President Donald Trump speaks on the deployment of 5G technology in the United States while Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai listens on April 12. | Evan Vucci/AP Photo technology Trump rejects government intervention in 5G wireless networks

President Donald Trump finally took sides Friday in a fight among his advisers about the best way to advance super-fast 5G wireless networks in the U.S., backing administration officials who want to keep the federal government from grabbing a bigger role from industry.

“In the United States, our approach is private sector-driven and private sector-led. The government doesn’t have to spend lots of money,” Trump said at the White House alongside Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai.


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

The comments offered a sign that Trump is siding, at least for now, with officials like Pai and White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow, who want to allow telecommunications giants like AT&T and Verizon to take the lead in developing and out rolling the technology. They have been feuding with Trump-world figures like Newt Gingrich and 2020 campaign manager Brad Parscale, who favor a more government-heavy model that critics liken to "nationalization."

The Gingrich-Parscale faction has promoted a concept that would see the government share 5G airwaves, via a third-party operator, with wireless companies on a wholesale basis. Major proponents of that approach include Rivada Networks, a politically connected firm backed by Trump ally and venture capitalist Peter Thiel that counts GOP operative Karl Rove as an investor and adviser.

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Such talk has spooked the wireless industry, administration officials and a number of lawmakers from both parties, who want to stick with the traditional, industry-led approach.

Looming over the debate are fears that China, which has mounted an aggressive effort to develop 5G, will beat the United States in the race to develop the next-generation networks, which promise a super-fast internet expected to fuel innovations ranging from self-driving cars to precision agriculture to remote surgery.

As the Trump-world feud has heated up — Gingrich called it a "knock-down, drag out fight" this week — key figures have been making their case directly to Trump. Those include Pai, the FCC chairman, and AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson, who held separate meetings with Trump at the White House last week. Gingrich, the former House speaker and informal Trump adviser, said he also discussed the issue with the president.

Ahead of Friday's event at the White House, Pai announced Dec. 10 as the date for his agency's next 5G airwaves auction and touted a $20.4 billion fund to support rural broadband over the next decade. The announcements, however, appeared to track with previous FCC plans. The 5G auction had already been scheduled for the second half of 2019, and the newly named "Rural Digital Opportunity Fund" is part of an established program for underserved areas.

"The market, not government, is best positioned to drive innovation and investment in the wireless field," Pai told reporters on a call Friday morning. "I think the wholesale network would be the wrong answer for American consumers."

Parscale has been a vocal advocate for the wholesale network, with the Trump campaign publicly embracing the idea as a way to woo rural voters who have long lacked decent internet service because wireless companies don't have a financial incentive to offer high-speed coverage outside the biggest cities. (The campaign later downplayed its split with the White House and said the administration sets policy.)

In recent days, both Parscale and Gingrich have attacked AT&T over its $85 billion acquisition of Time Warner, with Gingrich saying the company could have better spent the money on building out its network. AT&T has a fraught history with Trump; the administration waged an unsuccessful court battle to block the company's Time Warner deal, and Trump frequently attacks CNN, a Time Warner unit that is now part of AT&T.

"The old order has failed rural America, which is the base of the Trump coalition, and has no plan to help rural America before the next election, which makes perfect sense if you’re the owner of CNN,” Gingrich said in an interview Thursday.

Inside the administration, Kudlow, the head of Trump's National Economic Council, has been a cheerleader for the traditional, private sector-led model for wireless development, saying last week that "what we’re doing is the right way."

“I believe that the principles that we’ve worked to rebuild the economy will be applied to the telecom sector and to the whole issue of 5G, and 6G and however many G’s we’re going to go through in my lifetime," Kudlow said. "They’re free-market principles.”