A version of this essay was originally published at Tech.pinions, a website dedicated to informed opinions, insight and perspective on the tech industry.

The Obama presidency and the FCC under Chairman Tom Wheeler have been among the more activist and ambitious in recent memory. There have been some big victories — successful spectrum auctions, innovative spectrum sharing and 5G initiatives, the National Broadband Plan — and some acrimonious proposals, notably around network neutrality and cable set-top boxes. Justice has been a bit mercurial: Opposing major consolidation in mobile and broadband (AT&T/T-Mobile, Sprint/T-Mobile, Comcast-Time Warner Cable), but allowing Charter’s acquisitions of TWC and Bright House and Comcast’s acquisition of NBCUniversal.

In a few days, there will be a new president-elect, and transition teams will begin strategizing for the post-January 20, 2017, world. What might be the impact of the election on comms and media regulation? I’ll start with a broad view and then drill down to a few of the more prominent items.

Of course, who is elected president will potentially have a significant bearing on tech. Hillary Clinton has a pretty detailed and well-articulated platform, with a particular emphasis on expanding broadband availability. She is likely to continue many of President Obama’s initiatives and priorities. If Secretary Clinton is elected, it is likely that FCC Chairman Wheeler will stay on until July or so. If she is true to form, expect FCC commissioners and senior-level FCC staffing to take on a “FOC” (Friends of Clinton, and by that I mean Hillary and Bill) flavor. On the other hand, President Clinton could signal intent to bridge gaps with the Republicans by ensuring a balanced FCC. The current FCC has three Democratic and two Republican commissioners, but the Democrats (especially Commissioner Rosenworcel) have not always been in lockstep with Chairman Wheeler.

If Donald Trump is elected, things are more of a wild card. To begin with, he has said little about the tech sector during the campaign, and there isn’t much to glean from his policy platform. Trump is likely to be much more hands-off than President Obama (who was very hands-on). He will also be more pro-business and anti-regulation, which is why his off-the-cuff remark about the proposed AT&T-Time Warner deal was surprising. If he ends up being Delegator in Chief, his appointments could have an outsized influence.

What happens in terms of control of the House and Senate, as well as the overall post-election “tone,” will also be important. If the temperature remains highly acrimonious, there will be contention and delays in the naming and confirmation of senior staff. This could affect the process, prioritization and timing of some big-ticket items on the FCC’s docket. The FCC has a lot going on already. The AT&T-Time Warner deal will land at least partially on its plate, at minimum, as an important litmus test for network neutrality.

Here is a quick rundown of some of the issues a new Administration is likely to face.

Network neutrality: This is something President Obama strong-armed through the FCC. So far, the FCC been fairly hands-off in its application of NN. For example, allowing zero-rating services such as T-Mobile’s Binge On. The AT&T-Time Warner deal will be an important test, given AT&T’s current practice of zero-rating DTV content for AT&T subscribers and plans to do the same with the upcoming DirecTV NOW service. I think the FCC’s tone will continue to keep the application of NN at a high, “B to B” level. For instance, ensuring combined distribution and content companies (AT&T-Time Warner, Comcast-NBCUniversal) do not discriminate against new media and OTT players (Netflix, Amazon).

Spectrum: There’s a lot going on in the spectrum department right now. The new administration is likely to inherit the 600 MHz auction — both its final rounds and its implementation. It’s a complex undertaking. Hot on the heels of that is the re-auctioning of Dish’s AWS licenses. The 3.5 GHz “shared spectrum” (CBRS) initiative also has some important milestones hitting sooner rather than later, such as selecting and certifying the administrators, and coming up with an auction framework and other procedures. There is still some opposition to the FCC’s April CBRS Report and Order that the next FCC will have to address to keep this moving forward.

Another priority will be keeping the early momentum going on 5G. This is important from the standpoint of the U.S. continuing its leadership in advanced wireless networks. A lot of innovation and work needs to happen to make the millimeter wave bands usable for commercial wireless services.

Broadband: The National Broadband Plan was one of the signature tech initiatives of the Obama presidency. Its implementation has been somewhat of a mixed bag. Broadband availability expanded and average speeds steadily improved. But there was also a lot of squandered money, the broadband market is not very competitive, and U..S average speeds are still very much middle of the pack.

A Clinton administration would be more likely to keep the broadband gravy train going. Fixed wireless/5G and deployment of large numbers of small cells will become a bigger part of broadband evolution over the next four years. The FCC’s Mobility Fund II, which is wireless’s version (and contribution) to the Universal Service Fund, is part of the equation, too.

Business data services: These are the FCC’s new “special access” rules, which would impose price caps on what telecom companies can charge other companies or businesses for bulk data connections — often referred to as backhaul. The FCC is racing to get this done by the end of the year. BDS is important to the evolution of broadband and 5G, because bigger pipes are needed to deliver the capacity required by those services. Backhaul prices can be prohibitively expensive in uncompetitive markets. If the FCC doesn’t vote on BDS by the Inauguration, its status could be in limbo and/or its proposed rules could be revisited.

Set-top boxes: The vote on this controversial Wheeler initiative to open up the set-top box market to competition has been delayed, after FCC commissioners could not come to an agreement. The FCC could try to get this done by the end of the year and before a new administration takes power in January (although the expiration of Rosenworcel’s seat in December adds a tasty plot twist). But it is equally likely that this will land in the new chairman’s lap. The direction of the winter of 2017’s political winds, plus the new administration’s having to deal with the AT&T-Time Warner deal, could affect the direction of this proposal.

M&A and industry consolidation: The approaching election has certainly been a factor in the accelerated pace of tech M&A activity during the second half of 2016. The new administration will have to rather quickly deal with the proposed AT&T-Time Warner deal. This will be an important litmus test for future deals because it touches on many fractious issues that both the DOJ and the FCC will have to deal with more broadly: Cross-ownership of assets, media consolidation, and the internet’s impact on traditional distribution channels.

I also believe the wireless industry will revisit the consolidation issue early-ish in the new term. Sprint and T-Mobile could try again to get a deal done, or one of them could get acquired by a cable company. Dish is also a factor here.

Congress might be on hold between November and January, but the FCC still has a lot on its plate. From a tech industry perspective, Obama’s eight years were certainly active on the regulatory front, which no doubt angered those preferring a more hands-off public sector. But Obama’s initiatives, particularly with regard to broadband and spectrum, will be almost universally viewed as laudable. There is a lot — a lot — going on in our sector and, regardless of who wins on November 8, we will need some minimal level of government effectiveness to keep our fast-changing market moving forward.

A leading wireless industry analyst and consultant, Mark Lowenstein is the managing director of Mobile Ecosystem. Most recently, Lowenstein was a member of the senior leadership team at Verizon Wireless, where as vice president of strategy he led the company’s efforts in product and business planning, market segmentation, national pricing and customer intelligence for both consumer and enterprise markets. Reach him @marklowenstein.

This article originally appeared on Recode.net.

A version of this essay was originally published at Tech.pinions, a website dedicated to informed opinions, insight and perspective on the tech industry.

Even for those who never watched “The Brady Bunch,” it’s a well-known meme. When it comes to consumer tech, I think many of us feel like busting out a similar sibling grumble: “Millennials, millennials, millennials!” A huge amount of attention, as well as many new products and services, are focused on this admittedly large and amorphous segment composed of people currently aged 15-25. Barely a day goes by without seeing something in my inbox akin to “Marketing to Millennials,” “Understanding Millennials,” “Why Millennials Aren’t Buying Houses.” Investors seem to love anything with good prospects for success in the millennial market.

But what about baby boomers? Even though millennials overtook boomers in 2015 as the largest group in the U.S., there are still around 75 million boomers (those born between 1946 and 1964). Some 10,000 are retiring every day. This is the group that drove email, the early days of the web, AOL, the late 1990s internet boom, the early days of cellular and e-commerce, played a big role in the success of BlackBerry and the initial iPhone, and even got comfortable with online dating (Match.com understands this).

Whether it’s Mary Meeker’s seminal “State of the Internet” report or the hottest Silicon Valley companies, products and apps, boomers don’t seem to be a big part of the conversation or the focus of product development. Yet this is a fascinating group, currently aged 50-70, and going through important life stages — midlife issues, empty-nesterdom, downsizing and retirement. I think tech companies are missing some opportunities, given the disproportionate focus on millennials and the up-and-coming Snapchatting, cord-cutting, Pokémon Go-ing Gen Z-ers.

What are some of the wants and needs of this group and what product development opportunities might match up? First, this is a group that wants tech to be easy. They don’t want to have to do a lot of self-provisioning and troubleshooting. They over-index iPhone to Android, they buy AppleCare and they still have cable. I think this is a segment ripe for what Apple is planning for TV. Millennials are cutting the cord because they are comfortable with the perambulations of what’s needed to do it. They think on-demand when it comes to entertainment (what time? what channel? who knows/cares?). But if Apple or somebody else can make cutting the cord and the whole search/discovery process easier, there is real potential to shake up the traditional pay TV space.

Boomers are also a segment that want some level of human interaction when it comes to customer service. Older boomers want someone to do it for them (make sure my phone is set up before I leave the store), while younger boomers might be prepared to do some self-service but will want a human being on the other end of the [phone!] at a certain point. Younger boomers are now reaching a stage where their teenagers, a.k.a., VP of Technology for the Household, are leaving for college. So they are going to be on their own when it comes to tech. Gulp!

A great case study here is Fitbit. The company has achieved dominance in the fitness tracker segment and basically created this market for boomers because such top-selling trackers as the Flex and HR do three things: Address a growing area of interest for the segment (health and light fitness, not super geeky or competitive, which is the target market for companies like Garmin); are easy to install and configure, with a limited but vital set of functions; and come from a company that’s easy to deal with (lots of help resources, good customer service). Fitbit is the Apple of the fitness tracker space.

On the other hand, boomers are not unlocking some of the real value of these products, because product and feature extensions are hard or cumbersome. Trying to configure and connect a scale? Works out of the gate, but often breaks and is hard to troubleshoot. Tracking nutrition? Gotta be easier. Integrating with other apps? Not a lot of standards yet. 

We also recognize the boomer segment is moving through different life stages. At the younger end, they are becoming empty-nesters, starting to downsize, moving back to the city, divorcing at higher than the average rate and spending time thinking about what’s next. They have more leisure time on their hands but they also have aging parents to worry about. The older segment is retiring but has the active lifestyle of those 10 years younger a generation ago. They are worrying more about health issues and costs.

So, what does this mean for the tech sector? I think there are some really interesting opportunities here. A few particular areas:

Kids going to college:. One thing boomers will miss about their teens is the in-house tech support. An opportunity for a fresher, more contemporized version of Geek Squad. Maybe even house calls?

Downsizing/moving back to the city: Zillow is a great one-size-fits-all website/app but there could be a better resource to help those 55-70 years old optimize where to live, type of dwelling and lifestyle for their next life stage.

Midlife-crisis stuff: All of a sudden, boomers have more time and disposable income. They want to do new things, have different experiences, meet people again, re-engage with their community. There could be some interesting products and apps that help them do these things. Facebook could do more for them here. Or is there an opportunity for a boomer-centric social network?

Travel: Related to the above point. Travel sites/apps are monolithic and have become a virtual monopoly. They’re adequate for finding the cheapest airfare/hotel/car. But there are some great opportunities that fuse the old (i.e., travel agents) with the new. A guy who seems to understand this is Paul English, founder of Kayak and now founder of Lola, which is a new kind of travel company that provides on-demand, personal travel service through a smartphone app. And boomers are willing to spend. Just look at the success of high-end active travel company Back Roads, which has morphed from bike tours to walking/hiking/intergenerational (and does great in the boomer segment).

Health care. There are lots of health-care sites, apps and a growing number of “connected” health devices. But, other than fitness trackers, there aren’t as many breakout products or services here. Boomers are an important segment in the connected/digital health care space. It was telling that Apple recently bought Gliimpse, a three-year-old startup that helps patients make sense of their medical records. Health Kit has huge potential but has been a disappointment so far.

Finally, as some of the large boomer segment ages, there are lots of little things that could be done to make products easier to use. This doesn’t mean “products for old people,” but minor features and UI elements like bigger buttons, larger fonts, better guidance out of the box and more hand-holding. Thinking about boomers will certainly be important in the burgeoning IoT segments if companies want to sell connected home and connected car products or services to anyone over the age of 50.

A leading wireless industry analyst and consultant, Mark Lowenstein is the managing director of Mobile Ecosystem. Most recently, Lowenstein was a member of the senior leadership team at Verizon Wireless, where as vice president of strategy he led the company’s efforts in product and business planning, market segmentation, national pricing and customer intelligence for both consumer and enterprise markets. Reach him @marklowenstein.

This article originally appeared on Recode.net.

A version of this essay was originally published at Tech.pinions, a website dedicated to informed opinions, insight and perspective on the tech industry.

With the U.S. Federal Appeals Court ruling earlier this month, it looks like net neutrality is here to stay, at least for now. Much ink has been spilled on both sides of this debate, but I’d like to weigh in on the wireless angle.

Part of what was affirmed in the ruling is that wireless broadband fits under the same rules as fixed broadband, and wireless users “don’t see the difference.” In fact, the practice of “zero rating” is coming under fire, and might end up being the first test case of the FCC applying NN rules to wireless. This tells me that, as NN heads toward even more appeals and potentially to the Supreme Court, we need to urge that wireless be looked at through a different lens.

What has changed since the NN discussions started in earnest in 2009 is that wireless network performance is broadband-esque. A good LTE connection with all cylinders firing — wide channel, carrier aggregation, advanced MIMO — offers an experience comparable to middle-of-the-road fixed broadband service. But the economics are fundamentally different.

If wireless got anywhere near average broadband usage patterns that are now approaching 100GB per month, every major operator’s wireless network would fall and not be able to get up.

Even though wireless data prices have dropped by 40 percent to 50 percent over the past several years, the average price paid by consumers still averages in the $8-per-gigabyte range (it’s $3 to $4 per GB at the low end), which is 10 to 20 times that of broadband (where usage caps apply). It still costs a wireless operator in the $1-per-GB range to deliver data to a consumer. Put another way, if wireless got anywhere near average broadband usage patterns that are now approaching 100GB per month, every major operator’s wireless network would fall and not be able to get up.

Now, I realize that network neutrality is more aimed at preventing bad behavior between corporate internet actors. The poster-child example is the possibility that Comcast would provide differentiated access or pricing to Netflix, or speed up its own apps or content. There’s not much evidence of this practice and, in fact, services such as Netflix, HBO Go and even “cord-cutting” are incenting users to buy higher-end broadband plans; 4k and Ultra HD will push that still further.

Despite Netflix comprising some 40 percent of internet traffic at peak times, the cable industry’s broadband business has never been better. In fact, it’s looking much more attractive, long-term, than its pay-TV business. And if the FCC really wanted competition in broadband, it should have required broadband firms such as the cable companies to open up their networks when it wrote the 1996 Telecom Act (a prevalent practice in many European countries, which have far more robust broadband competition and lower prices).

Want to watch a Netflix movie in 4K on your tablet? It might cost more.

So now we get to the poster child for how the wireless industry might get its hand slapped by the NN crowd: T-Mobile’s Binge On service, and the general practice of “zero rating.” Binge On basically zero-rates video from certain video streaming providers, such as YouTube, Netflix and HBO, which means that using these services does not count against a customer’s usage in their data-bucket plan. Video in Binge On is slowed down to 480p, using a special adaptive bit-rate coding technique that also reduces consumption on T-Mobile’s network. The quality difference is noticeable, but still tolerable. T-Mobile does provide users with the option to turn video back up to full throttle, in which case it’s counted against data usage per normal. This is viewed as a win-win for both the consumer and for T-Mobile: Binge On customers are spending more time watching video on T-Mobile’s network in a way that’s less consumptive of TMO’s network resources.

With the incredible growth of video consumption on mobile networks, expect more of these situational schemes. I could easily see wireless customers being charged extra for “premium data services” in markets where advanced techniques are used to provide faster speeds or a capacity boost. Want to watch a Netflix movie in 4K on your tablet? It might cost more. An operator might even charge a content provider differentiated pricing. A strict interpretation of NN rules would say this is a violation of equal access principles — the creation of “fast” and “slow” lanes. But how is this any different from how iTunes has historically charged more to download an HD version of a movie compared to a standard version?

Another example: What if live video services such as Facebook Live are really successful and end up choking wireless networks? One option is for wireless operators to say, “all right, you can only do it over Wi-Fi,” which is what AT&T did initially with FaceTime over iPhones. They could raise data prices or charge a premium for these types of services. They could try to pass on some of these costs to Facebook, or work out some cost-sharing scheme. The bottom line is that wireless operators’ execs are scared $#¡†less about the impact of video on their networks. Binge On is T-Mobile’s technique. Higher data pricing is AT&T and Verizon’s technique, for now.

I’d rather see a constructive conversation of how we handle the incredible traffic growth in wireless.

The economics don’t change markedly with advances in LTE, which is why operators are excited about services such as LTE Unlicensed and the FCC’s recent ruling to open up the 150 MHz of spectrum in the 3.5GHz band using a unique and innovative spectrum-sharing and prioritization scheme. 5G might offer significantly faster speeds and low latency — but it will be very expensive to build. A recently published, well-researched report by New Street Research says that, due to the low propagation characteristics of the 5GHz-and-higher spectrum bands being considered for 5G, it will take one million small cells to reach 10 percent of U.S. homes in relatively dense areas with 5G. Yikes.

I think FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler, who understands wireless economics as well as anyone, realizes that wireless is indeed different. He has basically looked the other way at Binge On and other zero-rating schemes so far. But in the several years since NN became a more serious possibility, regulators have edged closer to treating wireless as part of the NN equation. This is ironic, because we’ve seen a larger-step improvement in average broadband speeds than in wireless speeds during this period, but built for a comparatively lower cost. I’d rather see a constructive conversation of how we handle this incredible traffic growth in wireless than see an onerous set of antiquated rules apply to an industry where services such as Periscope and Facebook Live Video didn’t even exist three years ago.

If network neutrality heads to further appeals, as appears likely, I believe the idea of treating wireless differently should be rekindled.

A leading wireless industry analyst and consultant, Mark Lowenstein is the managing director of Mobile Ecosystem. Most recently, Lowenstein was a member of the senior leadership team at Verizon Wireless, where as vice president of strategy he led the company’s efforts in product and business planning, market segmentation, national pricing and customer intelligence for both consumer and enterprise markets. Reach him @marklowenstein.

This article originally appeared on Recode.net.

A version of this essay was originally published at Tech.pinions, a website dedicated to informed opinions, insight and perspective on the tech industry.

Over the past few years, “mobile first” has been the rage. Attach “mobile first” to a VC pitch and the valuations multiply, the way “dot-com,” “slo-mo,” “cloud-based” and “big data” did in their heydays. But while designing for mobile remains a key part of any development strategy, I think the concept of “mobile first” and “mobile only” are becoming outmoded and will come to apply only to specialized situations and apps.

The idea of mobile first is to design an online experience for the mobile Web before designing it for the desktop Web. In many cases, it has come to mean something more radical, such as designing almost exclusively for a mobile device or being “mobile-centric,” which means development efforts have been prioritized for mobile. The reason, of course, has been the tremendous growth in the usage of mobile at the expense of time spent on PCs and other screens such as TVs. But while mobile data consumption continues to rise exponentially, mainly because of video and rich media, the shift in consumption (or cannibalization) has started to level off.

I think the focus will be less on delivering a “mobile first” experience and more on optimizing for a multiscreen experience, or the “screen of the moment.”

Why is this? Well, it looks like the evolution to the Steve Jobs’s “post-PC” era is taking a bit of a pause or is perhaps weaving in a bit of a different direction than he anticipated. While sales of laptops and PCs are not exactly a growth market, the market isn’t dying, either.

Instead, we are seeing a shift toward thinner client devices, with apps and content in the cloud. Look at the success, for example, that Chromebooks have had in certain market segments, such as K-12 education. We are also seeing an evolution of the tablet market, with some successful products, such as the Surface, making progress in combining the best of both worlds. Tablets are fantastic content/media consumption devices, and are great for certain occupations such as real estate or pharmaceutical sales. But, for the vast majority of professionals, the PC reigns and the smartphone/tablet is ancillary.

Another factor has been the steady growth and improvement in the quality of Web apps and responsive design, where content adapts to the screen of the moment. This seems to have killed the native-app-versus-HTML5 debate, at least as far as this being a zero-sum game is concerned. It appears to me these will all coexist for the next couple of years, as the locus of innovation is less on hardware than on software and user experience evolution.

So what does this mean? I think the focus will be less on delivering a “mobile first” experience and more on optimizing for a multiscreen experience, or the “screen of the moment.” Let’s face it: If we were naming the smartphone today, we’d call it a portable computer, rather than a smartphone (to someone under the age of 25, what’s a phone, anyway?). That device has tremendous and unique value: Always with you, always on, location-enabled, and becoming more useful for more things every day. So developing for the evolving capabilities of these portable computers is critical. And there’s likely to be a lot of action over the next few years on combining the tablet/laptop/Chromebook form factors in some way.

We should also pay attention to the role of the TV in all this. As content moves a la carte, cloud-based and less linear, with better search/discovery and more interactivity, the device formerly known as the “TV that sits in your den” might instead be the 60-inch screen that you use and easily moves around your home. Or the image that projects on a large surface.

The idea of “mobile first” is evolving to a “multiscreen” strategy. And I’m sure someone will come up with a better term for it. But the action will be evolving online content and apps to adjust, on a dynamic basis, for the portable computing device and context of the moment.

A leading wireless industry analyst and consultant, Mark Lowenstein is the managing director of Mobile Ecosystem. Most recently, Lowenstein was a member of the senior leadership team at Verizon Wireless, where as vice president of strategy he led the company’s efforts in product and business planning, market segmentation, national pricing and customer intelligence for both consumer and enterprise markets. Reach him @marklowenstein.

This article originally appeared on Recode.net.