NTIA Nominee Roth to Face Senate Commerce Grilling on BEAD Revamp, Spectrum Views
Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Ted Cruz, R-Texas, praised Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick during a Free State Foundation event Tuesday for moving toward what he hopes will be a major overhaul of NTIA’s $42.5 billion BEAD program. Other panel members told us they plan to grill agency administrator nominee Arielle Roth on the issue during her Thursday confirmation hearing. Lobbyists we spoke with expect Roth will face heat from Senate Commerce Democrats on BEAD because she's the committee Republicans’ telecom policy director, but they don’t believe this means the nominee will face an otherwise contentious reception. Thursday's hearing is set for 2:15 p.m. in 253 Russell.
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Cruz predicted during the FSF event that Roth will “do a great job at NTIA” and in partnership with Lutnick. Cruz said he's “working very closely” with Lutnick on the Commerce Department’s “rigorous review” of BEAD (see 2503050067) and hopes for a reversal from the program’s “spectacular failure” during the Biden administration. Former BEAD Director Evan Feinman, who criticized the direction in which the Trump administration is taking the program when he resigned earlier this month (see 2503170045), pushed back against criticisms of the initiative in a Cardinal News interview this week.
Cruz said he wants Lutnick to remove the “extraneous regulations” NTIA included during the Biden administration in its notice of funding opportunity for the program. He pointed to a raft of rules that previously drew GOP ire, including “labor requirements,” guidelines “favoring government-owned networks, extreme tech bias of fiber over satellites and fixed wireless” and climate change-related stipulations. Robert Fisher, Verizon's senior vice president-government relations and public affairs, said at the FSF event that he hopes Roth will effectively address concerns that NTIA’s Biden administration-era BEAD notice of funding opportunity's low-cost option language provided a backdoor to rate regulation. Verizon later endorsed Roth.
Senate Communications Subcommittee ranking member Ben Ray Lujan, D-N.M., told us he remains likely to probe Roth’s BEAD views (see 2502040056), given his dissatisfaction with Lutnick’s management of the program. “There was a bipartisan effort to get” BEAD funding via the 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, but there are now doubts about the Trump administration’s commitment to continuing the program as enacted, Lujan said. “Is this administration going to support investing in broadband expansion across the country or not, especially in rural communities?”
Senate Public Works Committee Chair Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va., said she plans to mention her misgivings about BEAD’s “status” during Commerce’s Roth hearing. “All of [the BEAD money] is still just sitting there” while Lutnick proceeds with his program review, Capito told us, noting her concern about how further delay in doling out funding will affect “states that are far along in the process, like” West Virginia, which has a final plan ready for approval for its $1.2 billion allocation. “We’re not really sure where we are on that,” Capito said.
Airwaves
Senate Commerce ranking member Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., told us she will eye Roth’s views on spectrum policy matters, particularly whether she's “going to work toward” NTIA asserting itself as the lead agency coordinating federal spectrum allocations. “We were proud that we got DOD and NTIA on the same page last year” on the Spectrum and National Security Act package (see 2406120058), but interagency agreement on airwaves legislation is in renewed doubt, Cantwell said. Senate Commerce didn’t advance the Cantwell-led proposal amid objections from Cruz and other Republicans (see 2410290039).
Senate Communications Chair Deb Fischer, R-Neb., told us she was not yet sure if she will attend the Roth hearing but has "a meeting with her ahead of time.” Lobbyists said that puts into doubt whether the panel will feature another airing of Fischer’s disagreement with Cruz on spectrum policy. She has signaled during several hearings this year that she opposes using a spectrum title in a budget reconciliation package to reallocate parts of the DOD-controlled 3.1-3.45 GHz band (see 2502190068).
Lobbyists said they expect Cruz will use the Roth hearing to again tout his 2024 Spectrum Pipeline Act, which would require NTIA to identify at least 2,500 MHz of midband spectrum to reallocate within the next five years. Cruz cited the measure during the FSF event, saying he's “fighting hard for spectrum to be part of the reconciliation bill.” Spectrum sales revenue represents “a big, big pay-for” to offset other matters that Republicans want to address via reconciliation, particularly extending the tax cuts enacted during the first Trump administration, Cruz said.
Cruz later urged Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard to investigate whether the Chinese Communist Party “or its affiliated entities might be conducting or furthering a campaign to oppose reauthorization of” the FCC’s lapsed “spectrum auction authority and the creation of a pipeline of spectrum for commercial use.” Chinese “entities have used officials from the American defense establishment to attempt to paper over legitimate national security concerns with their products,” he said in a letter to Gabbard. “Considering the stated importance of dominating 5G and 6G for the CCP, it is hardly a logical leap to ask if a similar campaign is underway with regard to current efforts to commercialize spectrum.”