WASHINGTON, December 1, 2023 – GOP lawmakers took the opportunity to slam recent Federal Communications Commission efforts at a House oversight hearing on Thursday.

That did not come as a surprise, with the communications and technology subcommittee branding the hearing as overseeing “President Biden’s broadband takeover.” Partisan disputes have resumed around FCC policies since the appointment of commissioner Anna Gomez, who gave Democrats a 3-2 majority on the commission.

The hearing also touched on spectrum policy and the Affordable Connectivity Program, which is still set to dry up in April 2024 despite months of calls for its renewal.

Digital discrimination

The FCC voted along party lines on November 15 to instate rules addressing gaps in broadband access along racial and class lines. Those rules are taking an approach industry groups opposed and allow the commission to take enforcement action against companies for practices that do not intentionally withhold broadband from protected groups.

Technology and Communications Subcommittee members and Republican commissioner Brendan Carr echoed talking points from an industry lobbying push that characterized the rules as a “micromanagement” effort to scrutinize routine business practices. 

Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, R-Washington, said “burdensome requirements like these will discourage deployment and harm our efforts to close the digital divide.”

Rodgers sparred with FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel on the issue, interrupting her answers to questions to reclaim time.

Rosenworcel, for her part, stuck to her argument that the rules are in line with the Infrastructure Act, which mandates the commission take action “preventing discrimination of access based on income level, race, ethnicity, color, religion, or national origin.” 

“The language in this statute is exceptionally broad,” she said.

The act also directs the commission to take into account technical and economic feasibility of deploying networks in poor and rural areas, but Rosenworcel’s assurances that the FCC will do so have not convinced industry or Republicans.

Net neutrality

The commission also moved forward on plans to reinstate net neutrality rules in October. The rules would classify broadband internet as a telecommunications service under Title II of the Communications Act of 1934, opening the industry up to more expansive regulatory oversight from the FCC. 

Similar rules were in place for two years before being repealed by the Trump FCC in 2017.

Republican committee members grilled the commission on Democratic warnings that the repeal would result in widespread traffic throttling, which did not materialize at scale in Title II’s absence.

Subcommittee Chairman Rep. Bob Latta, R-Ohio, asked Rosenworcel “when the so-called net neutrality rules were repealed, did it end the internet as we know it today, yes or no?”

The commission chairwoman answered a string of similar questions by saying the anticlimactic end to Title II broadband rules was “a result of more than about a dozen states stepping in and developing their own net neutrality laws.”

Commissioner Carr also argued with Rosenworcel on Title II’s impact on national security, talking over each other at points. Carr said there had been “one briefing” in his six year tenure in which he was told about a security issue the government could not address without Title II oversight over broadband. 

Rosenworcel said she has told national security authorities “over and over again” that without Title II authority, she cannot take requested actions to stop bad actors from hijacking traffic.

The commission is taking public comments on the proposed net neutrality rules until January 2024.

WASHINGTON, November 30, 2023 – The Federal Communications Commission asked Congress to move on renewing the agency’s auction authority and funding the Affordable Connectivity Program at a House oversight hearing on Thursday.

“We badly need Congress to restore the agency’s spectrum auction authority,” said FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel at the hearing. “I have a bunch of bands that are sitting in the closet at the FCC.”

Rosenworcel pointed to 550 megahertz in the 12.7-13.25 GHz band. The commission would “be able to proceed to auction on that relatively quickly” if given the go ahead, she said.

The commission’s authority to auction spectrum expired for the first time in March after Congress failed to extend it. Auction authority lets the commission auction off and issue licenses allowing the use of certain electromagnetic frequency bands for wireless communication.

Repeated pushes to restore the ability, first handed to the commission in 1996, have stalled in the face of gridlock on Capitol Hill.

Opening up spectrum is becoming more necessary as emerging technologies and expanding networks compete for finite airwaves. The Joe Biden administration unveiled a plan this month to begin two-year studies of almost 2,800 MHz of government spectrum for potential commercial use.

FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr said that’s not fast enough. “I would have had the spectrum plan actually free up more than zero megahertz of spectrum,” he said.

Rosenworcel said the FCC was in talks with the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, the agency that wrote up the plan, during the drafting process. When asked if the NTIA followed her recommendations, she said she would “like everyone to move faster and have a bigger pipeline in general.”

Commissioners expressed support for a House bill that would give the FCC temporary authority to issue the licenses it already auctioned off for 5G networks in the 2.5 GHz band. An identical bill passed the Senate in September.

T-Mobile took home more than 85 percent of the 8,000 total licenses in the band for $304 million, but the company and other winners cannot legally use their spectrum until the FCC issues the licenses.

Affordable Connectivity Program

Also at the top of commissioners’ minds was the Affordable Connectivity Program. Set up with $14 billion from the Infrastructure Act, the program provides a monthly internet subsidy for 22 million low-income households.

The program is expected to run out of money in April 2024.

“We have come so far, we can’t go back,” Rosenworcel said. “We need Congress to continue to fund this program. If it does not, in April of next year we’ll have to unplug households.”

The Biden administration asked Congress in October for $6 billion in the upcoming appropriations bill to keep the ACP afloat through December 2024. The government has been funded since September by stop-gap measures, with House Republicans ousting former Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-CA, over his unwillingness to cut spending and making similar demands of his replacement. 

A coalition of 26 governors joined the chorus of calls to extend the program on November 16. Lawmakers, activists, and broadband companies have been sounding the alarm on the program’s expiration for months as the $42.5 billion Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment effort gets underway. Without the subsidy, experts have said, households could be unable to access the new infrastructure built by BEAD.

Representative Yvette Clarke, D-NY, said of the ACP shortfall that she is “looking forward to introducing legislation on that very subject before Congress concludes its work for the year.”

WASHINGTON, November 22, 2023 – All 56 states and territories have now released for comment their Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment initial proposals.

Funded by the 2021 Infrastructure, Investment and Jobs Act, the BEAD program provides $42.5 billion for expanding broadband infrastructure. That money was allocated to states and territories in June based on their unconnected populations.

A final wave released their proposals for funding projects with that money in recent weeks, with Florida bringing the total to 56 on Wednesday. 

States and territories are required to submit those proposals, which come in two volumes, to the National Telecommunications and Information Administration by December 27. So far, 24 have submitted volume one and three have submitted volume two

Volume one details how states will ground-truth broadband coverage data. The Federal Communications Commission’s largely provider-reported coverage map was used to allocate BEAD money, but is not considered accurate enough to determine which specific locations lack broadband. 

Volume two outlines states’ plans for administering grant programs with their BEAD funds. That includes provisions like how grant applications will be scored, financing requirements, and the price at which states will start to consider technology other than the fiber-optic cable favored by the program.

The NTIA approved volume one from Louisiana on September 22 and Virginia on October 25, allowing their challenge processes to kick off. Those are each slated to last 90 days, after which the states will have finalized their list of which locations are eligible for BEAD-funded broadband.

The agency has yet to approve a volume two.

States are able to submit volume one before volume two, an effort by the NTIA to get challenge processes started and expedite the program’s process. 

Once a state or territory’s volume two is approved, it will have one year to award grants under the process outlined in that volume and submit a final proposal to the NTIA. Projects are slated to get underway after the agency signs off on those final proposals.