duvall Award is intended to recognize the policymaker who most demonstrated the “political courage in, and contribution of analytical rigor to, the United States telecoms policy debate.” This year, it was our privilege to bestow our Duvall Award upon FCC Commissioner Michael O’Rielly. Given Commissioner O’Rielly’s long career in public service, we could think of nobody who epitomized this standard more in 2018.