NTIA Takes Input on New Innovation Fund Round
The agency will use its remaining $50 million to support AI integration in wireless networks.
WASHINGTON, March 24, 2026 – The Commerce Department should focus its upcoming $50 million grant for AI in wireless networks on driving practical results, commenters told the agency Monday.
Commerce’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration received wide-ranging comments over the course of a more than two-hour listening session on the issue Monday. It was streamed virtually and hosted at the MITRE Corporation’s headquarters in McLean, Va.
“If we want this to be successful, it has to result in something that has value, that is sellable to industry,” said Kyle Allen, a senior vice president at Airspan Networks. “Not just to MNOs, but also to enterprises.”
On that front, commenters like General Motors and researchers from Iowa State University and Virginia Tech floated use cases like automation of manufacturing facilities, cybersecurity, network planning and coverage modelling, and managing spectrum resources, among other things they said could be improved with machine learning.
That could include smoother integration between terrestrial wireless and satellite service, satellite company Skylo told the agency.
“By embedding AI deeply into the [network] and system design, the network can dramatically optimize across both terrestrial and non-terrestrial, selecting the best access spectrum transmission strategy in real time,” the company said in written comments.
Commenters said NTIA should consider how to quantify the success of any funded projects and should try to foster access to network data and other information to train and test machine learning algorithms.
“A lot of the data we’re talking about, it is illegal to sell and it is illegal to use,” Eric Burger, a professor at Virginia Tech and former FCC official, said at the listening session. “Maybe we could go to, say, Congress if it requires a base law change or to the FCC if it’s a regulatory change, but first we need to figure out the policies that will enable this sharing.”
With the remaining $50 million of its Wireless Supply Chain Innovation Fund, the agency is planning to incentivize companies to integrate AI into their networks, and ideally build an American technology ecosystem that could be exported as companies adopt 6G in the future.
Previous tranches of Innovation Fund cash, about $550 million in total, have gone toward promoting an open radio access network, or open RAN, ecosystem. Still getting off the ground, open RAN is intended to provide a market of interoperable network components and software vendors to compete with Chinese firms globally.
In the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, passed in July, rescinded $850 million in unspent Innovation Fund cash. There had been more than 90 pending applications seeking nearly $3 billion from a $450 million round of funding, none of which will be awarded.
NTIA is planning to issue its new NOFO “in the coming months,” NTIA Administrator Arielle Roth said in a Feb. 25 speech.
With Monday’s listening session done, the agency will work to “build a NOFO that we hope is responsive to everything we heard today,” said Amanda Toman, who directs the Innovation Fund at NTIA. “We hope that very shortly after this, we can post the NOFO, you can take a look, and then we can get together again soon to talk about the details of that funding opportunity.”
Member discussion