Donald Trump Announces Effort to Improve Private Expansion of 5G: ‘America Must Win’

President Donald Trump expressed his interest in America winning the implementation of 5G networks at a White House event on Friday.

“The race to 5G is a race that American must win,” Trump said. “It’s a race that we will win.”

Trump emphasized that the success of 5G networks would be up to private companies, not the government.

“As you probably heard, we had another alternative of doing it, that would be through government investment, and leading through the government, we don’t want to do that because it won’t be nearly as good, nearly as fast,” Trump said.

But Trump noted that the government would act to free up wireless spectrum and reduce regulations to help speed up the process.

“We want to be the leader in this,” Trump said, making it a priority of his administration.

Trump said the 5G networks should both secure and also deployed to everyone in the country including rural communities.

FCC chairman Ajit Pai joined the president for the event, announcing the biggest auction of wireless spectrum in history by December.

“We want Americans to be the first to benefit from this digital revolution,” he said.

Pai said that the FCC would not only auction off more bandwidth but reduce regulatory obstacles of fiber and wireless infrastructure proposed by the Obama administration.

“Mr. President … I am pleased to report that America is now well positioned to win the race to fast and secure and reliable 5G,” he said.

He also announced that the FCC would create a $20 billion program to bring more wireless and digital infrastructure to rural communities.