LAS VEGAS — Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chair Ajit Pai made his long-anticipated and delayed appearance at the tech industry's largest annual gathering in the country this year. The bureaucrat was scheduled to appear at CES in 2018, but cancelled amid death threats during his quest to rollback net neutrality, and last year’s appearance was cancelled because of the federal government’s longest shutdown in U.S. history.

“He said he was coming a couple times and didn’t show up … hopefully he’s backstage,” said Gary Shapiro, president and CEO of the Consumer Technology Association, as he anxiously waited for Pai to come on stage.

After wading through some discussion about the net neutrality debate, Shapiro shifted the conversation to 5G, which Pai has described in terms of paramount national importance. “We want to promote American leadership in 5G and we’re doing that in part through what we call the 5G Fast Plan,” he said.

That effort includes “getting more spectrum in the commercial marketplace, making it easier to deploy the wireless infrastructure of the future — small cells and the like, and promoting more fiber deployment, which is of course critical for carrying all that internet traffic into the core of the networks,” Pai explained.

Some significant barriers still stand in the way of 5G deployments, he added. “It is not cheap to build a 5G network, and the scale of the network that you have to build is pretty massive if you want to create a nationwide network,” Pai said.

Other challenges include gaining access to spectrum and finding work crews to climb towers and install new network equipment. On the spectrum front, the FCC is gearing up to auction or take action on unlicensed spectrum in the 2.5 GHz, 3.5 GHz, 3.7 GHz, 4.9 GHz, 5.9 GHz, 6 GHz, in addition to millimeter-wave (mmWave) bands, he explained. A spectrum auction currently underway in the 37, 39, and 47 GHz bands has surpassed $6 billion in total bids thus far, he added.

“This is an issue where we want America to lead, and not just for parochial pride of being able to say we lead, but we do believe that our model of innovation and investment is one that ultimately serves consumers well here and around the world,” Pai said. He is also confident that the FCC will be able to remove constraints on unlicensed spectrum this year.

While shared spectrum is a hot-button topic in the nation’s capital, Pai said it’s important to remember that spectrum is a public resource, and “our top mission at the FCC, and regardless of any band, is to make sure those public resources are being deployed for the benefit of the American people.”

Achieving that mission is “increasingly difficult” because “every single band we’re talking about has incumbents, and so we’ve got to think very creatively about sharing models,” Pai added.

Another area of heightened focus and controversy at the FCC is the national security implications wrapped up in 5G. The agency last year voted to prohibit the use of FCC funding from being spent on equipment or services that might present a national security threat, and it has engaged other agencies, including Homeland Security, the State Department, the National Security Council, and others to coordinate in developing a strategy on 5G security.

The U.S. government’s position is to lead in 5G on deployment and innovation, but that doesn’t mean it wants to block all companies based outside of the country from getting involved in that effort, Pai explained. “There’s no American-based supplier of equipment as we currently conceive it,” he said. “But one of the very interesting things is that people are innovating here in the United States and in other parts of the world to virtualize the radio access networks (RAN) and other parts of the 5G infrastructure.”

Software is an area that America has traditionally been a leader in, he said. “We really do have the lead in terms of software innovation. Using the software layer to address not just the security but also the cost element, the cost problem for 5G networks, I think is a win for everybody.”