The Daily Journal describes Kenneth Carter as, “an
infinitely inquisitive and enthusiastically
intellectual telecommunications wonk who wants to
change the way the Internet works.”He has
also been called,
“a
GC visiting from the future.” Mr. Carter is
an attorney, a technologist, and a communications
business analyst. As a lawyer-turned-MBA,
his work applies the principles and tools of
Management Science to law and public policy,
bringing strong legal analysis and a quantitative
approach.
Mr. Carter is currently the
General Counsel to Bitmovin,
a technology leader in online video, with the
fastest API-driven, cloud-based Video Encoding
Service and an HTML5 Player for MPEG-DASH and
HLS. The company's technologies allows
adaptive content to be played on any device, in
any browser without buffering. He is a
co-creator of Bitmovin's Universal
NDA, the first truly standardized and open
source non-disclosure agreement. Mr. Carter
was previously Counsel at Cloudflare
in San Francisco, hired as the company’s first
in-house lawyer to lead legal affairs, public
policy, government relations, and trust &
safety. Cloudflare protects and accelerates
millions of websites by automatically optimizing
the delivery of web pages and applications.
He was part of the the company's leadership team
which created a Silicon Valley unicorn, which
valued at more than $4.2 billion at IPO. Mr.
Carter was twice selected as General Counsel of
the Year, Silicon
Valley (2016) and Corporate
Counsel (2021).These
awards recognize outstanding attorneys who steer
their companies through uncharted territory.
Mr. Carter was previously Policy Counsel for
Advanced Networks and Access Services at Google in
Mountain View, CA. At Google, he was
responsible for developing the company’s global
telecommunications policy strategy. Mr. Carter
also served as policy counsel for Android and Google
Fiber.
Before joining Google, he was a Senior Consultant in
the NGN and Internet Economics Department at WIK
Consult GmbH, in Bad Honnef, Germany. At
WIK, he advised both private- and public-sector
clients on matters relating to Next Generation
Networks, particularly emerging issues or issues of
first impression which cross traditionally-defined
industries and classifications. Mr. Carter
also proposed a new mechanism
for spectrum trading and assignment which can be as
much as 80% more efficient than conventional
auctions. Mr. Carter was Senior Counsel for
Business and Economics in the Office of Strategic
Planning and Policy Analysis (OSP) at the Federal Communications
Commission (FCC). At the FCC, he
provided the Chairman, Commissioners, and other
senior staff with financial, business, and market
analysis regarding emerging trends and their
implications for strategic policy objectives.
He co-authored OSP Working Paper #39, "Unlicensed
and
Unshackled", widely-cited as an authority on
the FCC's Part 15 Rules. In
addition, the Chairman recognized Mr. Carter and two
other colleagues with the Commission's Excellence in
Economic Analysis Award for their cutting-edge
experimental economics work on market-informed radio
spectrum policies.
Before the FCC, he served as the Deputy Director of
the Columbia
Institute for Tele-Information (CITI) at
Columbia University, the leading academic research
institute focusing on strategy, management, and
policy issues in telecommunications, computing, and
mass media. Mr. Carter remains a Senior
Research
Fellow at the Institute. Mr. Carter is
currently serving as a pro bono advisor to
San Francisco Mayor Mark Farrell, advising the Mayor
on the City's initiative to develop a municipal
fiber network. He is also a GLOCOM Fellow at
the Center for
Global Communications at International
University of Japan. Mr. Carter has served on
several advisory boards and committees, including
the Board of Directors of the Dive Club of Silicon
Valley, the Telecommunications
Policy Research Conference (TPRC), and the
Policy Program Committee of IEEE DySPAN. In
2008, he served on an International
Advisory
Forum on Next Generation Broadband Networks to
Minister Eamon Ryan of the Department of
Communications, Energy and Natural Resources in the
Republic of Ireland.