The Senate Commerce Committee confirmed plans Friday for a March 21 spectrum policy-focused hearing, as expected (see 2403140044). Ahead of the hearing, panel chair Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., was eyeing a set of slimmed-down spectrum legislative proposals the Congressional Budget Office evaluated at her request, including a potential five-to-seven-year reauthorization of the FCC’s auction authority (see 2403140066). Cantwell was doubtful Thursday those proposals would be ready for inclusion in a coming FY 2024 “minibus” appropriations package to provide additional money for the FCC’s affordable connectivity program and Secure and Trusted Communications Networks Reimbursement Program (see 2403150063). The March 21 hearing “will focus on how a coordinated and comprehensive approach to domestic spectrum policy is critical to U.S. national security,” Senate Commerce said. “A unified approach will enable the [U.S.] to lead internationally, which will help counter threats like those from Huawei and ZTE.” Renewing the FCC’s mandate, “engaging in fact-based spectrum decision-making, and investing in dynamic spectrum sharing and other technologies will ensure the [U.S.] leads in spectrum use policy that protects the nation’s critical national security and economic competitiveness missions,” the panel said. Open Radio Access Network Coalition Executive Director Diane Rinaldo, a former acting NTIA administrator, is among those set to testify. Also on the docket: WifiForward Executive Director Mary Brown; Hudson Institute Center for the Economics of the Internet Director Harold Furchtgott-Roth, a Republican former FCC commissioner; University of Notre Dame professor Monisha Ghosh; and Center for Strategic Studies senior fellow Clete Johnson. The hearing will begin at 10 a.m. in 253 Russell. CTIA praised plans for the hearing. The group is “committed to working with Congress to incorporate the key missing piece to successful legislation and that is the inclusion of specific targets for auctioned spectrum. Every prior multi-year extension of FCC authority -- in 1997, 2006 and 2012 -- included specific amounts of spectrum for auction that now power our world-leading networks. Failing to include specific direction now risks setting us back half a decade or more and foreclosing critical opportunities to make new 5G spectrum available, which is critical to our national and economic security.”
Advocates of additional federal funding for the FCC’s affordable connectivity program and Secure and Trusted Communications Networks Reimbursement Program were closely monitoring congressional negotiations Friday in hopes appropriators would reach a deal addressing both priorities as part of a second tranche of FY 2024 spending bills lawmakers want approved before midnight March 22. Rip-and-replace supporters voiced strong optimism that the next “minibus” package would include $3.08 billion to fully fund that program. ACP backers were, at least privately, growing less hopeful of a deal including their priority.
Senate Commerce Committee Chair Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., told us she's considering a clean FCC reauthorization bill that could pay for some of congressional leaders’ telecom priorities but wouldn’t necessarily mandate that the commission begin sales of specific frequencies. Senate Commerce plans a March 21 hearing on that and other spectrum policy issues, Cantwell told us Thursday ahead of a formal panel announcement. Cantwell's proposal would be in line with her pursuit of a slimmed-down measure (see 2403110066) drawing some elements of the stalled House Commerce Committee-cleared Spectrum Auction Reauthorization Act (HR-3565).
FCC commissioners voted 3-2 Thursday, over dissents by Brendan Carr and Nathan Simington, to approve the agency's Telecom Act Section 706 report to Congress. The report concluded that broadband isn't deployed in a "reasonable and timely fashion," with about 24 million Americans lacking access to speeds of at least 100/20 Mbps. The two Republicans also dissented at the commissioners' open meeting on a proposed requirement that cable and satellite TV multichannel programming distributors display prominently the aggregate cost of video programming in ads and customer bills.
The House Communications Subcommittee unanimously advanced the Foreign Adversary Communications Transparency Act (HR-820), Future Uses of Technology Upholding Reliable and Enhancing Networks Act (HR-1513) and two other anti-China communications security bills Tuesday. House China Committee Chairman Mike Gallagher, R-Wis., meanwhile, is pressing the FCC on whether it will act on reports that mobile devices in the U.S. are still processing signals from China’s BeiDou and Russia’s global navigation satellite systems (GNSS).
Senate Commerce Committee ranking member Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and Communications Subcommittee ranking member John Thune, R-S.D., filed their long-circulating 2024 Spectrum Pipeline Act Monday with some changes from a draft version proposed in the fall (see 2311220063). The proposal drew sharply divided reactions from communications policy stakeholders. Some lobbyists suggested Cruz and Thune filed the measure Monday to get ahead of NTIA's planned release later this week of its implementation plan for the Biden administration's national spectrum strategy (see 2403050048).
President Joe Biden is requesting increased funding in FY 2025 for the FCC, Patent Office and the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security (see 2303130070). The FY25 requests are lower than FY24's for the FTC, NTIA, the National Institute of Standards and Technology, DOJ’s Antitrust Division and some Agriculture Department broadband programs, though in some cases the Biden proposal exceeds ultimate Congressional allocations for FY24. Biden signed off Saturday on the Consolidated Appropriations Act FY24 appropriations minibus package (HR-4366), which included funding cuts for NTIA and other Commerce agencies but a slight increase for DOJ Antitrust (see 2403040083). The Senate voted 75-22 Friday night to approve the package.
Backers of Congress giving the FCC stopgap funding to keep the affordable connectivity program running through FY 2024 latched onto President Joe Biden's short mention of internet affordability in his State of the Union speech Thursday night to bolster that push. Biden also said Congress should pass comprehensive data privacy legislation and briefly touched on other tech policy issues. He didn't mention the House Commerce Committee's push to require TikTok Chinese owner ByteDance to divest the app for it to continue operating in the U.S., despite its supporters' rapid push to advance it (see 2403080035).
Senate Commerce Committee ranking member Ted Cruz, R-Texas, called Wednesday for Congress to substantially rein in the FCC's autonomy in setting USF spending and creating new programs amid a bicameral working group’s examination of a possible universal service revamp (see 2305110066). “Caught in a dilemma of wanting to further expand USF programs but having already maxed out the level of taxation American consumers can reasonably tolerate, the conversation at the FCC and in Congress has focused on expanding the pool of companies and products subject to” the USF contribution factor, which is effectively a “tax on the working class,” Cruz said in a paper. “This approach is anything but fair to American taxpayers: it would hide the problem of excessive USF taxation rather than fix it and ultimately make tax burdens worse by emboldening further unaccountable spending growth.” Instead, he said Congress should “take charge of defining universal service and deciding where USF funds may go.” Cruz proposes making most USF programs subject to congressional appropriations but believes “it may make sense to keep the High-Cost program within the current” funding framework “given ongoing multiyear commitments to providers.” Congress should eliminate “duplicative” USF spending, including combining the Lifeline program with the currently independent affordable connectivity program, given perceptions that the “federal government has too many broadband programs, and a poor record of coordinating them,” Cruz said. He also proposes curbing the FCC’s expansion of E-rate eligibility, citing concerns about permitting schools and libraries to use program support for off-premises Wi-Fi hot spots and wireless internet services (see 2311090028).
Many small and mid-sized internet service providers (ISP) have doubts that they will participate widely if at all in the broadband equity, access and deployment (BEAD) program. At ACA Connects' annual summit Wednesday in Washington, President Grant Spellmeyer said members are concerned "about where BEAD is headed" on project requirements and conditions. "Places like Pennsylvania have got some troubling provisions that are slowing members down," he said. "I think you're going to see wildly disparate results across the 50 states." One ISP that operates in multiple states told us it's leaning away from participating in the states with particularly onerous conditions.