FCC Officials Say They're Confident Auction Authority Is Coming

Meanwhile, BEAD delays drew criticism from Democratic staffers for congressional committees and lawmakers. Mary Huang, senior communications and technology counsel to House Communications Subcommittee ranking member Doris Matsui, D-Calif., said Louisiana and other states were ready to go with BEAD construction, but the White House was seemingly "shooting itself in the foot" by injecting delay into the process. The danger is that the administration will cause states to undo BEAD work they have completed, she said. Parul Desai, chief minority counsel for the House Communications Subcommittee, said there's no end in sight to Commerce's BEAD delays.

Huang called the White House freeze of Digital Equity Act funding "alarming" and against the law, since Congress authorized the grants. Desai predicted the cancellation will face numerous legal challenges.

China increasingly sees wireless leadership coming from promoting Chinese-made commercial devices globally, CTIA General Counsel Umair Javed said. In the face of that, he said the U.S. needs to embrace global spectrum harmonization. The U.S. can't be "a spectrum island" while Huawei and other Chinese companies are selling to the rest of the world, he said, adding that the U.S. needs to prioritize operating in the same spectrum bands as allies and partners.

Matt Pearl, director of the Strategic Technologies Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said China has had a transactional approach at recent World Radiocommunication Conferences, making many deals, while the U.S. has relied on soft power. The shifting foreign policy of the U.S., with its America-first focus, could complicate that approach, he said.

Trade

Pointing to the preliminary trade deal that the U.S. has struck with the U.K., Information Technology Industry Council Director-Trade Policy Kyle Johnson said many more with other nations are expected in coming months. He said the Trump administration is more focused on tech and tech-related trade barriers than the Biden administration was. The U.K. deal includes security cooperation provisions, of which there will be more in future trade deals, Johnson said. He added that security issues and U.S. tech leadership will likely play a role in future tariff actions.

White House trade policies have Samsung "in the risk and damage mitigation business at the moment," quipped Scott Thompson, the company's head of policy and outreach. He said Samsung's focuses include reducing the scope of tariffs on its products and diversifying where it makes them. The company is trying to impress upon the White House and Congress the effects of tariffs on consumers and on Samsung business partners, he said. It started moving production from China 15 years ago when the country made it tougher to sell in the Chinese market, he said, adding that Samsung has moved production to South Korea and the U.S., as well as Vietnam, India and Mexico. However, that's "not good enough" under U.S. trade policy. Thompson said some further Samsung production could move to the U.S., "but everybody cannot make everything here."

Space Pace

Space operators named a variety of targets for the FCC's "Delete, Delete, Delete" deregulation proceeding. Jennifer Warren, vice president-global regulatory affairs and public policy at Lockheed Martin, said the agency's experimental licensing regime and equipment certification processes need to be changed. GPS Innovation Alliance Executive Director Lisa Dyer said the commission could consider benchmarking its licensing regime against that of other nations.

SpaceX Director-Satellite Policy Jameson Dempsey said satellite operators too often have to ask permission to make changes that improve safety or efficiency, even when those changes comply with the rules. Streamlining the earth station application process and allowing self-coordination would reduce the administrative burden on the agency, he said.

Pointing to the non-geostationary orbit/geostationary orbit sharing framework NPRM approved at the FCC's April meeting (see 2504280038), Kalpak Gude, global regulatory affairs head at Amazon's Kuiper, said some GSO operators are “extremely aggressively” trying to prevent even a discussion at the ITU of changing the rules. He said the value of the FCC proceeding is that it demonstrates to the world what can be done in modernizing rules without going through the ITU.

FCBA Seminar Notebook

The FCC's cyber trust mark is primarily consumer-facing, and the next step should be extending it to industrial and wireless network contexts, Simington said. Executive order language from the Biden administration requiring U.S. government procurement of cyber trust mark equipment by 2027 has been retained so far, he said. He also said edge providers that benefit from universal connectivity, such as Meta, Amazon and Alphabet, are the primary beneficiaries of universal service and logically should pay into USF. The challenge is figuring out how to charge edge providers, and the USF framework might not be the right one, he added.

Asked about Chairman Brendan Carr's priorities once the FCC has a third GOP vote, Delacourt said the agency is busy "dealing with what's right in front of us." He said Carr has experience with a 2-2 FCC, and its composition today is not a major obstacle to getting things done.